text:
How to discourage irrelevant self-citation?
I once reviewed a manuscript whose authors cited many of their own published papers, which were not relevant to the subject of the manuscript. This kind of practice is evidently frowned upon by the academic community. In my comments, I advised the authors to remove those references, which they did afterwards to some extent. The manuscript eventually got published, after two rounds of review.
With hindsight, did I do the right thing to discourage this practice of irrelevant self-citation, or is there anything else that I should have done?

On a related note, I had an anonymous reviewer convince me to put lots of citations to papers that just happened to be written by X et al, then in the next round another reviewer told me to remove almost all of those as irrelevant.

Did I do the right thing to discourage this practice of irrelevant self-citation?

Yes. In fact, as a reviewer, you should point out irrelevant citations of any kind (self- or otherwise), and suggest that these be removed. Conversely, you should not complain about relevant and appropriate self-citations. The issue is the lack of relevance, not the self-citing.

Is there anything else that I should have done?

This is exactly what should happen: reviewers should call out this kind of thing, so the authors will have to remove the irrelevant citations before the paper is published. This anecdote is a triumph of diligent reviewing :)

A rule that was told to me in my youth and I have always obeyed and agreed with: never include a paper in your bibliography unless you cite it in the text itself.  Like most rules, it admits some exceptions: for instance if a primary purpose of your paper is to gather references -- e.g. if you are writing a retrospective on the work of one specific person, or you are the first to compile what you intend to be an all-inclusive guide to the literature of an entire sub(sub...)field -- then this would not apply.
Of course one should in most cases try to go farther than the above rule: as a reader I am not thrilled when multiple references get dropped in a single phrase, e.g. "For more work on this problem see [73], [152], [49], [16]."  In an age of increasingly sophisticated electronic bibliographic catalogues, this sort of "buckshot citation" seems to have little value.  Just a couple of days ago I read a famous paper (why not? it was Alon-Friedland-Kalai, Regular subgraphs of almost regular graphs, 1984) and noticed that they were not phrasing their results as explicitly in terms of a certain concept as it seemed to me that they should: that would simplify the proofs and result in some mild strengthenings.  Well, it's no big deal but I got curious as to whether anyone had later made this connection more explicit.  An appropriate google led me to a survey paper in which the AFK paper was mentioned...but in the above buckshot approach: nothing is specifically said about the paper in the text, not even the names of any of the authors.  As a result I am left to wonder whether the connection has actually been made.  Which is no big deal -- I have corresponded with an author of the (nice) survey paper before, and this is a good opportunity to do so again -- but the point stands: citing that paper and not doing any more than that doesn't seem to accomplish much.
On the other hand, I think the kind of vigilance in calling out weak citations that @ff524 lauds could be taken too far.  In some fields -- like mathematics -- we are pretty rampant under-citers, to the extent that it makes it harder for a non-veteran to find their way through the literature, which can result in duplication of work.  Citing too little is a crime which has real victims.  Citing too much is a crime only* because of the current academic fad that one's research profile can be accurately estimated in terms of citations indices.  I would encourage every academic to maintain a healthy skepticism about that: again and again I have found important, deep papers with few or no citations, and I have often found that what is most cited is what is easiest to understand.
If you really believe in the science of citation indices, I think you need to at least approach it with some sophistication.  The issue that the OP specifically asks about can be dealt with by keeping track of self-citations, which is certainly trivial to do with current technology.  Creating and implementing algorithms that detect and counteract various kinds of "inappropriate citations" sounds like a fun research problem: for instance, we should probably be searching for small cliques in the citation digraph.
*I just remembered that in Gian-Carlo Rota's in/famous Indiscrete Thoughts, he mentions and endorses the practice of sprinkling in some absolutely irrelevant citations to your work as an easy way of making friends.  This is definitely a book for which always taking the author literally at his word would be a mistake, but I read his attitude here as one of whimsical mischief rather than real academic skullduggery.  The times they are a-changin'.

Added: I will admit to being surprised by the downvote: I don't see that I've said anything remotely controversial.  In particular, I don't disagree at all with @ff524's answer (which I upvoted): I said only that vigilance in pruning citations could be taken too far.  This is not the first time that I've encountered on this site the phenomenon of cultural differences in citation practices between my field (mathematics) and certain other academic fields.  As I've said before and again in this answer: mathematicians are rampant underciters, to the point in which people end up spending significant amounts of time and effort replicating others' work.  That's a problem which in my mind safely outweighs the damage one does to the readability of one's own paper by too much buckshot citation or the games that apparently some people play to try to increase their citation index.  Does anyone disagree with this?  I would be interested to know.
One thing that I could have been more explicit about in my answer: in general, there is a spectrum of relevance in citations, with "so obviously irrelevant that you are perpetuating some kind of academic dishonesty by including it" on one end and "so obviously crucial that you are perpetuating another kind of academic dishonesty by omitting it" at the other end.  Clearcut cases should be clearly addressed, absolutely.  There are also less clearcut cases, and in such cases I would recommend giving some latitude to the authors (especially if the "crime" is reducing the signal-to-noise ratio of their paper: a helpful referee might point that out, but ultimately that's the authors' own feet to shoot if they choose).
I did mention citations in a recent referee report.  I wrote:

[Self effacing remark along the lines of "I could be wrong, but..."], Result X of the paper doesn't look so similar to Result Y of a paper they cite [and which was only cited by way of comparison and not used in any way].  I don't find this citation irrelevant per se, but it makes me wonder why they didn't cite Z1,Z2,Z3 which seem MORE relevant.

The authors specifically responded to this point in their revision.  They said, essentially:

The citation to Y was not in our first draft.  We added it based on feedback.  We agree that Z1,Z2,Z3 are also relevant, and we added them.

I was quite satisfied with that.  Final citation density of the paper after adding the citations I suggested: about .5 distinct citations per page.
I also find this comment of ff524 interesting:

Consider yourself lucky that you rarely have to review papers that indiscriminately cite all the authors' previous work, an assortment of unrelated papers from the journal it's submitted to, and the first ten papers that appear in Google scholar for a related keyword. (I exaggerate only slightly)

It's not just rare; I have never refereed or even seen a mathematics paper that has anything like that level of citation.  I have refereed at least 30 papers, so if I'm "lucky", it may be that I'm lucky to be a mathematician rather than an academic in some other field.  While I certainly do feel lucky to be a mathematician, in this case once I again I suspect that this lack of a problem is a symptom of the opposite, more serious problem.
Is this phenomenon really common in other academic disciplines?  I find that surprising: to me it sounds like the sort of "rookie mistake" that some young person might try once and their advisor would correct.

The "crime" of an irrelevant citation is that it lowers the signal to noise ratio of useful information in the paper, and thus, the quality of the paper.

@ff524: My answer counsels against irrelevant citations.  All I'm saying is that if one is deciding between including a citation and not -- in good faith -- then the damage done by not including a citation that turns out to be highly relevant is worse than that done by including a citation which turns out not to be so helpful to the readers.

Consider yourself lucky that you rarely have to review papers that indiscriminately cite all the authors' previous work, an assortment of unrelated papers from the journal it's submitted to, and the first ten papers that appear in Google scholar for a related keyword. (I exaggerate only slightly)

Re: it sounds like the sort of "rookie mistake" that some young person might try once and their advisor would correct.  sometimes that advisor is as clueless as the rookie.

"never include a paper in your bibliography unless you cite it in the text itself" -- With LaTeX, that's actually easier to do than the opposite.

Since you edited your answer in reaction to my downvote, I will give my reasons. While interesting, I find your answer too wordy and borderline off-topic. Things like 'never include a paper in your bibliography unless you cite it in the text itself', which is a basic recommendation for every serious scientific writing, are not directly related to the question. I would include a tl:dr with the comment you wrote above starting at 'If one is deciding, etc'.

@Jigg: Thanks for your comment.  I have to agree with you that my answer is on the lengthy side and includes considerations that are not absolutely directly related to the OP's question.  (It also includes things which are, e.g. the suggestion that if one is worried about way too many self-citations one should simply track self-citations and include a "non-self citation" statistic, which is now easy to do).

I myself tend to think of (and use) downvotes as expressing either outright mistakes (more so on other sites, perhaps) or serious disagreements with the opinions expressed.  I am happy to hear that your downvote was not for these reasons.  (Of course you are more than entitled to downvote for the reasons you mention.)  Thanks for explaining yourself.

With hindsight, did I do the right thing to discourage this practice of irrelevant self-citation

Not necessarily. Citation is not a prize or a favour. It's a scientific tool to help the reader or to justify the claims. Therefore, it is certainly right to discourage the practice of irrelevant citations. But if your concern is only irrelevant self-citation, it seems that your motivation is not scientific proper, rather social and competitive one: to "level the market of citations", so that people do not "get ahead" by self-citations. Indeed, by claiming that the author engages in what you call (a deliberate) "practice" of self-citation you assume with no evidence that they are not behaving in good faith, which is a speculation based on your world-view of academic competition.
In other words, discouraging only irrelevant self-citations is not right. But discouraging any irrelevant citation is right, as explained in the excellent answer by ff524.

I think this should be followed by all reviewers. There are certain facts to be remembered. Apart from scenarios where the author of the manuscript citing his own publications, I would like to add few other too. First, an author from a lab citing  publications of his own laboratory. Second, an author from an institution citing articles that were from his own institution. Third, an author submitting an article to a journal with more citations that are publications of the journal to which he is submitting. All this scenarios exists and mostly these all were done intentionally. In addition, most of the times the author was instructed to do so, either by his guide or by the journal itself. Hence, I think there should be specific regulations to be followed by journals and reviewers in order to reduce such unnecessary irrelevant citations.


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Could Brexit negatively affect PhD students in the UK who are EU nationals?
This question relates to the potential withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, a.k.a. Brexit.
I am an Italian citizen, and I will start a (funded) PhD in the UK in September.
Right now I don't need any particular documents to stay there, but I am worried that if the UK decides to leave the EU my position could be in trouble (especially with regards to funding).
What would happen in such a situation?
I am aware this question might be labeled as opinion-based, but I am looking for people who already got answers from their universities. I imagine financial plans have been established for the next two-three years already.

It is a hard question. We don't know much about how brexit will impact universities. Probably no impact on you, since the contrat which links you to the university will never be revoked because of that.

I think this question is not so much opinion-based as it is unanswerable right now. It's not like there is a clear, well-defined set of rules for how a country exits the EU, as this has never been done before. One can only speculate at this point what might happen, and this site is not particularly well-suited for speculations that may need to be reverted as soon as there is more info.

Maybe this is more of a law question than an academic question.

I imagine some people with more important projects than a PhD may already have been informed about possible consequences, which is why I asked it here

I just don't think there is any way to "inform" yourself currently. It is simply not defined yet.

Okay, I think I'll still leave it open for a couple of days

I don't think Brexit will be applied. If it will be, it will have negative consequences on the research in UK. Hopefully it will be disregarded.

Not a precise duplicate, but see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/64963/how-would-the-uk-leaving-the-eu-affect-academia-and-phd-admission and answers there.

@dan111 EU funding are given entirely before the start of the study, so no possiblity of withdrawal (I know it, I was part of an EU project)

There's a reason why the "Remain" campaign is widely known as "Project Fear". So far, as a UK citizen since birth, I haven't read or heard a single rational argument either for or against the issue. I've heard plenty of attempts at blackmail, though, on both sides of the debate.

Nice question. I'm Italian too and I'm currently writing my thesis in Edinburgh. It did occur to me that if Brexit happens then my ID might not be enough to stay in the UK, and I literally don't have a passport since I never traveled outside Schengen (well, at least since I was 2 or so).

@bakuriu What? The UK is outside the Schengen. How did you get in?

The UK accepts EU ID cards for entry (even though it doesn't issue them to it's own citizens)

yup. there's even a EU citiziens row in heathrow just for those quick, no stamp id's. like in almsot any other european bug airport.

@ColBeseder EU provides the right of free travel between all its members, UK included. That's my point. If UK exits I wouldn't be able to stay here anymore (though, given that the procedure takes 2 years to complete it's not really a problem for me).

@Bakuriu . Yes, you have a right to enter. But you need a passport. You said that you don't have a passport. So I still don't understand: How did you get in?

@ColBeseder: government-issued ID-card?

@ColBeseder I do NOT need a passport. I went to the airport with my ID card, when I arrived in Edinburgh's airport there is a queue specifically for EU citizens (+ switzerland and some other country) and I just gave the policeman my ID and was done.

@GautierC Perhaps it has changed or depends on the project, but I don't think it's the case for the H2020 project funding my salary.  And in Switzerland, EU research funding was frozen when they ended freedom of movement.  I'm not sure how those observations add up.

Please see this meta question for my vote to close rationale.

@gerrit interesting, But is it more because Switzerland didn't respect a term of the initial deal, which will not be the case here. We will see anyway.

Even if UK decides to leave it will take 2 years of planning before we actually leave. I doubt they would go around kicking people out.

@gerrit: though now Horizon2020 (and Erasmus) list Switzerland just like other participating countries. Interesting background: seems there had been trouble between EU and Switzerland that was rather independent of the referendum: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/eu-swiss-spat_erasmus-funding-was-an-issue-before-vote/38103170. For students it is also important to know that Switzerland jumped in within 2 months and payed the students themselves: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/students-on-the-move_temporary-solution-for-erasmus--to-continue/40789696. Though of course that's no guarantee for UK.

Update on 2016-06-28: The UK Government has put out an official statement on this issue.

The short answer is "We don't know yet, but for a PhD program likely not."
The terms of Brexit have not been negotiated. They will may start to be negotiated if and after a vote to leave wins the referendum. (So that's the "we don't know".) On the other hand, it will be at least two years after the vote before the actual British exit from the EU (presumably to negotiate and to allow a graceful transition). If you are starting a 3-year PhD program this fall, there's a good chance that the negotiations will not have concluded fast enough to directly affect your research.

Source: the BBC writes

If the UK left the EU would UK citizens need special permits to work in the EU?
Lots of people asked about this. A lot would depend on the kind of deal the UK agreed with the EU after exit. If it remained within the single market, it would almost certainly retain free movement rights allowing UK citizens to work in the EU and vice versa. If the government opted to impose work permit restrictions, as UKIP wants, then other countries could reciprocate, meaning Britons would have to apply for visas to work.
What about EU nationals who want to work in the UK?
As explained in the answer above, it would depend on whether the UK government decided to introduce a work permit system of the kind that currently applies to non-EU citizens, limiting entry to skilled workers in professions where there are shortages.

and

How long will it take for Britain to leave the EU?
This was a question asked by many people. The minimum period after a vote to leave would be two years. During that time Britain would continue to abide by EU treaties and laws, but not take part in any decision-making, as it negotiated a withdrawal agreement and the terms of its relationship with the now 27 nation bloc. In practice it may take longer than two years, depending on how the negotiations go.

"If it remained within the single market, it would almost certainly retain free movement rights allowing UK citizens to work in the EU and vice versa."  Given that a large proportion of "leave" voters are apparently doing so because they don't want other EU citizens to have free movement rights in the UK, this doesn't seem like a likely outcome.  That said, the situation for getting academic visas when coming from non-EU countries to the UK is apparently reasonably good in any case, so it is unlikely the OP would have an issue because of this.

@Jules a substantial proportion of voters in this referendum are not, shall we say, being well-informed about the future options they're voting for.

"It will start to be negotiated if and after a vote to leave wins the referendum" Not "will" but "may". The referendum is non-binding.

Vote Leave wish to “take back control on immigration” much sooner than that.  When the Swiss “took back control”, H2020 funds were frozen and they were thrown out of Erasmus immediately, if I recall correctly.  I fear effects may be felt sooner than the date that the UK formally leaves the EU.

@Jules The situation with academic visas might be reasonably good, but the tuition fees in UK are vastly different for EU and for non-EU citizens (I've just checked Imperial College; it's around 9k vs. 27k / year). I wonder what will happen after Brexit.

As an undergrad starting their last year in September, I really hope all the polls are wrong...

@MKII brexit will take two years of planning before we actually leave, you're safe

@Pyrite undergrad degree courses in the UK range from 3-5 years, so someone starting a course now risks being hit by the fallout of brexit after they have already committed significant time/money to the course but while they are still a fair way from completion.

@PeterGreen: but MKII says he/she is starting the last year of undergraduate studies in September.

Sorry I misread his post, as someone starting the last year now he is probablly safe.

"We don't know" sounds right.  A friend of mine (from a continental EU country) is on faculty at a Russel Group school, and he said no one has any idea how this will evolve or what it will mean for him and his peers.

@gerrit Not quite, the Swiss have not done anything regarding freedom of movement (and actually just pushed a plan - almost three years after the referendum - to do as little as possible to avoid breaking with the EU if at all possible). What happened is that Switzerland is not a member and depends on special agreements withe the EU, and H2020 and Erasmus needed to be renewed. From the EU point of view, it was difficult to do that when the Swiss were effectively making it impossible to make progress on on-going negotiations. But full members like the UK do not depend on this kind of renewals.

I was a funded PhD student from Russia in the 90s, before the EU existed.  There are no issues as long as you have paperwork in order. I haven't had any problems at all.
The way it works is that British immigration will typically give you a "leave to remain" for 3 years when you enter the country. This allows you to come in and out of the country at any time, open a bank account, phone service, etc.  I think you even get the NHS.
If your program takes longer (and again, you will have to supply paperwork) you may have to extend your leave to remain.
You do have to get a visa, which takes a couple of months.  Apply at the British Consulate in Italy with all paperwork. Your visa will get exchanged for the "leave to remain" and a stamp in your passport with the expiration date; until that date you are, basically, British.

One more detail: you actually have to get a visa before you enter UK as a student. That may have to take some time, so allow for it -- you apply at the British consulate in Italy, they will tell you what to do. When you actually enter the UK, that visa gets exchanged for the "leave to remain" which is actually nothing more than a stamp in your passport with the expiration date -- but it gives you almost everything the British residents get.

Please edit your previous answer, merging it with this.

I do not need a VISA, since I am from Italy. Are you suggesting I get one anyway?

UK immigration laws have gotten steadily stricter over the last decade or so I've lived here (currently a citizen, was originally a non eu immigrant). While the essence of this answer may still be correct, please be very wary of "old" advice regarding immigration. The older it is the less it may reflect current practice

Fair enough, things have changed since the 90s.  Another thing to note, is when the 3-5 years expire, the deal is over.  I could not get a work permit for some strange reason, so I went to the US which, in immigration sense was much more friendly.

You are better off getting a visa actually, because visa will give you more rights, strange as it may sound.  All of the visa-free agreements apply only to tourists.  And, yes, you still get that.  If you want to live or work, you still need a visa and that gives you all the necessary rights.  I am a US citizen now and I would have to get another visa to study or work in the UK.  One thing you don't want to do is come on visa-free program and start working -- you will get in trouble.

I would like to add that if they want you they will keep you (and provide you support for the paperwork).

That wasn't true for me -- we had the paperwork, lawyers etc -- I ended up getting a much better deal in the US so no complaints really.

Alexander, what do you mean? Could you provide examples (or sources) of things I could do with a visa (can I even get one?) but I couldn't do if I enter UK with my ID as an italian citizen in the current scenario? Or are you referring to an hypothetic post-yes-to-Brexit scenario?

Primarily yes-to-Brexit, because 1993 was before EU.  You will get a couple of things with the Leave to Remain that lasts more than 1 year.  One is NHS (free healthcare).  I am not sure you get that under EU.  Another one, more options on opening bank accounts, phone lines -- in 1993 all of my European housemates had restrictions on their bank accounts, and none could open a phone line.  I had to do that for everybody.  I think this is because Erasmus exchange is year or less.  It's "1 year or more" and "Leave to Remain" that ultimately makes a difference.  You want "Leave to Remain"

There is a possibility that Brexit may actually better in your situation -- another important item is where the funding ultimately comes from -- will that be affected by Brexit.  The latter sounds like a more important issue than immigration which you will get one way or the other.

@AlexanderKrotov everything you said is true BUT only if he is a non-EU national, for example Russian, and I think he does have an Italian passport, so he is a EU national. Things are different in this case, EU/EEA nationals (+Swiss nationals) CAN come to the UK without any visa and work immediately without any documentation indefinitely. That's why it's called a free movement of people, EEA + Swiss nationals are treated the same as UK nationals in the UK. You just wave the passport to the border control and they do not put any stamps, they just look at it visually and give it back to you.

@AlexanderKrotov if AnalysisStudent0414 will try to go to the British embassy and requests a visa I think they will reject his application automatically (at least that's what happens when you try to get a Schengen visa if you are a EU national, so should be the same for the UK I think) because it's like if you are Belarus national and you try to get a visa to Russia.

@AlexanderKrotov Even if the referendum ends up with the leave vote it will take time (at least 3+ months), so you will be able to come to the UK freely. Then usually they make laws that apply only to the newly arrived people, so even if they get rid of the freedom of movement for EU people I'm pretty certain they will give a special status/visa to the EU nationals that are already in the UK. So as the song goes - "don't worry be happy". :)

Sounds like non-EU is actually better :-) I am now an US national working for an Austrian company which creates some interesting situations.

Even if British people opt for Brexit, it will take time. According to Refs. [1] and [2], it will take years for the Brexit to actually happen. I'm pretty sure you have plenty of time to arrange everything.
But just in case, I would get a signed contract mentioning the funding/salary from the university if you don't already have one.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35921610
[2] https://www.rt.com/uk/346505-brexit-how-long-leave/
Edit: Added additional reference.

As others noted, so far it can only be guesstimates. And for your PhD funding that does obviously depend on the small print, but:
There are other non-EU countries in Europe, such as Norway and Switzerland. My personal guess is that a brexited UK will have relations to the EU that are similar to those.
Wrt. to academia, a lot of the EU things are actually not restricted to EU countries. A number of associated countries e.g. for Horizon2020 are eligible as well (which are far more than just Norway and Switzerland). That are for example COST and Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions. Which would mean little if any change for a Marie Curie funded PhD if UK ends up being associated.
BTW, there seems (hearsay only) to be quite a distinction already in the UK between funded PhD positions that are eligible for UK citizens only and funded PhD positions that are open to EU citizens (or Horizon2020 countries) such as the Marie Curie funded positions.
As for loosing funding for a PhD position for which you do have a valid contract, I don't think the risk is high. The UK votes on leaving EU, not on abolishing their whole legal system. Retroactively changing requirements for temporary contracts would be rather costly in terms of violation of the principle of legality. (Though governments sometimes do have a tendency towards ex post facto rules like "as of last year, we'll collect a new tax")
As for the burocratic paperwork, sure there may be some changes. But again, my guess is that it wouldn't be much worse than the paperwork I had to do as a EU citizen when working in Italy as a postdoc (comparison: young worker exchange visum for Canada was less paperwork).

Tuition fees in UK are vastly different for EU and for non-EU citizens (e.g.: Imperial College, 9k vs. 27k / year). I think that Norway and Switzerland currently count as EU (possibly because it is technically for EEA, not for EU citizens). I wonder what will happen after Brexit.

@amoeba: Switzerland is not EEA but they have (lots of) bilateral agreements.  (I've see UK tuition fee lists where the category was "EU/EEA/Switzerland") Leaving the EU does not necessarily imply that UK universities cannot have a EU/EEA/Switzerland category any more. OTOH, students from the Isle of Man already now have to pay overseas tuition ...

Yeah, Switzerland is a special case, even in the UK government website it says "Switzerland is neither an EU nor EEA member but is part of the single market - this means Swiss nationals have the same rights to live and work in the UK as other EEA nationals.". © https://www.gov.uk/eu-eea

@cbeleites The problem is that the whole point of leaving the EU seems to be to somehow restrict the freedom of movement for persons. That's an integral part of the single market to which both Norway and Switzerland had to consent to get the rest. It's obviously possible to retain that while being formally out of the EU but it's not clear that it would satisfy anybody in the UK…

Noone knows for sure what will happen. The government has not negotiated exist terms in advance of the refferendum.  It will likely take a couple of years for an exit to be negotiated which unfortunately for you means that the actual exit may come roughly in the middle of your degree.
There are two aspects to this. Funding and immigration/border control.
I think it's highly unlikey that immigration/border control will stop you from studying in the UK but it's concinvable that you may have to jump through some hoops (get a passport, get a student visa on that passport).
Funding is a far thornier issue IMO. I would hope that funding bodies would put transitional arrangements in place to continue paying existing students but I don't think it can be garuanteed in the face of a major shakeup like this. Especially if your funding is coming from a UK government source.

As other people have said, it is unlikely to affect a PhD that is starting in September.
However when you have finished your PhD you will want a job….   If Brexit has completed by then, it may be a lot harder to get a job in the UK, due to the employer having to get a work permit for you.   (You may also not be able to take a job to support yourself while doing the PhD, likewise for your wife etc.)

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Is it worth it to continue thinking about academia?
I will try to make this short.

My Ph.D. was in life sciences. I was a part of an "International Ph.D program in life sciences" in Germany. The Ph.D was a nightmare of its own. I had to start the project from zero, there was a strict time limit of 3.5 years to finish. The worst part, after some time I realized that the PI either did not write recommendation letters or wrote bad recommendations for his own people (both Ph.D students and postdocs). At the end, I got my Ph.D, but without publications and, obviously, without recommendations.

I managed to find a "postdoc" position in "no-name" university in Canada, however, it was not a normal "postdoc" as one might expect. At that time, the lab was a mess: high turnover, overworked and demotivated people. Few people had to put extra effort and time to keep that place together. The remuneration was extremely poor. Moreover, foreigners were paid less than Canadians for the same position and, essentially, same job. I barely lasted for 3 years and had to quit and walk away from all results, because my mental and physical health started to collapse. I authored one "book-chapter" as the first author. My name is on some 7 or 8 papers but in the middle, as 5th or 6th author. So these are obviously useless. I cannot expect any recommendation from that place either.

I tried to get another job in a university environment or in bio/tech. I managed to land a half-decent job as a project manager in another small university in Canada. Conditions are much better than before, but my salary is paid by "grant funding" and it is one-year contracts that have to be renewed.

I am in my mid-30. Sometimes I feel that I cannot do this anymore. I cannot make any long-term plans and always feel insecure. I simply tired of this life. I need at least a semblance of stability in my life.
Lately, I looked at some ads for university jobs in Middle East and in Asia. I would take a lower pay, only to have some job stability.
My problem is that everywhere one needs (a) papers and (b) 3 or 4 recommendation letters. I do not see a way to circumvent these requirements.
My problem is that my Ph.D + "postdoc" took good 7 years of my life and it is very difficult for me to accept that all this experience (and suffering) is completely useless.
I understand that I should stop looking at anything academic, but it is very difficult to let go. Any career advice will be appreciated!
P.S. To be clear, I am not trying to complain, I have been desperately seeking any legitimate career advice/mentorship for a very long time. The problem there is none for "life scientists", neither here nor on Reddit! Even in my current position, which technically calls for solid experience in molecular biology, I utilize ~1% of my knowledge/experience in molecular biology. The moment I move out of "life science" arena, I am basically on par with a fresh "college graduate" with regard to skills/experience.
On the other hand, I have been hanging on 1-year contracts last 8 years of my life. I cannot do this forever. Basically, I need to re-invent myself somehow, but I do not know how to do this job-wise, finance-wise etc.

I think you have some skills. Flexibility seems to be your superpower. But you should probably deal explicitly with your mental health with a professional. And, flexibility is a great superpower. Maybe you can exploit that.

I agree strongly with @Buffy about doing yourself a favor, whether you see it a favor or not at the moment, to ensure your mental health. Sounds brutal, but you’ve been through a brutal times. A new perspective might open unexpected paths to you.

I’m voting to close this question because it is a complaint rather than a question.

A request for career advice seems pertinent.

what field of life science? now there are a lot of findings in COVID19 related research

Most of the PhD students and postdocs you've known/met over the years will have now left academia - that's just how the numbers work. Where did these people go? Who do they work for? What are they doing? Find out - Linkedin and other social media sites can help you here. I suspect you'll discover that there are plenty of interesting opportunities for 'people like you', if you look in the right places.

I would suggest that you are framing the problem in a bit of a negative way. Your options (as you put them) are either "suffering" (continuing to look for a university job) or "giving up" (looking for non-university jobs). It's no wonder you don't like either of those options!
My recommendation is to understand these options a bit better. Presumably, you already understand your university options well, and they are not great. But, I suspect you have only a vague (and negative) idea of what non-university positions are like. Try to concretize this a bit more: what jobs do you think would be a good match? How much would you get paid? Where would you live? Where could you be in twenty years? To what extent would your current skills and knowledge be useful? These questions should take weeks or months to answer; don't just do a google search and frown at the results.
I suspect you will find that there is intellectual life outside of universities; rather than invalidating your previous efforts, taking a permanent position somewhere else could be a logical next step in your career trajectory. But even if you end up confirming your suspicion that no (achievable) job in the world would be more satisfying than what you are doing now, at least you will have a concrete sense of the trade-offs involved.

Unfortunately, I see many problems/questions to which I have no answers. What is worst, there is no counsel! "Academic" jobs in Western world are not available for me. Outside of West, there are no money in "academia" (ex. Middle East). "Biotech" jobs are few and far in between in Canada, mostly in Vancouver and Toronto. However, compensation is not on par with cost of living, esp. for a single person. The moment I step out of "life sciences" arena (however broad this definition is) I flush my experience and skills down the tubes.

I am a Mathematician now working in Computer Security. Towards the end of my PhD, I gave a lot of thought to the problem you are suffering from right now, even though I enjoyed my PhD (for the most part ;-)). My conclusion was the following, and I think it still applies in your case; To stay in academia, you need to satisfy the following criteria:

You have to fairly evaluate your potential as a researcher, which includes your scientific intuition, the ability to execute on it, and your (social) network. Now deduce from this the potential position you can hope to ultimately land. You need to be ok with having that position for the rest of your life.
You have to be willing and able to go through the process of getting to that position, which I anticipated would include unpleasant post-doc experiences like the one you already mentioned.
Now comes the big one. In fact, you need to not only be "ok" with the position in (1), you need to be so incredibly dead-set on having that position that you are not deterred by the fact that (2) is not even the worst that can happen. You need to be so dead-set on it that you do not fear the possibility to end up in your mid-40s with absolutely no job experience and in a dead end that does not lead to new academic prowess.

The alternative is to get a job in the industry. If you do this, I want to give you one piece of advice: Do not look for a job that requires a lot of the specific subject matter expertise that you acquired as a researcher. Do not look for a job that is "like academia". In short, do not fall prey to a sunk cost fallacy. Instead, look for the job you would have wanted fresh out of college. You have proven that you can learn a difficult thing, you can learn a new difficult thing.
Now, chase that job. Industry jobs have a much higher density than academic jobs, so laying out a career path to your dream industry job is much easier. It might be necessary to first work less perfect jobs, to acquire new skills, or simply because you do not have the experience yet. Nevertheless, there is a much lower chance of just falling off the edge and not having any prospect job at all.
In any case, I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

Could you elaborate on the negative aspects of looking for a job that requires specific subject matter expertise? Do you consider this a bad idea because of the scarcity of such jobs or because it is a bad sign about the actual job offered?

Since I chose differently myself, I can not really say anything with certainty. However, I have witnessed a handful of fellow mathematicians trying to find a job that has "lots of math" and ending up disappointed by how little math it actually had, while simultaneously suffering quite a bit from the downsides of those jobs. My personal impression was always that they had chosen to look past those downsides because they were clinging too much to what they had grown accustomed to.

This is a very common problem for academics (in most disciplines only a tiny fraction of PhDs go on to a TT position in a research role). However, when you are inside the academy, it will seem like a rare problem, because by definition, no one else around you has left!
The Professor is In addresses this in her fantastic book, in the chapter entitled Leaving the Cult. There is a much shorter feature on her blog here covering the same content.
The short version is that you do not have "nothing" to show for a PhD plus postdoc. However, most academics have a very poor sense of which of our skills are marketable and to whom, in part because many of the rare and valuable skills we have are taken completely for granted inside the cult. Some examples:

You are likely in the top 1-5% of all workers in your ability to quickly learn new complex topics.
You can read and assess scientific studies better than virtually any worker. Even in areas outside your discipline, you will not have difficulty interpreting things like whether a study design has established causality, whether an effect size is large enough to matter, whether there are other risks that the study did not account for, etc. Investment firms and management consultancies, for example, may value this kind of skill greatly and employ some workers based on it alone.
You are likely in the top few percent of workers by ability to autonomously plan and execute complex, vaguely defined tasks. Beyond this, you have concrete experience doing this for years, on some of the hardest problems imaginable. Employers love workers who can do this, no matter the area you work in.
Your statistical, mathematical and experimental skills are likely to be strong.
Your computer skills are likely to be strong. Even if you don't program well, as a scientist you probably program better than ~85% of workers.
Your professionalism and communication skills are likely to be strong.
Crucially, you know how to write grants, and have demonstrated the ability to secure short term funding from governmental programs. There are startups and consultancies that will pay you just to do this.

All of these skills are actually in great demand, some across all industries, some in more niche areas.
In my experience, "failed academics" tend to have a lot of difficulty at first figuring out a match for their skills and how to sell that skill set outside academia; a moderate amount of difficulty landing the first job (but realistically, far less than landing a faculty position!); and almost no trouble quickly adapting to and advancing within industry once they land a position. You're at the hardest part, deciding to leave the cult. It's only going to get easier from here!
Something I did not do when I left, but which some of my colleagues did do, was book a consultation with someone like The Professor is In. These people specialize in helping academics understand how to market their skill set inside and outside the academy. It's best if you can find one who knows your own area well, but even someone outside your area will be able to see far better than you how to make a good living with your training.
Good luck!

Also worthwhile to figure out if, with your skills, you’re a theory-builder (Hilbert) or a problem-solver (Erdös).

This doesn't address your question directly, but I think it merits an answer.
MITACS offers internships to postdocs in Canada. Reach out and learn about their programs. It's a fantastic platform to learn about the industry and transition if you so desire.
These internships can start from a 4 month (paid) project to a couple of years from what I've seen. I know many people who have transitioned to industry after one of these.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to deal with systematic rigging of academic position job postings?
In a discussion with some of my close friends in other academic institutes, we noticed the common experience* in which it seems that well over 80% of the advertised job postings for permanent or tenure track positions at the departments close to our working environment where we are working are rigged or fixed. It seems that in Europe there are many people facing similar problems [1,2].
In this context "rigged" is meant to describe that many people at the involved institution already know who will get the position when or even before the position is publicly advertised. And with "knowing" it's meant that if it would be possible to place bets on the outcome, the people familiar with the situation (but not in the selection commission) would place all-in bets for the same person without any regard of the other candidates who applied.
In some cases the job description was even tuned to match the CV of particular candidates. And sometimes, it's already known years ahead that a particular person will get that position. In some cases those persons are also well qualified for the job, but in many cases external candidates with better credentials were not objectively evaluated. The other candidates were invited for interviews, and talks, giving sample lectures, spending time energy and financial resources for their applications and traveling.
This practice seems unethical, but it seems so common that it seems to be an accepted norm. When I spoke with a professor about this, he thought it was perfectly normal to give the job to people who you know well, instead of someone who might seem to be qualified better but who you do not know well. From a risk management point of view he might be right. But to me the situation seems similar to people in the mafia, those people who are part of it do not consider it as a mafia, and they do not consider the activities to be unethical, they even consider it beneficial for the society.
*EDIT: Based on the answers in a similar question on a particular instance [3], it seems that many people are OK, with that this is how the things go, it has become part of academic culture.
But some aspects of the question stay open:

How to deal with it in the search for a permanent faculty position?
How to find those job adverts which are really open?
How to deal with this if you are an insider and are observing this behavior on a regular basis?

I gave department and campus tours to applicants, of who i knew they
had no chance, even if their credentials were better than that of some
of the professors in the selection commission.

Should i have told them, that the whole vacancy and invitation for the interview was a charade?
If one notices such rigged position job advertisements in
its environment, should one report it somewhere? Where could such conduct be reported?

Proof is not so much of an issue: We could easily set up a list of names and positions posting them on the web before the job was advertised get a time stamp. And confront some institute who cares with the statistics of hiring behavior.
But the most important central question is:
What could be changed in the hiring procedures or rules to mitigate rigged job postings?
*These experiences are based on 7 people from various institutions in Europe (Germany, Italy, Spain, France) during the last 10 years.
EDIT: The associated question is definitely similar, but i think there are some fundamental differences.

That question was about a single particular case this question is about systematic ongoing behavior with which I and my friends and many others [1,2] are dealing on a daily basis.
That question asks about a solution for a particular insider and potential whistleblower only. This question asks for solutions for insiders and outsiders (applicants).

Further more considering some of the answers on the other question which were relevant to the other case i changed the question a bit. How to solve this problem in the big picture.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Academic-Job-Hunts-From-Hell-/236635
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20191122070839500
I know that there is a preselected candidate for a position to be filled at my department. What should I do?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Please don't use "EDIT:".  Instead, revise your question so it reads well for someone who encounters it for the first time.  https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/657/755.  I think it might also be valuable to narrow your post to focus on one specific question.

I don't understand this question. If it's asked from the perspective of the jobseeker, then there's nothing one can do anyway except shrug and bear it (since there's no oversight committee or anything like that). If it's asked from the perspective of the job poster, then it's easy: don't systematically rig. There's not much to answer then.

Hello @Allure, " If it's asked from the perspective of the job poster, then it's easy: don't systematically rig."---As you can well see below, there is a lot to answer, and many academics provide all sorts of rationalizations and justifications for rigging job posts.

@Allure, there are more perspectives than being a robber or being robbed. I work at a department where these in my opinion ethical crimes happening very regularly, and i was looking for advice on how to stop it, or how to deal with it. It seems its even more common as i thought. Besides maybe setting up a website like tenureleaks.org to report and post rigging it seems there is little one can do about it.

We all will pay for this type of corruption in the long run. The whole point of fair selection is: every now and then, someone we do not know comes, someone exceptional, and changes everything for the better.

I have seen this in situations where giving tenure track positions was not possible either because that institution was not available or because the financial situation of the department was too uncertain. Rigged processes for permanent jobs for postdocs who had proved themselves is than a way to get as close as possible to a tenure track position in that situation. That is imperfect, but the problem is the absence of the possibility to offer tenure track positions.
That leaves the question of why a department might want to give a tenured position via tenure track position rather than a simple application. In some countries it is extremely hard (impossible) to get rid of a person with tenure. So giving tenure to someone based on a letter, an interview, and some recommendations is much riskier than hiring someone who you already know. Your question assumed that it is clear that someone is better, but in my experience that has never been the case. Often it is clear that someone is not suitable, but that leaves many candidates. The impressions I got during the application process are very often wrong: those who I thought would be great turned out to be problematic, while those about whom I had doubts turned out to be great. In a tenure track process you can find that out before you give someone tenure.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

There are countries where institutions are forced, by law, to advertise positions before hiring someone. I think the idea behind such laws is that this will ensure they get the best person for the job plus it helps in fighting corruption by making everything more transparent.
So when the institution wants to hire a specific individual, independently of the reasons, it sees itself forced to advertise said position to obey the law. To deter applicants other than the one person they want to hire, this position can be tailored to the person's strengths and the evaluation metrics adjusted to ensure there is a high chance no one else will take the place.
While this is in a sense "rigged" it is the only way some institutions have to hire specific people without breaking the law. And there are legitimate cases for such behavior.
For example, say you have someone who worked for 2 years in a project. The 2-year contract ends and you realize you need 4 or 6 more months to finish it. In this case, it makes sense to re-hire the same person. However, the law prevents you from doing so directly. What do you do? You go around the law by opening a new position and tweaking the position to said person. Is it rigged? Yes. But you can easily argue this person is the best one for the job, after all the individual already has 2 years of experience in the project in question.
This is not the same as hiring faculty, but even in those cases, it's not surprising a hiring committee prefers the devil they know.

Yes, good point, but, still, this system is arguably unfair to people "trying to get a job"... I do not know how to resolve this...

@paulgarrett I honestly don't understand your and others' perplexity. I had several PhD students who spent some time as visiting researchers in US institutions, both universities and government institutions. At the end of the the visiting period they were offered post-doc positions, without the need of passing a selection. So, what's the difference? I cannot hire a candidate directly, but I can tailor a selection toward the qualities of a certain candidate.

It is complicated, especially in view of traditional mechanisms for getting academic jobs, but the question is: is such procedure fair to other people? I certainly understand an impulse to extend the employment of a good person, but if that extension was not part of the original deal (and, as we know, in academe these things are toooo vague), then there is an argument strongly in favor about re-competing for the extension. Part of the argument is that otherwise people get shut out long-term after not "getting inside the system/network"... and have no legitimate chance to recompete.

@paulgarrett Is direct hire fair to other people? And if I put the money, should I be generically fair to other people or should I be fair to me or the funding agency?

@MassimoOrtolano... in your last comment, there is of course the accidental assumption that the several notions of "fairness" are in conflict. I guess we won't resolve that issue here...

I think there is a big difference, in hiring someone for a project, for who the PI organized the funding. And for faculty positions. But i get your point. If the criteria are transparent and made clear upfront even if they are tailored to someone in particular, this is more tolerable because other applicants can recognize it. But the decision reports are never made public or transparent. In my opinion the commission must be held accountable for their decisions publicly. And maybe even be evaluated in a later stage comparing the progress of the most promising candidates 4 years later or so.

@Hjan In Italy you can always ask to view the decision reports which are, in fact, public. Actually, along the years there have been many appeals against preferred candidates (you can appeal at the administrative court), and sometimes selections have been invalidated.

@MassimoOrtolano Thanks, I saw the same things happening in Italy, although much less clear. But i did not know that the reports were public. Which is actually disappointing, because it means that public reports also do not fix the problem. But if there have been successful appeals, it is probably step in the right direction.

@MassimoOrtolano, "I honestly don't understand your and others' perplexity."--- I don't think it is perplexity. On the contrary, speaking for myself, I believe I understand quite well the clear rationale behind job postings rigging, and in my answers I tried to explain this rationale and its consequences (i.e., provincialism).

If the hiring institution is a <private company/entity>, then they can do whatever they want. Just they must not waste applicants' time with theatrical postings. But if it is , they must end this unfair activity for sure.

Indeed, I believe you are mostly correct in your arguments. In my opinion, as someone with quite a rich experience in academia, rigging or tailoring job postings, as is done a lot in Europe at least, is indeed unethical, and akin in some sense at least to a mafia mentality. There are of course some advantages to recruiting someone you already know, but the disadvantages first severely outweigh the advantages, and furthermore usually only apply to those few persons that are rigging the job posting. In most cases the one who devises these rigged positions is a "career-scientist" who attempts to recruit a colleague to add to his/her group junior assistants, or to add to his/her network of close colleagues within the department.
Rigging a job posting thus serves to:
1) Block the development of new groups and areas in the department.
2) Strengthen an already existing group, with someone who does not strengthen substantively the group, rather is more a junior faculty.
3) Promote the mostly narrow political-agenda of a group leader in the department.
Departments that usually rig positions after some time become non-competitive and usually are left behind, in comparison to their competitors (this is one reason in my opinion that European universities are on average less successful than US ones, in which rigging is less common; though of course there is more to it than that).

Following comments and previous discussions, I now explain why consistent rigging of job postings leads to a gradual decrease in quality and eventually a highly provincial department/cohort of academics. Let us consider the following highly simplified scenarios:
1) A department of "ranking 5" (out of 10) with 4 research groups hires for five consecutive years faculty members based on rigged job postings. Since no new faculty brings new expertise the department only maintains or expands in the areas it is already active in.
Outcome: the department only gets people it already knows. It doesn't go much down then in ranking. But it also doesn't go up: still 4 groups, doing the same research. Scholars of "rank 5" bring their colleagues who are also "of rank about 5". New areas are completely lost. Stagnation, and eventual provincialism. No new connection to different research groups and different countries.
2) A department of "ranking 5" with 4 research groups hires for five consecutive years faculty members based on international and unbiased recruitment process. People are hired based on reference letters, CV, publications, tangible achievements, and some strategic considerations (i.e., areas to invest in).
Outcome: Although one hire was found to be a problematic colleague who then quit after three years, all other four members are dynamic, international-level scholars, that bring fresh ideas to the department. New areas and new connection emerge. The four new hires are also of "rank 6 and even 7". The department then increased its average "ranking", its international connections, and the scope of areas it covers.

I've seen it happen both ways but honestly, far more often the department has preferred the "known known" to the "known unknown."  I've even seen the process derailed entirely to promote someone who was less than qualified but had one heck of an "in" with the department dean or chair.  It's sad, but it certainly happens.

Good points, best point that such behavior has long term consequences in quality. Maybe this could be used to create a formalized feed back loop to evaluate the commission. Tailoring job positions is at least transparent to other applicants. One could try to spot and avoid them.

I am going to respond to a part of the premise of the question, highlighted by the following statements from the question and comments:

in many cases external candidates with better credentials were not objectively evaluated
This practice seems unethical
In my view the procedure should be to search for the best available candidate

These statements imply that the eventual choice falls on someone who doesn't have the best qualifications and who was taken from a closed pool of candidates that "outsiders" could not enter.
An issue that I see is that often enough, who is or is not the "best candidate" in academia can best be determined by long-term endeavours such as conducting a project together with the candidate that takes at least a couple of months, or repeatedly working with them on various projects throughout the years.1 It seems that it is at this stage where indeed anyone can enter the race (e.g. by establishing contact at conferences or other meetings etc.).
Naturally, this does not match up well with the formal requirement of handling such a selection like a regular job offer followed by inviting applicants. The (as you correctly recognized, technically very dissatisfactory) solution is to run the selection process based on a long-term evaluation of candidates as described above while fulfilling the formal requirements by conducting what could be dubbed "job offer theatre".
As already stated, this is quite suboptimal. There is considerable potential for abuse and where no abuse happens, a candidate still needs to know how the process works to have a chance in the first place. (I think it is noteworthy that a considerable number of posts on this site about how to find such positions point out how important it is to simply get in touch with people from the department - because that is, generally, how any external candidate could learn about how to get into the department.)
I am not really sure about a solution; maybe the actual hiring process (i.e. including the evaluation that might span multiple years) could be formalized in some way - though of course, this would create quite some bureaucratic overhead and might also not be very practical given that such an "evaluation" may begin well before the candidate first utters (or even conceives) the wish to actually become a candidate.
Right now, as an attempt to answer the titular question directly:
How does one deal with rigged academic position job postings?
By understanding the difference between the formally required and the "actual" hiring process, and by, first and foremost, entering the latter. Get in touch with departments you would like to work with, show them your expertise during repeated encounters, contacts, or mutually conducted work, and thereby get on the path of being hired into your own personalized "rigged job posting".

EDIT: Based on various remarks, such as:

It seems to be about minimizing the risk, not about optimizing quality.

the OP's own answer

you claim that if A is perceived as a "good fit to the department" then it is advisable to take A. The problem is that (a) by that you exclude all other globally stronger on paper candidates.

Dilworth's comment
there seems to be some confusion about what is the assumed goal of evaluating candidates. The way I know hiring decisions to work (and that, personally, I think also makes most sense) is that they always combine several factors that need to be kept in a certain balance:

Are the professional skills of the candidate sufficient? These can be objectively tested and shown on a global scope. The candidate's formal education, prior work experience, and handling of concrete sample problems are just some of various ways to accurately determine these.
Is the candidate a good fit in the intended context? This one is much harder to determine, short of having already worked with the candidate before for extended amounts of time. The answer to this question may vary from one department to the next, as each environment, project, etc. is different, yet it is also crucial to know.
How accurate are the answers to the above two points? Both of the above points come with a degree of uncertainty. Keeping that uncertainty low is, of course, also important. Speaking in a simplified manner, a candidate who seems to be able to apply 90% of the expected skills in the department but turns out to apply only 70% is worth less than a candidate who is definitely known to apply 80% of the expected skills in that department.

Thus, the decision who is the strongest candidate is a combination of all of these factors. Especially in highly individual jobs as often found in academia (the higher in the hierarchy you look, it is less about fulfilling pre-defined duties and more about being able to develop and maintain one's own goals and positions), in my opinion an accurate impression of how that works out for any particular candidate in any particular context can only be gathered by gradually collaborating with and integrating them, rather than in a "normal" hiring process with a few superficial snapshot impressions such as a CV, interviews, sample lectures, etc.

1: Arguably, the longer I work in industry and have to do with (sometimes helping select, sometimes just training) new hires, I am getting the impression that quite the same applies there. Picking the seemingly best candidate based on a CV, work samples, and personal impressions from an interview within the course of a few weeks is simply not a reliable method to identify suitable (let alone the best) candidates, compared to hiring people who you've been in touch with for years.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I disagree with point 2: a "good fit" is undefined, and is not a strong criterion, because in academia you hire colleagues who are going to work in the department potentially 30 years on, hence "good fit" cannot be assessed in the long run (only for short term purposes ("we need someone to teach X"), which is a flawed hiring tactics).

@Dilworth: I agree it is definitely very difficult to determine whether someone is indeed a "good fit", and possibly impossible to predict on the long run. Certainly, the person might stick around for a long time, and many things can change during that time. (For what it's worth, that's not really specific to academia, but basically the same in industry.) But what is the supposed solution? Picking someone who harmonizes with the existing team/group/department is simply an important factor, certainly on par with the professional skillset, so just ignoring that dimension just because it is ...

... hard to evaluate sounds like an unfortunate choice, as well.

---  "Picking someone who harmonizes with the existing team/group/department is simply an important factor"    @O.R.Mapper, I see where you are coming from but I simply disagree with this. An academic position in a strong department (!) is usually not a team's work. Strong departments usually have 100 faculty members or more, of independent group leaders. You hire based on academic excellence and independence. That's it.

@Dilworth: Thank you for your input. Apparently, you are used to vastly different modes of collaboration with co-workers (or lack thereof) than I am. It is not clear to me that the model you describe is everyone's preference, let alone that it would improve the output of researchers who work well in successfully integrated teams.

@O.R.Mapper, perhaps, but we must also respect the mode of independent group leaders I suggested, and not only the model you suggested that may suit some, but not everyone.

I've seen* different kinds of rigged hiring processes which IMHO ask for different actions:

nepotism is IMHO the most problematic form. By definition (hiring someone because of the relation hiring Boss (I'll use Boss for the powerful one in the hiring committee) and Favorite rather than because of scientific achievements or job-related soft skills) this is dangerous for academic and general work quality.
Hardly anyone cares about spotting nepotism if the Favorite is actually a good fit for the job.

So nepotism is spotted as problematic when Favorite doesn't fit that well. Either because their research isn't that good or because they don't get along/cooperate well with the other members of the group or department.
Nevertheless, Boss typically thinks they prefer Favorite based on objective criteria. For hiring local people/keeping jobs for their own staff rather than hiring newcomers, this may be related to a positive feedback loop: Boss supervises Favorite. Favorite is taught what research Boss does and how. After a while, Boss finds Favorite doing exactly the research they'd like to see. In addition, there's the important criterion that the candidate should work well in the department. Boss finds that Favorite works very smoothly with them.

Of course, the usual rules against academic inbreeding counteract this if the relationship is internal as in the example. But a very similar problem may be encountered with hiring Boss' external Favorite.
What to do? If the nepotism comes along with Boss being convinced that they are objectively right it is IMHO very difficult to stop as long as Boss stays boss.  Realistically, only someone who is highly esteemed by Boss and who perceives the hiring outcome as problematic has a chance to make Boss aware of the trouble.
For everyone else, IMHO the only feasible consequence is to think carefully whether/how long they want to stay in such a department/group: working atmosphere is likely already quite bad, and there is the risk that the fishy smell of being in a group that a) a does bad research and/or b) hires bad people (nepotism) sticks to them.
Hiring rigged in favor of someone found by a scouting process.
Here we actually have a proper hiring process looking for the best or at least a very good candidate - but the visible administrative hiring process happens afterwards. The industry equivalent would be to have a job opening announced at the local unemployment agency as required by law and at the same time employ a headhunter.
One reason to do this is that the visible administrative process cannot start before all grant contracts are signed - but then someone must be hired immediately. A 2nd related reason is to avoid the risk that noone applies who is really suitable for the job, either leaving the position open (project cannot start) or filled with someone who is not that suitable for the job.
Related: we do have a probationary period of typically 6 months here that allows cancellation of an employment contract by either side without explanation. But again, doing so would mess up any project schedule (or the lecture plan) - so this is something a department is afraid of.
This type of rigging comes at varying levels of unfairness to other candidates. In general, the hiring committee is still looking forward to hire Unicorn  who appears out of the blue raterh than Favorite. However, the more preliminary negotiations have taken place with the Favorite candidate and the more promises have been made, the higher the hurdle Unicorn must overcome = the better Unicorn must be than Favorite in order to get the job.  On the other hand, such a situaton is comparably easy to spot for other applicants: the job offer then looks as if they had forgotten to state required shoe size and eye color.
What to do? When writing proposals, work that there is a realistic amount of time for the official hiring process. Do not make promises you can only keep by rigging the official hiring process against other good candidates when scouting.
I do think that scouting is needed, but at the same time, allowing scouting procedures to replace the public announcement will facilitate nepotism :-(.
Maybe allowing a certain amount of jokers/wild cards could give a good balance? After all, if a department (Boss) is determined to go bad, academic freedom allows them to do so.
Related is postdoc Favorite who wrote the proposal together with Boss ("You can join my group if you get a grant that pays you").
Here the ethics are IMHO not so clear cut and need to be discussed in the academic community: what is a fair chance for some who wrote the proposal to actually get that job? Should it be treated like any other unrigged job advertisement - after all having written the proposal will give them a headstart, or should the writer have an "option" to the job? Anything in between?
Someone getting a follow-up contract has a similar headstart: they objectively won't need as much time to get started as an external candidate.  The hiring process may still be further rigged in their favor.
In my experience, administrative or legal requirement are sometime followed as required, but the perception is that the rigging counteracts unfair/unethical  consequences of legislation (we have a saying "Gut gemeint ist das Gegenteil von gut gemacht" - quite literally "Well-intentioned is the opposite of well done"). One example is that legislation that was intended to protect emplyoees has the practical result that there are few things that administration fears as much as hiring someone on a permanent position, and at the same time there are strong requirements with fixed term contracts (violating them can turn the contract into a permanent one - nightmare for administration). The practical consequence is that Boss cannot offer permanent positions to Favorite who objectively deserves the position. So Boss/the committee does the next best thing they can do: making everyone jump through the loops of a rigged hiring procedure for a job that is promised to Favorite as a makeshift permanent position.
What to do? This is a general political issue. And while many agree that the situation is bad as it is, I don't see anything approaching a majority agreement on what and how changes should be implemented.
"Rigging" in favor of internal candidates may be required by law: e.g. the staff council can demand that positions are first offered internally. In other situations, an external announcement may be required (by law, funding agency, administration, you name it): I'm quite sure any combination of weird administrative requirements may kick in. Or administration thinks they may kick in and asks the hiring committee to err on the safe side in the formal procedure.
Rigging against candidates (to be done...)

Conflict lines and political questions:

Academic freedom attracting despots? - relation to nepotism. (Humboldt and mafia)
Fair to applicants ./. scouting for and getting the best candidate
Labor laws: job safety ./. difficulty to get hired, fixed term ./. permanent contract regulation.
Administration minimizing risk ./. department wanting someone good

* In order to not blow up the answer even more, I'll write in indicative what is actually not more than what I believe to be true. Conjunctive or similarly cautious wording would actually be more appropriate. All this is my personal wold view - for few of the things I describe I have hard evidence, not to speak of a proof that I could show.

Interesting perspectives on many different cases. Also think that the situation if some one organized the funding, is a bit different. Also i think the case you state as: "Boss finds Favorite doing exactly the research they'd like to see" is perfectly connected to academic inbreeding. Many bosses think that a good employee is that who does what you ask them. But in academia i think a good employee comes with new and different ideas.

Based on many of the responses it seems that this "rigged" faculty job postings are quite accepted in the academic community. And not really seen as something unethical. It is a way to deal with the formal requirements of "the system". And the formal requirements are a way to make the selection process look fair and objective.
A common argument is that one needs to know the person very well in order to appoint him for an important positions. How to compare an assessment of a CV, some papers and an interview with some of the candidates with years of collaboration experience with another candidate? If you have way more information about candidate B, how could you justify choosing another candidate?  It seems to be about minimizing the risk, not about optimizing quality. "It is extremely difficult to get rid of some one with tenure". Another point mentioned is the lack of other alternatives to give tenure track or other permanent positions to those locally well known. Apparently often the real recruitment phase starts (and ends) before the formal job position opens.
Once you are hired in a similar way you get used to it, if it happens every where it becomes normal.
So what to do?

If one writes a rigged job advert, make it clear that it is tailored to a very particular person. (maybe one can agree on some code words?)
If you have to give a tour or have a conversation with one of the candidates who have no chance, whistle or hum the "the Entertainer theme (from The Sting, Scott Joplin), or offer them the choice between a red and a blue drink.
If you are in a department where this frequently happens, don't freak out, it seems to happen a lot. If you feel that they will rig a job for you to, stay and get assimilated. Otherwise network and collaborate with other clans and try to get yourself in a good position for the next rigged job posting there.
If you want to report it, forget it. Nobody with authority or power against it really cares and many even support it. You can write a blog or a post on academia.stack exchange. The answers could be disappointing, but you will learn the truth.

What could be changed in the hiring procedures or rules to mitigate rigged job postings?
The first thing is that it requires to chance the view of those who think that this is ethical and acceptable, and the only way to circumvent the problems of the system. I hold it for impossible, and i fear they are in the majority. Resistance seems futile, and even counter productive. If you are known to be against such practices, you will not be invited for selection commissions, you will be considered as dangerous for other faculty members. These are things difficult to find out in a job interview, or CV, or by reading your papers. This kind of trust needs to be based on long term experience and close relations. So I recommend: do not try to change it, try to find a place where this is uncommon and exceptional, or adapt.
But hypothetically, the procedures could be changed to a more competition like structure. Quantifiable hiring criteria using a fixed limited "equal" amount of information per applicant could publicly stated in advance. With the possibility of public comments. An external commission evaluates the criteria, to see if they favor a specific applicant in a way not relevant for the position. The commission report is and remains public. People apply and another commission evaluates the candidates according the the specified criteria. The report with  ratings, votes and conclusions of the individual commission members is and remains publicly available. Its imperfect but it seems more transparent, than how things currently go.
But those who want to circumvent the system will find ways around it, and jobs will keep being rigged. And probably in ways more difficult to spot. The more transparent the procedures, the more darkness is required to conceal the true objectives of those with power and objectives against the system. So in the end things will probably even get worse.
Italy is one of the countries with public commission decision reports, but i know from personal experience that it did not solve the problem.
Therefore, maybe one must be thankful to know, and be warned that many faculty jobs are rigged. And try to find constructive ways to deal with it. One way is to keep it silent, and have the advantage of being warned w.r.t. the other poor sheep candidates who really still think they have a chance.
Also beware for the next level: maybe i am paranoid but the processes between awarding funding/grants (selecting reviewers, selection committees) and faculty hiring are not that different. Similar processes, similar people there might be a pattern there. It would even be inconsistent if the same arguments: "We know candidate A, better than B and C so we minimize risk by choosing A", are not applied there. In Germany there are elections for the subject committees of the national funding agency "DFG-Fachkollegienwahl" and of it is difficult to imagine that people do not vote for their friends, and that their friends do them favors back.
Note 1: I did not intend to answer my own question in advance, but the answers and feedback (also that of the related questions) gave me new perspectives summarized here. Thanks for all the other answers and discussions in the comments.
Note 2: On request i could place references to some of the statements from other answers and quotes from other users, but i thought it was more polite not to do so.

I am not sure whether I understand your comments about the rigged grant decisions. Do you mean that people decide in advance what should be funded?

If you have the right connections, in the national funding agency and the surrounding society of the field, you can get inside information about when to submit a proposal for which particular call. And this helps in success rates of proposals of people in particular groups. Not that this is about relatively big projects in the field. Big in my field is salary of 30 people for 4 years, divided over 2 institutions. I am not deep enough in to this to make more detailed statements. But the decision process between faculty hiring and funding are not that different.

@Hijan They are completely different here. I have not heard about a rigged grant here. At least in the main scientific agency for standard projects.  Random-like decisions or unfair reviews yes, but I have not heard from anyone that rigging would happen. Not even as a complaint from people who did not get a grant. Not even as a rumorr. Hiring, on the other hand...

@VladimirF I have no proof and experience of rigged grants and funding, as with the hiring. But if you abstract the hiring and grant awarding processes a bit, you see that the processes are very similar, and the people involved are very similar. The "lines" and connections which provide extra information about when to submit for which calls can be seen as friends helping out friends, put i can't help to see a pattern here. I hope i am wrong. But you are right its another topic, i will cut it down for now.

Rjey are not really that similar at all. Grants are awarded after reviews by international experts who are anonymous to the applicants and in panels with relatively larger amount of members from many institutions with very different own interests, they won't cooperate. For many calls there are strict publicly known deadlines and the bids are opened once the deadline passes. The time of dubmission plays exactly zero role. Maybe you heard some rumours somewhere but it will be very specific to your situation and your specific funding agency.

@VladimirF In Germany the national Science foundation DFG is sub-structured by field, area, subject category. For projects (5>M. Euro) you must apply in some subject category, and for each category there are several slots with deadlines each year. The DFG advisors know who is planning to apply when, because before submission, its usual to "consult them" for advice. They can pass on "hints" to their friends, in which period and category they have better chances, and in the end they are the ones who select national reviewers. Hoping to be wrong, I can't help to see a lot of rigging potential.

@Hjan It is normal for grant agencies to be structured by subject. Passing information about other projects prepared or consulted for applications are as wrong as it gets.  So wrong that any such leak should start a BIG scandal. The people in those panels are usually members of competing institutions so the aim is they have as little incentive to cooperate as possible. If you know of anything like that happening, you can inform the police because that is a VERY serious thing (potentially organized crime). It is a serious allegation that could even get people into jail if you have evidence.

+1 for "It seems to be about minimizing the risk, not about optimizing quality" ― this really clarified a lot for me. (I found similar sentiments, though not phrased so succinctly, in other answers.)

Resolve that if you ever find yourself in a position to make (or contribute to making) hiring decisions, you will act fairly. If enough of us do this, some of us may eventually be in a position to effect change for the better.

I will just give direct answers to each of your questions

How to deal with it in the search for a permanent faculty position?

Your question demonstrates that you have quite an accurate understanding of what is going on, and your comments on people's answers indicate that you have read the multitude of answers given here, which all say similar things. You now know how hiring is viewed and that you alone will not be able to change this overnight. So here is how I would advise you to deal with it:

It's okay to complain about the process here with your anonymous username, but try not to be too vocal in real-life about everything you've written here, especially how you think they are behaving like a "mafia". They will not appreciate being compared to a mafia or being call "corrupt" or accusd of "rigging" anything, and you will just be killing your own chances of getting the job. Wait until you have a permanent position, then you can fight to fix things (if you want).
If you file formal complaints or sue them, you are unlikely to see a happy outcome in a fair amount of time, so
Spend your energy on publishing many, strong papers. If your h-index hits 30 and you reach 2000 citations on 100 papers, eventually one of these institutions will have no choice but to hire you because you will be objectively and obviously a stronger candidate than the one they originally thought they wanted. Go to many conferences and make friends with as many powerful professors in your field as you can, one of them might like you and might make a "rigged" job opening for you.
If you are unable to develop what others think is a strong publication record, and you are unable to make friends with a lot of powerful professors, do remember that there's 1000s of people that can do these things quite well (whether thanks to very good luck, being born into an extra privileged family, having a lot of money, or doing the near-impossible: simply working even harder and making even more sacrifices than you and me), so I hope you don't have a closed-mind towards other excellent academic opportunities outside of being a professor at a top institution in one of your favorite countries. Academics tend never to give up, which is good, but compare yourself to the top sprinters in the world: you can be the best in your country and not make it to the Olympics.

How to find those job adverts which are really open?

Do you think that there is a place where you can find job adverts that say "this particular job hiring is going to be done in a fair way"? If so, how can you be sure they are being honest? So you can do the following:

Look everywhere and join every relevant mailing-list.
If you want to err on the caution, only apply to jobs where the advert is a rather direct fit for you. If they say they want someone specializing in machine learning, you can be tempted to apply because you do have a couple of excellent papers that used machine learning, but consider instead focusing on the ads that are really directly related to your specialty.

How to deal with this if you are an insider and are observing this behavior on a regular basis?
   If one notices such rigged position job advertisements in its environment, should one report it somewhere? Where could such conduct be reported?

That's up to you:

You can ignore it (most professors do, and maybe that's why they managed to get professorships, but it's also why most of them are not celebrated like Martin Luther King Jr for standing up against corruption).
You can bring the matter up with the hiring committee, or if they don't listen than the person in charge of the chair of the hiring committee (either the Head of the Department, or Dean/Associate-Dean of the Faculty if the Head of the Department is the committee chair, which often is indeed the case). Or you can write an article about it, or go to your local news station and have an investigative journalist write about it. You can even raise the matter in a tribunal. But all of these things can backfire on you, especially if you don't have tenure yet.

I gave department and campus tours to applicants, of who i knew they
  had no chance, even if their credentials were better than that of some
  of the professors in the selection commission.

Should i have told them, that the whole vacancy and invitation for the interview was a charade?

Whether you "should" or "should not" is subjective. Are there any laws obligating you to tell them this? If so, then if you want to be a law-abiding citizen no matte what the law says, then perhaps you should. If not, it's up to you, but remember that your department colleagues can be very nasty to you and make your life a living Hell if you anger them.

"make friends with as many powerful professors in your field as you can, one of them might like you and might make a "rigged" job opening for you" - I think what this comment demonstrates blatantly, is that academia is now so riddled with corruption, that they don't even see the need to wear a mask when saying so.

@Steve That is a fair point. However I actually am vehemently opposed to the idea of creating a "rigged" job opening, and I would never do it myself. The comment actually does not indicate that I am riddled with corruption or that there's anything to hide behind a mask. I agree with you that this comment of mine is reassures people that academia is corrupt, but I don't think you needed  to accuse the person "saying so" of not even seeing the need to wear a mask, because that can be seen as taking a stab at me.

Good points and warnings, based on this and other answers, i understand to be more careful speaking about this with my colleagues. Before i thought that doing good work, writing good papers is enough, but now i am learning that knowing the right people is more important. This seems also true for getting well cited. But any way i will try the good paper road, over fake friendships.

I don't have a full solution, but it is necessary to be daring and speak up against the practice.  And I would like to strenuously object to the "this is expected, and solves some problems, let's keep it" ethos.  Or to the "you're not established yet, don't rock the boat" ethos.
These practices are common, not just in academia, but also in certain professions.  And they contribute to the "looks like me" results.  In other words, if you're a minority, you're less likely to "get in" on each level of the career ladder, and if you're not already "in", you're even less likely to progress.  It would be great if cis-gendered white male allies would educate themselves on the full picture, and do what they can, when they can, to speak up against such culture.  It is a risk, but less of a risk than it is to be a minority, and that's what allyship is all about.
I applaud the OP on his ethics.

It was very disappointing that, so many experienced tenured people think, that this is completely normal and even think that this is the best way. I consider the reactions as a warning, and I will fight and discuss it more cautiously as before. I think this is not something that can be battled easily because the majority of the system supports this Cronyism, and does not even consider it unethical. They will view people who do consider this unethical with hostility and care to protect themselves, which will make it hard to get tenure if you are outspoken about this to early.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How can I store sources in a structured manner?
I started writing a book on my own in lockdown about some critical social issues. For this I read some books online to gain more knowledge about the issue I am writing about (all books are online), and I read some news articles as well, which are as important as the books. The problem I face is this: how do I store those article in a well-structured manner? For example, if I am reading some articles on some specific topic, how I store them so that when I required I find them again later?
Edit:) thanks for ur kind response to all,I felt that I need to somewhat elaborate more about my problem, actually I did download Mendeley after getting referred from this site, but the problem is it store the only citation not the complete page of the article (for e.g. here) now I want to store this complete article for future reference and I want to store this kind of articles in a right folder.

Look for library solutions. Mendeley is a free option for example. Google for library or citation managers and you will see options.

The regular file search on windows 10 is quite good for pdfs. Can automatically read and search through the text contained in the pdf itself. Returns results quickly. You can add additional tags to the pdf just by adding to the file name, and then search for the tag later. Easier than mendeley

Zotero is quite similar to Mendeley but doesn't require an account and doesn't surveil and commercialize user behavior.

@marts  I edited the question now for better understanding.

Citavi can store PDFs, for example. I am afraid you have to go through several reference management tools to evaluate their capabilities.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/854/keeping-track-of-bibliography-references-for-an-entire-research-group

What you are looking for is one (or more) of the following:

Reference management software allows you to store, organize and retrieve bibliographic information about literature. Almost all of them interface with word processors to output citations and reference lists, and online sources, such as journal websites and the DOI system, to easily obtain bibliographic information. Most of them also allow you to include your own notes with any entry.
Qualitative data analysis (QDA) software allows you to highlight, store, and organize relevant sections and quotes from all kinds of digital texts (including ebooks and articles). These text snippets can then be analyzed to discover relations between them; very useful to organize literature around various topics, e.g. for a literature review/survey article.
Note-taking software allows you to ... take notes. Some are very minimalist, and some are infinitely extensible. With org-mode, for example, you could probably compile your own hybrid form of note-taking, QDA, and reference management from scratch.

I edited the question now please have a look!

@Jack Rod almost all reference managers can store copies of pdfs or websites. Your problem is probably that you don't have access to the article.

This is actually a really important question in terms of using sources that are perishable. I would recommend first making sure that sources are archived using the wayback machine, that way the current versions are accessible to you and everyone in the future.
I solve this problem using Zotero! Zotero works a lot like Mendely, but it's browser plug in is really nice and can save PDFs and the HTML website linked to the citation. I also use betterBibTeX and Zotfile as extensions to improve the workflow and let me not only save the pages themselves but also my notes on them.

Mendeley has browser plugins, too.

@marts Yes! I was a mendely user previously, but the zotero plug in has been better at saving things in my experience.

Also, if downvoters could let me know how to improve this answer I'd appreciate it! This answer directly addresses the question in a way that is standard in academia.

I didn't downvote but your answer sounds like an advertisement. That might be it.