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My former post-doc host failed to credit my work in a paper - what to do?
I was employed as a post-doctoral fellow at some institute, and left it a couple of years ago. When I left, it was on ok terms with my host (= person who invited me and arranged for funding for my stay) - although our relationship had not always been on the positive side, and we ended up collaborating only here-and-there rather than closely. We both have a negative view of some aspects of the other's personality.
Anyway, I've noticed that members of the research group - some junior ones, but also my host - have published a certain paper a few months. This paper is mostly not about my own work, but it presents a certain concept which (*) I was studying and developing; these ideas are now in work that I've published - but mostly on ArXiV and not in peer-reviewed venues. I've also sent an email link and an invitation to read it to a bunch of people in my field - including my post-doc host and one of his junior co-authors.
The paper does not mention any of the above; makes no reference to my work or to me; and says something like "In this paper we introduce the concept of X".
Now, my work is much wider than just that concept (it fits into a larger theoretical framework); and the paper does something with this concept which I didn't explore nor write about. So it's not a case of brazenly stealing results.
A final point is that this work of mine has not yet gotten any (non-self) citations, which makes this situation sting more.
My questions:

Considering the circumstances, should I even get in contact with my former host and/or other co-authors about this, or should I just drop it? Especially seeing how this paper is already published and has made its rounds for a few months? I am worried that this will just develop into a fight involving third parties, a sort of a "crusade run remotely" on my part, and end up hurting more than it helps.
Assuming I do contact my former host about this - How diminutive/coy/reserved should I be in a first email about this?
What can I / should I ask for as a rectification of the situation?

(If you'd like more information, please ask in the comments.)

What does a solution look like to you? Do you want a citation? Also, are you quite sure you deserve a citation? If the paper you complain of is genuinely a body of original work and thought in its own right, and arguably it only just touches on the same topic as your work, then why potentially get dragged into bickering with someone you don't like?

It's unclear why you think there was plagiarism.  Failing to cite related work is not necessarily plagiarism (though it is bad).

@AnonymousPhysicist: Rephrased the title to not commit to that term. I am not very knowledgeable about the different "crimes and misdemeanors" in academia.

Steve:1. I'd like some form of recognition/apology, at least to me, by the authors; and a rectification of the paper being published without crediting my work and my ideas. But I'm not sure what exactly that would mean. 2. In a sense, that's not possible, since the paper is already published and the conference in which it's presented has already taken place. The paper doesn't "only just touch" on my idea, it bases itself on it and does something with it; that something is not my work, but the basic idea - discussed in the initial part of the paper - is mine.

First, please remember that human memory is fallible. People have honestly forgotten work done by their students or their postdocs or even themselves. So I'd be inclined to assume, unless there's evidence to the contrary, that your supervisor has forgotten your work on the broader concept Y that subsumes the "new" concept X, and that he hasn't had time to study the arXiv preprint that you sent him.
Second, what should you do about it? I think that, under the assumption that no malice was intended, you could write your former supervisor an email along the lines of "It seems to me that the concept X in your paper "[title]" is an instance of the general concept Y studied in my paper "[title]" [arXiv link] which I sent you a preprint of a while ago. I hope that my work on Y will be useful to you if you contiue to explore X." It seems to me that something like this should alert him to pay attention to Y and cite you in further work on X.  (Of course, you can put personal things like "I hope you are well" before and/or after the main message.)
I think you're unlikely to get a citation in the already published paper (unless it has an on-line version that gets updated), but if your supervisor produces more papers about X, you might get some citations in them.

This type of question is asked often in different contexts, but usually comes down to the same points.
What do you gain by bringing it up? e.g., Satisfaction? gratification? Do you try to get them fired?
Asking your ex-host: Well, if they plagiarized your work, they are aware of it, and clearly did not think it necessary to discuss with you or that it was not ethical.
Since your work has been publicly available on the ArXiV, you could send an email to the editor that published your ex-hosts paper, showing this is plagiarized.  Then what do you get from this? A retraction? A reprimand from their department head? Stopping them from doing it again?
If this is more about how you can publish your work in a journal next, I would not be concerned at all with your ex-hosts paper.  If it is tangential to your core work, and your manuscript gets a review saying someone published this, you can easily point to your dated ArXiV paper saying your journal paper is just extending that.  The dates speak for themselves.
Update:
However, since you also changed the title away from stating it was plagiarism, the assumption is they did not copy your text, but instead your ideas. I would first remember, if you were in their lab and working somewhat on related issues, there is the possibility they had a similar idea. It is not uncommon for people to 'see' their ideas in others papers.
Next, I would consider the issue that you have already put your paper on the ArXiV. If this other paper was not from your ex-host, but rather another lab, what would your question now be?  Would it be "how to rectify the situation?" ? If so, the question comes down to "How can I make someone cite my paper?". The answer you are looking for would likely be found in:
Are 'please cite my paper' emails socially accepted?
or
Is it plagiarism and/or copyright infringement if research started from one person but another diverged onto a different path?
When faced with the situation, you must ask yourself what you gain from it. You can say it is not revenge, but it is difficulty for others not to see it this way when you do it to stand on moral ground.  As stated above, I don't see how this prevents you from publishing your work (although you don't seem interested in it), and it does not prevent you from claiming you came up with the idea (since you have a dated paper on ArXiV).

I said I want the situation to be rectified - I don't want revenge. Why are you suggesting that? 2. "Clearly did not think it necessary" - it's really not clear at all what he thinks. It could be careless, an oversight, or something more intentional. 3. I could send an email to the editor without first talking to the author... and that would be like taking a knife and stabbing them. Why-ever would I do that? Honestly, your answer is not helping me.

@HadynRyley I am not sure what you mean by 'rectified', or why you consider this different than the questions I pose for you to reflect on, as I did not say revenge. Maybe the issue to accept is that 'rectifying' the situation can end up appearing like revenge. To rectify the situation, you have to make 'right' a 'wrong' that happened.  If the wrong was not being credited with the concept, your choice to 'right' this is to have the paper retracted, or a letter to the editor, both raise the questions in my answer.

How does someone carelessly copy someone else's paper? Now that you changed your question to not say it was plagiarism, I updated my answer. You publicly released your idea, and years later someone else also wrote about it.  The issue you want to rectify is then not being cited in an already published paper.


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Using mendeley and science papers from sci-hub in Germany
I am using mendeley to organize all my science papers and to keep things structured. From time to time capitalism forces me to get the texts from sci-hub which is not totally legit.
Now I noticed mendeley uploads the science papers to a cloud to save and synchronize them for different machines using that mendeley account. As I am uploading these papers again. So is there either an option to turn this feature off or is there any attention by any persons regarding this? If there is none I continue using it as it is.

What does is there any attention by any person mean? Are you asking whether the copyright owner might demand (with a court order) that Mendely reveal the identities of any users who are violating their copyright? If so, then: Yes, that's plausible.

Note that this is essentially backing up your articles in the cloud, so it is private use, not file sharing / uploading. So you'd be liable for downloading the articles illegally for your private use, but not for sharing/uploading them which is usually the thing that is punished more harshly, in most jurisdictions. The upload part is irrelevant.

Also, from what I understand the pdf files that sci-hub provides are the same that you could download from the journal's website if you had legitimate access to it. Mendeley does not know where you obtained those pdf files, nor if you have or not have the right to use them legally. So they do not have the technical means to identify that you are a copyright infringer (unless some of these files are watermarked --- which AFAIK is not standard practice).

capitalism forces me you misspelled "laziness"

In Mendeley you can turn off file syncing if you'd like, by folder or for all files. Right-click any item under "My Library" (folder name, "All Documents", whatever you like), and choose Edit Settings from the context menu. You will be presented with settings that includes Synchronization options, including an option for "synchronize attached files", which you can turn on or off as it pleases you.
In terms of checking copyright or digital rights management schemes, I'm not aware of any reference manager that cares about this - but then back in the days of Napster (or even the early days of YouTube) no one cared either, right up until they suddenly did. The main difference is that most reference managers, including Mendeley, have extremely limited file-sharing ability, as well as limited space requirements, so they tend to be more like a cloud file backup service than a file-sharing service. Also, historically, "digital rights owners" disagreed that even having a digital file was legal at all, even if it was just a personal backup copy, and this made the 1990's a bit weird in retrospect - but should not be an issue with academic papers, which are mostly digital now anyway. And when services are only backing up files only you are using, and often accepting payment to do so, there is far less incentive for anyone to care about the provenance of the materials.
If you are concerned about the availability of the files in-case a service suddenly decides to start erasing files they can't establish you were licensed to obtain (which seems unlikely and technically difficult to achieve in any useful way, but I can't predict the future - and passing files around between colleagues and students/teachers is so common that it would be really disruptive to attempt), you can instead just have a system like Mendeley organize the files into a folder that you then backup/save with a backup service/system. But if you are concerned about being targeted for having such material at all, I'm not sure that just turning off a feature like sync would actually do anything to protect you at all, as there is no guarantee a software could not still scan files and report back to the mother ship whenever it pleased anyway. So I'll have to leave it to you to decide how big of a risk you think that is, and whether it is worth attempting to mitigate.

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What makes papers publishable in top-tier journals?
What are some factors that enable some papers to be published in top-tier journals while others (apparently similar) cannot?
For example, in the field of control theory, there are so many papers with complicated mathematics. Some paper is related to a very similar topic, but some get published in a top-tier journal while others not.
This question is important because knowing this, then I know which journal my paper might be submitted to that is possible to be accepted in the end.

your top-tier paper will change the working plans, goals, methods of many of your colleagues working on a related/similar topic or has major interdisciplinary influences on several other fields. And when you can reflect this, then you will now if it is worth the time to prepare and submit to top-tier journal. Some groundbreaking discoveries have also not been published in top-tier journals, because the authors didn't know they made one ;-)

@MichaelSchmidt yes, ideally if one made a breakthrough, then by all means send it to a top tier journal.  However, most papers do not fall under this category.  Then the question remains, what makes such papers publishable at such venues?

@Prof.SantaClaus you answered your own question...that the reviewers of the top-tier journal cannot rule out it is a minor/major breakthrough :-)

To be accepted and published it has to be submitted. Some papers that might be accepted just aren't ever submitted.
Some of it is just luck. The editor was looking for something. Even something as simple or stupid as s/he needed to fill an 8 page gap in an issue and yours was the best available candidate at the moment.
Some of it is just the writing itself. Good journals want, and try to get, well written, understandable, papers. If the reviewers have trouble understanding you, it will be hard to get accepted.
But most of it is that a paper answers a question (or two) that seems important at the time the paper arrives. It is the science/mathematics/whatever behind the paper that really matters. The members of a scientific community are fairly often on the lookout for an answer to a perplexing problem. If you can provide that, and submit a well written paper, you are more likely to get published.

Then how to find out these perplexing problems?

I'd guess that the only way to plan for excellence is to work toward excellence. You won't hit the mark on the first shot, most likely. An olympic level swimmer spent a lot of time in the pool. Thrashing at the start, but improving. I doubt that there are shortcuts. If you want to write better, then write more. If you want to solve hard problems then work on a lot of problems.

@winston Finding perplexing problems is trivial. The hard part is solving one of them.

@winston - Solve Pi and I guarantee you'll get your pick of journals.

Top journals don't necessarily contain the best papers
For many fields, especially in the natural sciences, the "top-tier" are not just looking for well-done, well-written research reports. Instead, they have an explicit editorial goal of finding papers that are impactful and interesting to a wide, interdisciplinary audience. For example, Nature wants manuscripts that

are of outstanding scientific importance, and
reach a conclusion of interest to an interdisciplinary readership.
technique reported will have significant impacts on communities of fellow researchers
the therapeutic effect reported will provide significant impact on an important disease.

In practice, this means that they often select for 'hot' or controversial topics, the use of exciting new techniques, and surprising, counterintuitive results. As a result, the zeitgeist of the field is probably the major determinant of whether your paper gets accepted in a 'glamorous' journal like Science, Nature, or PNAS.  Quality is obviously important too: even the trendiest paper won't get in if the experiments are obviously flawed or the writing is impenetrable (usually!). However, it is manifestly not true that the best quality papers are published in the best quality journals, or conversely, that everything published in a well-regarded journal is gold.
To add some specific examples, Physical Reviws rejected Theodore Maiman's description of the laser, Physics Letters didn't want the Higgs model, and Nature declined the first reports on MRI, the Krebs Cycle, and(!) the cell cycle. Paul Lauterbur, whose MRI paper was rejected from Nature--but nevertheless won him a Nobel Prize (2003)--has quipped that "You could write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature."
On the hand, these journals are also full of papers that seemed exciting at the time, but either went nowhere or turned out to be fatally flawed (e.g., arsenic-based DNA, water memory, and so on).
How do you decide where to publish?
If you already have a target venue in mind, you can often submit a presubmission enquiry. Each journal handles them slightly differently, but they almost always contain the manuscript title and abstract, and often include a short discussion of the results and why the journal's audience may care about them. The editor will reply, often in a few days, to tell you if the proposed article is a good fit for the journal. While you often don't get much feedback at this stage, it can help you avoid journal-specific scutwork, like reformatting the text or redrawing figures. Occasionally, editors will also mention concerns related to a specific topic: Current Biology told us, for example, that while they were interested in the topic generally, they also felt that much of the existing literature was not very good, and so they would be expecting very rigorous controls.
If you don't have a "target journal", you need to think about the potential audience for your paper. There are many journals which specialize in particular techniques (e.g., J Neurophysiology, for neurophysiological experiments), topics (Attention and Perception for studies of, well, attention and perception), and application (J. Neural Engineering). Browsing your own reference list may help: your paper is likely on-topic at the journal you cite most!
Finally, I would quickly browse through a few complete issues of your candidates. For example, while Journal of Vision and Vision Research are both nominally interested in anything pertaining to seeing, Journal of Vision skews very strongly towards human behavioral experiments. Although you could submit other kinds of work there--and people occasionally do--there are probably better venues for experiments with other techniques or animal subjects.

Whenever I read through a paper in a top-tier journal, I will usually notice the paper has top-tier results. However, that is not enough. You also need top-tier presentation, including top-tier figures and top-tier handling of data. For example, if it's possible to use a statistical method and obtain useful results at a 99.9% confidence level, go for it!
To help you getting a paper published in top-tier journal, you can:

Learn statistical methods.
Illustrate the paper well with excellent figures. If you need to draw some of the figures, consider hiring a professional graphical artist. However, then you need to set exact criteria for the images (what should they show?) and also have a clear copyright status on the figures. You should also mention who the graphical artist was in your acknowledgements section, so that you don't claim the illustrations made by others as your own.
Run a professional language check by a native speaker of the language, and you could also consider mentioning this in the acknowledgements section as well, although in this case I don't think omitting the mention would be claiming the work of others as your own work.
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite! I would get feedback from several peers, and be prepared to rewrite the entire thing based on their feedback! In fact, I typically start writing at a very early stage, even before I have useful results, and this means I often use content written before the direction of the research was clear. This has led to many rejections. Had I bothered to rewrite, some of those rejections could have been acceptance decisions.
Be prepared to remove content. Usually, the first version of your paper may be a bit repetitive. Don't repeat, use concise language! If you're prepared to remove content, you can fit more useful content in.
Be through. Explore all of the implications of your research. A paper that says everything that can be said about a certain idea will be far more successful than a paper that just introduces a concept and makes thoroughly exploring the concept a future research topic. You could also consider criticizing your research and subsequently defending it. For example, I recently submitted a very good paper, which identifies certain anomalies in my solution. I think I was very thorough in listing the anomalies. I also included proof that an anomaly-free solution to the problem I presented cannot exist.
Underline the importance of your results. Sometimes, you might think the reader ought to know the importance, but better to mention in explicitly. All it takes is few sentences.

However, I would say that you should go through this list only if you have top-tier results in the first place. A paper having mediocre results, but top-tier presentation, top-tier figures and top-tier handling of data will get published only by sheer luck if you're targeting the very best of the journals.

While all of these things are important for writing a good paper, I'm not actually convinced that they're either necessary or sufficient to get into a top-ranked journal.

@Matt I agree: language check and professional artist aren't necessary if you can do those things yourself, and I can't guarantee acceptance after following all of this, for obvious reasons. This is the best answer I could write on the subject. If you have more ideas, consider posting an answer of your own!

added one below!

A lot of it is about audience: this is obvious in places like Nature and Science, which are general science journals, and are therefore looking for papers that will appeal to a general science audience - for your example of control thoery: what is a paper in control theory that a biologist or materials scientists (for example) might think was cool. This also applies further down the pile:
Would a mathematician or engineer from a different, but related field find it interesting?
Step down again: Would anybody in control theory find it interesting, or only people studying that particular problem?

Actually, my personal experience has been that top-tier journals tend to publish articles that are more like summaries of a certain field. Take Nature, the papers you will find in there are either groundbreaking discoveries from CERN or similar institutes, or papers that offer a kind of Big Picture of a certain field.
So I would partially disagree with some of the other answers - it's not all about writing high-quality papers. The content also needs to be what the journals are looking for, and what they want is often not a brilliant, but highly technical paper. Instead they want the paper that summarizes/reviews your brilliant technical paper, together with a dozen others, and offers some general/accessible insight.
And it feels wrong to omit that of course, your standing in the scientific community has some influence. There are exceptions to the rule, but I would imagine that even someone with Einstein-level brilliance would have trouble getting his groundbreaking theoretical paper published in Nature if he is only just starting his PhD. Such is the way of the world.

There was a point when the Nature/Science paper was, more or less explicitly, the 'best' results from an on-going research program that was described in more detail elsewhere. However, I think this is less true than it used to be: the papers are more self-contained

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Is it legal to use Sci-Hub in Germany?
I used to use this website to get the research papers that are not freely available online. So, passing the right name of any research work for this Russian website will derive the paper directly to your browser in Pdf format.
I used this website for the last 2 years when I was doing my Masters in Jordan. Now, I am doing PhD in Germany, So is it known this website in this region ? is it legal to explore or download the results?

As far as I know the only actual prosecution in Germany is done for sharing (meaning uploading) copyrighted material. This is also started by the copyright holders or their representatives, the government itself is not starting investigations.
I don't think there have been any cases anywhere where an individual was prosecuted for downloading publications for personal / educational use. Even if it came to that, it would be only for downloading from an illegal source, because you probably have access to most papers for free through some kind of inter-library sharing service.

When in doubt, use tor.

@MikeyMike I bet I will be ending up in a jail rather than PhD research office...

Because this would lead to the fast acceleration of mandatory open access publishing and the end of for-profit publishing as we know it. Publishers might have the right to prosecute individuals, but I think they know that it's a really bad idea.

@Roland I've yet to hear about a single case of an "Abmahnung" for downloading. Uploading is a different story - in particular, people from other countries visiting Germany are frequently sued for using bittorrent, where you cannot download without uploading, too.

Why not ordering via your institution's library?

@FuzzyLeapfrog its worth at long run but I am fresh student and still need 8 weeks to get my account access.

@Krebto I see. Here are some suggestions what you can do, if you want to avoid Sci-Hub: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/85623/what-to-do-if-cited-papers-are-not-freely-available-while-reviewing-a-manuscript/85628#85628

8 weeks to get a library account? Where in Germany is this happening?

@CapeCode Posting a proper answer could be more informative than posting no-sense comments ;) If you read all the comments, you could be noticed that I already mentioned I was in my first weeks, and normally, in your Germany, things take a lot of time, specifically when it comes to Ph.D. registration and committee final decision.

Normally in your Germany, you walk in the university's library and you can access anything they subscribed to. They can also often set up a temporary account until you're formally registered.

@CapeCode I did bachelor and currently Ph.D. in the same university and I can't confirm your 'often' hypothesis. And 'Normally' does not mean 'all' universities in 'your Germany' follows the conduct that you just mentioned nor the main question is asking about...

Again then, where in Germany did the library declined your request to access their resources because you're not registered? That sounds crazy.

I worked in Germany. You don't need to be a PhD student. So long as you're on payroll, you should be able to go to the library and request an account.

This is not a site for legal advice, and you should bear in mind that the answers are (unless they say otherwise) from academics, not legal experts.

@VonBeche Sharing is most often prosecuted, because a single download only leads to a minor penalty (just for one copy), while somebody uploading someone is charged for thousands of copies, which could potentially originate from his initial upload. So for some "Abmahner" it is worth more to look for uploaders than downloaders. (And it is easier to find them. Try to download something and you get the IP of the uploader).

The paper of
E. W. Steinhauer - Die Nutzung einer "Schattenbibliothek" im Licht des Urheberrechts Einige Überlegungen am Beispiel von Sci-Hub
says that downloading is probably illegal and viewing it in your browser is in some grey-area (although making this difference looks like some law-people did not understand the technicalities at all).
But there does not seem to be one court case where one was prosecuted for just downloading such material.
So if you still want to access the publications this way, then I suggest to use the following robust solution: Use the Tor browser or even the Tails operating system. In the latter you could save material with questionable copy-right license status in an encrypted file-system, then in Germany the law is pretty robust (compared to the USA or UK) around the "Aussageverweigerungsrecht", i.e. no authority can force you to decrypt it.

Cool, but I am not certain about the legality of downloading a Tor browser at my office machine where located inside German university. Do I have to contact the admin? if so, is it some how bad impression to ask about using a Tor ?

I do not know what the policy about running certain programms on your school computer are. But I am pretty sure that just using Tor on it is covered by the "Forschungsfreiheit".  But note that this is a very paranoid approach, I am pretty sure that you could just access them without tor (like everyone else) without any consequences.

Note that one can use encryption even without that OS.

You should add a link to https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en somewhere in your answer: not everyone knows what Tor is, or where to find it, and this is the simplest way to obtain a "running browser".

-1 since this seems to be saying that "I know it's illegal, but here's how to avoid getting detected". I can't condone doing something illegal, even more so teaching someone else how to avoid detection.

@Cashman: In light of my answer below - could you add a few words regarding how you believe recent changes to the law affect those conclusions (if at all)?

According to publishers, it's technically illegal to use a service such as SciHub. As Cashman points out, viewing the content from SciHub is considered a "grey area" in Germany and in many other countries. While I might recommend its use in countries where it's economically unviable to do otherwise, that can't be said for the German system.
As an alternative to avoiding any of the legal issues associated with SciHub, have you considered using "interlibrary loan" services? Most university libraries, including those in Germany, participate in some sort of network that allows them to request articles that are not available as part of their "local" collection. It may take some time (a few business days, usually) before you get the article, but it is completely legal and a low-cost means of obtaining it compared to buying it directly from the publisher.

"According to publishers"? I wouldn't put much faith in their opinion.

They are the ones most capable of influencing the law (see the recent link tax brouhaha). As I said though, I’ve offered a solution.

So, I just looked into it for a bit; would appreciate your feedback on my answer.

You might be interested: https://law.stackexchange.com/a/33647/15133 since that answer (and sources cited) indicates it's illegal not just according to publishers.

Since April 2018 at the latest it is most likely legal
In 2018, the "Act on Copyright and the Knowledge Society" (that's an English translation!) came into effect.
It says in Section 60c(3) that

... full use may be made of illustrations, isolated articles from the same professional or scientific journal, other small-scale works ...

Now, I am not a lawyer, nor do I live in Germany, but that seems pretty clear-cut to me.
Regardless, downloading and sharing academic material is important
While I would not presume to recommend anything in your case - with your being a non-citizen and non-local - I would make the claim that if enough German (or otherwise) students, junior researchers and faculty use it and legitimize it in their circles, then it would become de-facto legal, regardless of the letter of the law.
... In fact, considering past customs of German academics and students, and @cashman's indication that no one has ever been prosecuted on downloading SciHub content - perhaps this is what actually transpired in Germany.
In support of this argument, I would draw a parallel with the legality of homosexual sex: It was officially illegal in Germany since at least 1871 - but was of course practiced; and it wasn't until 1968/1969 that the criminal ban on homosexuality was lifted in the (split-up) Germany.

I see the law as saying the end user can use and distribute individual articles but the issue is SciHub creating an illegal archive and if it’s legal to obtain articles from them.

@aeismail: 1. But is the archive illegal if it only distributes "isolated articles" (which is indeed the case for SciHub, to my knowledges)? 2. Where does it say that what you can legally copy becomes illegal if the copy is from another copy and that other copy was made illegally? 3. Wouldn't this section override your answer to q. 2?

Section 96 seems to be relevant to point 2. I understand 60(c)3 as saying it’s OK to use an individual article but if SciHub is not the end user or an allowed source then it can violate 96 which overrides 60(c)3.

@aeismail: 1. As long as we agree that the potentially illegality is Sci-Hub's rather than the end user, then ok :-)  2. I'm not sure that SciHub's copy is made illegally; an argument might be made to the contrary, plus - it could well depend on which specific article you're getting from them.

That’s why I said it was a gray area in my answer and suggested workarounds. I doubt anyone will get prosecuted for downloading an article or two, but someone trying to do something like Aaron Swartz might find themselves facing legal action.

Downvoted since according to the Law.SE question, "If the file is only available for a fee, and the website purchases a copy and makes it freely available, and you download it knowing that you should be paying for a copy through the official site, then both you and the website are at fault." i.e. the user is at fault as well as the website (not to mention almost surely in breach of his or her ISP's policies).

@Allure: There's no answer that says that about downloading academic papers after the 2018 act has gone into effect. As in other questions, you are trying to mislead people and scare them away from sharing research, by mixing up sharing/streaming of entertainment media and cases such as Sci-Hub.

That answer references the link you gave. So no, you should stop trying to mislead people. Also see things like this, which isn't in Germany, but you should get the point. https://answers.library.curtin.edu.au/faq/204046

You're referring to "that answer", "the Law.SE question" without providing a link. The link you did just provide regards Australia - which is of course irrelevant to this question regarding Germany.

Disclaimer: not a lawyer.
It is probably illegal to use Sci-Hub in Germany. By "probably" I mean that although it is possible to defend yourself in court, your defense would be based on technicalities such as the difference between downloading and streaming (more on the difference below), which is definitely shaky ground. If sued, you do not have a strong case. Several court rulings have also inclined against things that would make using Sci-Hub illegal, so if the court sets a precedent in the ruling it is likely to be against you.

Sci-Hub acquired the papers illegally. This should be fairly obvious; if it isn't then see this article on how Sci-Hub acquires its papers. This matters because German law distinguishes between making a copy from a lawful source and making a copy from an unlawful source.
Streaming vs. downloading. Streaming is looking at the material without also making a copy of it. This could, e.g., happen if you are watching a broadcast of a live event. Downloading is actually making a copy of it. In the case of Sci-Hub papers, these are PDF files, and you can't read them without also downloading (at least) a temporary file on your computer. Therefore using Sci-Hub falls under downloading, not streaming. Every time you access something using Sci-Hub, you are making a copy of the work.

Under German law, it's legal to make a copy of a work without the consent of the copyright holder if all of the following conditions are met (section 53(1) and 53(4)):

The work (if it's a book or periodical) has been out of print for at least two years.
The source from which you got the book from is lawful.
Personal use only. No commercial use, either direct or indirect.

Point #2 is particularly important. The source from which you get the original copy has to be lawful. Since Sci-Hub is not a lawful source, downloading from it is automatically illegal.
More technical details: These aren't really relevant to question of using Sci-Hub, but answers a common objection.
German law has a separate section for works used in scientific research (section 60c of the above link). You are allowed to reproduce:

Up to 15% of a work for non-commercial purposes, to a limited circle of people. So for example if you're using it for your conference presentation, you're in the clear.
Up to 75% of a work for personal use.
You may use all individual figures or individual articles from a scientific journal.

The catch is that this does not supersede the requirement that you get the work from a lawful source. If you downloaded a paper from the publisher's website using your university's subscription, then you are allowed to make copies of it without the publisher's consent, but if you downloaded a paper from Sci-Hub, you're still in illegal territory.
Precedent cases: there have been two important rulings on this.

ACI Adam. This established that EU law for private copy exceptions (i.e. exceptions in which making a private copy is legal) takes precedence over national law. This means that German law can be more restrictive than EU law, but it cannot be more permissive; you cannot do something that is legal in Germany but not in the EU. EU law mandates that you provide fair recompense to the copyright holder even if you use the work for noncommercial personal use only (see article 5(2)(b) of the Copyright Directive). If you acquired the original legally, this usually takes the form of taxes on the CDs, hard drives, etc.
Filmspeler. This established that streaming copyrighted material from an unlawful source without consent of the copyright holder is also illegal. So even if you are able to view a paper using Sci-Hub without making a copy of it, you are still breaching the law. This was covered in the popular media, e.g. here.

Finally: chances are very good that your Internet Service Provider, e.g. your university - has policies that prohibit you from doing illegal things using the service. In other words, if you download the papers anyway, you are likely in breach of your institute's policies. In addition to that, your university could get in trouble for providing you with internet access.

If there's a silver lining to all this, it's that you are unlikely to be caught. But you'd still be doing something illegal. Should you use Sci-Hub anyway? That is up to your personal moral code.

Using material in the public benefit (e.g. in research) is highly different from personal entertainment, in many (most?) countries, and I would guess also in Germany.

@einpoklum can you find any source that says the motivation for illegally downloading matters?

You said the first link deals with streaming videos or music, so I didn't read it. The third link is a media broadcaster/publisher, and so not a credible source on these matters. The second link mentions an ECJ ruling about some kind of streaming - which I also assume has to do with video entertainment content.

... after reading the links, I reiterate - you haven't linked to someplace that says it's illegal to make copies of academic material for purposes of academic research.

Oh, and that ECJ ruling has to do with selling a player which streams copyrighted films without license. Are you sure you're not just spreading FUD here?

Are you familiar with what "streaming" means? Read the first link, it doesn't have to be videos or music. If you download a copy of the file, that's downloading. If you just view it without downloading, that's streaming. Also the laws don't just deal with videos and music, it deals with all copyrighted material.

I reiterate as well, you have not showed any evidence that motivation matters. Breaking the law is breaking the law. Breaking the law for good intentions might earn you a reduced sentence, but it's still a criminal conviction (usually).

@einpoklum I strongly suggest you familiarize yourself with the law, or you're at risk of breaking it without even knowing it. Check out the deleted answer and comments in this question (I assume you're able to read it). https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/112509/legality-of-downloading-books-from-websites-such-as-library-genesis? Downloading is well-established to be illegal for a long time; streaming is not so certain but the April 2017 case established it is illegal. http://www.ip-watch.org/2017/04/28/european-court-justice-tightens-screws-streaming/

I quote: "Now the highest EU judges have declared that obtaining a copyright-protected work by streaming without consent of a copyright owner would not satisfy the exception clauses of articles 5 (1) and 5 (5) on temporary acts of reproduction." The "selling a player" aspect isn't really relevant here. If you're still not convinced I'll start a question in Law.SE.

"Störerhaftung" ist currently an issue under heavy discussion...

You cannot stream a paper. Streaming means you have only a part of the file at the same time. Your streaming movie player shows you the movie part of the current chunk and then discards it when loading the next part. You browser first loads the full PDF and then shows it, which is a full download.

@allo yes, I believe that's mentioned in the streaming vs. downloading bullet point.

Merely browsing the public web, including PDFs on the web, is generally legal in Germany, that's for sure.  So it stands to reason, by set inclusion, that it is legal to browse Sci-Hub in Germany.  Also, Sci-Hub obtains and is generally used to view individual articles that are contained within much larger published journals. Also, Sci-Hub is generally used for scientific research.
There are 5 examples of German theses that acknowledged Sci-Hub at https://sci-hub.se/theses#de and there have been no prosecutions for their or other Germans' use of the website.  Furthermore, "there does not seem to be one court case where one was prosecuted for just downloading such material," as Cashman noted.
It is illegal to build and start some WMD using instructions you find using Sci-Hub.  But it is not using Sci-Hub that makes it illegal.  Likewise with many of the plethora of examples created by monopolists and intended to mislead readers into believing or even stating that all use of Sci-Hub is illegal, or "It is probably illegal to use Sci-Hub in Germany."  Selling access to copyrighted content without permission of the monopolist is illegal (Filmspeler).  Sci-Hub obtains articles from sources that the law considers to have obtained them legally: the for-profit journal publishers (and their ISPs).  Sci-Hub, in contrast, does not use them for commercial purposes.
Disclaimer: not a lawyer.
It is probably legal to use Sci-Hub in Germany.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Conference proceedings and talks on a CV?
I come from a multidisciplinary background, mostly biostatistics and bioinformatics. I'm currently updating my CV to apply for a post doc and I'm wondering how do people include conference proceedings and invited talks in a CV.
In my case, I have two type of abstracts:
- peer-reviewed conference proceedings which are published in journals,
- peer-reviewed abstracts accepted in national or smaller conferences which aren't published.
Should I make a distinction between these two types of abstracts? How do you separate abstracts selected for an oral comunication and/or poster and invited talks?
I used to have a section named Conference contribution and three subsections Invited talk, Oral communication and Poster but I'm not sure about this format and I'm wondering whether it's relevant to add this information or if I should filter more. Also, do people include all abstracts or only the first author?

I would not include my presentations in my CV, but I keep only the most important things (CV should be around 2 to 3 pages). Your potential employer won't read everything but only what he is interested in (for sure not your presentations). You can add a link at the end of your CV referring to your complete CV (which can be a web page). For publications, you could put your 3 best papers under a section named: Selected Publications

@Younes the OP is applying for a postdoc so a complete CV would be appropriate.

@anonymous I am sure that my professor does not spend one second to check the list of talks. A postdoc is not different than any other position. Even publications, one would mention the number of his publications but one puts the best of what he published (What if the candidate published 30 articles in proceedings? -which happens often-). The professor is as any other employer, is interested not only in research but also the ability to work in a group, solving problems, working under hard circumstances. Hence, the CV should cover everything but rationally.

@Younes That would be correct for a short CV, but generally a CV is intended to be a complete listing of your productivity as an academic. You will see postings that will indicate if a short version is preferred and there may be some regional differences, but if you published thirty articles, you should have thirty articles listed on your CV.

There is a little bit of variation depending upon the discipline, but generally the convention is along the lines of the following:

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Invited Talks
Unsolicited presentations (ex. keynotes) where you are invited by the organizers.
Papers
Complete manuscripts that are published in proceedings and indexed by relevant databases.
Abstracts
Short (i.e., 250 words) or possibly extended abstracts intended to describe the talk.
Posters
Any poster presentations, these may be eliminated by senior scholars.

Generally the rule of thumb is that the section is organized by most prestigious (i.e., invited talks) to least prestigious (i.e., posters). When applying for an academic position this section should be as complete as possible as well. Additionally, it may include notation indicating you are the presenter if you are not the first author.

Thank you for your answer! So you would include any poster, including the ones you didn't present but you're a co-author or only the ones you presented?

@psoares Early career, listing everything makes sense, as you advance in your career you might limit it just the you presented and have something noting "Selected Posters." Be sure to indicate the ones you presented though.


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Choosing between a Post-Doc and a faculty position at "2nd-tier" institution
I am Ph.D. student in India working in computer science. I will be graduating soon. I have two options: 1) post-doc 2) join a "tier 2 institute" (i.e., an institution ranked between #11 and #20 in India) as a faculty. I don't have sufficient publications to join a tier 1 institute.
I am inclined to go for a post-doc because I want to improve the quality of my research. Many people are suggesting that I join tier 2 institute and then keep working. My research field (computational mathematics) is such that if I have to work alone then I can only publish one paper per year, but in a collaboration I can publish with more speed. Some people told me postdoc will impact you badly if you do not publish enough. I don't know what to do, but I want to pursue my carrier in research.
What are the pros/cons of doing the post-doc vs. taking a tier-2 faculty position?

And do you actually have offers for these positions or are you simply deciding which to try for?

"Joining as a faculty" normally implies a permanent position -- is that the case here?

You say these institutions are 11-20 in India; what would those rankings work out to globally?

@cag51 Would global ranking matter at all?

@mast - I think so, if only because I don't have a great intuition for what the 15th best school in India is like, or how much "worse" it is than the tier-1 institutes.

@cag51 11-20 in India is around 600-800 global, comparable to mid-lower tier state universities in the USA, if that's familiar to you.

Why do you think the "level" of the institution will either enhance or degrade your ability to do research?    Separately -- if you are just looking for lots of co-authors, then the size of Uni matters, not its reputation.

My little experience during my Ph.D. tells that it matter to larger extent as in tier 2 not many professors are active in research they are more active in teaching and academic activities. Funding is also less in tier 2.

@CarlWitthoft  If research and facility quality has no impact on career prospects, funding, and success potential, then why would we bother ranking them?

This depends on a number of personal factors. Here are some questions that I'd be asking in your situation:

How happy would you be with a career at the Tier 2 institute? Is this what you were aiming for, more or less, when you started your PhD? If so, then consider taking the job.
If you do a postdoc, how likely would you be to get a "better" academic job afterwards? And how much "better?" I wouldn't focus on the distinction between Tier 1 and Tier 2 so much; the characteristics of universities will differ greatly within each "tier". Here I'd ask the opinion of some senior scientists -- whoever wrote your recommendation letters, for example.
If you do a postdoc and don't get any academic job at all, how would you feel about this? If, for example, you would also enjoy an industry job, and those are widely available in your field, then you could consider taking on more risk.
Are there any personal factors at play? Are you eager to "settle down"? Do you have any responsibilities that require financial stability? Is the Tier 2 institute in a city where you'd enjoy living? If you do a postdoc, do you mind the prospect of moving again in a few years?

None of us on this website can answer any of these questions, but I suggest them as good questions to ask yourself. Best wishes to you!

I'm going to come out and say something possibily controversial, but postdoc was the most enjoyable part of my career. I was trained enough to know what I was doing (at least a little), but I had none of the responsibilities of being faculty. I didn't have to apply for funding, teach, or be responsible for the success of a team of others. If my grant applications failed, at worst I lost my own job, I didn't put 2 or 3 others out of work as well. Now as faculty, not only do I have that responsiblity but 60% of my time is take up with non-research activities, and where I do get time for research, its mostly supervising others. Don't get me wrong - I think my team is great, and there is a lot of pleasure in seeing others succeed, and helping their plans come together.
Of course this is predicated the fact that as a white, british, middleclass, able-bodied male, with a partner who works remotely and is willing to move around 1) I didn't mind the instability and the moving regularly 2) If it all went belly up, and the jobs dried up, I would be okay - there were other careers that would accept me, and in the very worst case, I could go live with my parents without really making a dent on their living standards.

I have every advantage that life can throw at me. If I had failed, I would have undoubtedly continued to have had a comfortable and prosperous life, because in our society, its pretty hard for someone with my advantages to not do.

When I was an undergrad there was this program in the astronomy department for astro majors where you would go to a different professor's home for dinner once a week over the course of a term. We'd talk a bit about their research, but a lot of it was about what pursuing a career in astronomy was like. Interestingly, almost all of them said the same thing as you --- their postdoc years were the most enjoyable of their career for the same reasons you mentioned. By that time they had learned how to do research and their only professional responsibility was to do research.

About a month ago you said in another question that you had no offers. Perhaps that has changed. I hope so. But if not, I think your expectations are unrealistic. If you get an offer for a tenure track position from any of the top 20 institutions (in the US, say) or even the top 50, grab it. Carnegie Mellon is rated as 25 by USNews. Most academics would, I think, die to get an offer from CMU. Or University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign, rated 49, I think.
But for general advice, treat a post-doc, not as a thing of value in itself, but as a bridge to a tenured position. It can be a solid bridge, but the goal is the tenure track position in which you can build a career.
If you have a choice to step directly into a permanent position at a good place (never mind top 20 or even top 120) take it and avoid the bridge.
The exception would be if you were offered a collaboration by a top researcher (no matter where) in your field whose own reputation would be a boost to you. The institution would matter very little. Joining the collaborative circle of a superstar, is a boost.
Another exception would be an offer of a post doc at a place that uses them to "take a close look" at potential permanent faculty. I don't know that many universities are even allowed to do that anymore, but it was possible in the past. And even in the past, universities of that calibre were still required to conduct an honest national (at least) search even when they had a favored candidate.
But I'd also suggest that, if you are having any difficulty in finding any position, then you broaden your search. Your question suggests you have too small a target. It is possible, of course that you are capable enough to get hired at a "top" institution, but in any given field, the total number of offerings by the top 20 in a give year probably isn't too far from 20 or so. And with hundreds of potential candidates for those few openings.

Thanks for answer. I would love to join a institute which is in top 20 worldwide even 120 is fine but the institute is in top 20 within the india not in the world.

I can't judge the quality of universities in India, having no experience. I expect there are quite a lot of very high quality. The grad students I had from there were generally very well educated. But I think the advice holds anywhere. The post doc is a bridge. Search widely for a position. etc.

@Buffy Going by the Times ranking the best Universities in CS in India, the top ranked one is in 125-150. For top20 we're talking 400+. Not exactly Carnegie Mellon.

@Voo, I wrote it before India was specified. I left it as I think the basic advice is sound. And, the universities in India seem to be doing a good job of educating students, independent of their research rankings. But even 400 on a world wide scale is pretty high.

Congratulations for getting the offer! It is really a privileged position to be able to chose.
Before I tell you my opinion on this, I think contextualizing my situation would help. I am also from India and I obtained my PhD from a 'Tier1' university in North America about 3 years ago. I was lucky to get a faculty position straight out of my PhD in a top 20 university in the world. I have eventually moved on to a good European university (not top 100).
In my opinion, a post-doc is a great option to elevate your research profile. I would consider it as the ideal option if there was not a faculty position it was getting compared to. The logic behind this is that a postdoc is a contract position and brings with it uncertainties. For example, there seems to be general consensus that a recession will follow the current pandemic. So, in a year or two are you certain that there will be faculty positions or postdocs on offer?
Further with regards to the 'tier' of the university, I would not place too much importance on it. As Buffy has pointed out, rankings are not an all encompassing metric. Even though I do not publish as many papers now compared to before, I do have much better work-life balance. I am less stressed and I invest more efforts into my students and classes. All of these are benefits which an get obfuscated by university rankings.
Again, take my advice with a grain of salt. I have made my positionality clear. Having never been a postdoc myself, I am sure there are dimensions associated with it I cannot fully comprehend.

My own advice (I come from the U.S.A.) is that taking the faculty position (if still available) is far better, but of course I don't know your particular situation.  A lot of factors would go into it, such as the distance to loved-ones, your family goals, etc.  In general, a post-doc is not always very prestigious.
If the faculty position is tenure-track so much the better.  (See comment on question for a question about this).
Either way, best wishes for your future!
My career has had many winding roads I would not have set out to follow, so enjoy the journey as opposed to fretting over the destination.

First, congratulate for getting multiple academic offers. I can only say for the situation of US. It is extremely unlikely to get any (tenure-track) faculty job right after finishing PhD (in the field I am familiar with), that if people end up getting one, they will almost always go for it over any temporary postdoc. position.
A few professors I know end up in switching institution when they rank up from assistant professor to associate professor. If that could be a possibility for you, you might want to consider it over doing a postdoc.
For more people (include myself), the alternative of "not doing a postdoc." is to work in a teaching position or moving to industry, due to either lack of outstanding research results (enough to get the degree, not enough to be competitive for an academic position), or simply due to personal preference/interest/etc. change.

Take the one where you are able to do the most independent research. Even just not having a position, but researching, can be best, in order to develop a profile in your field.
Then, tenure track will come to some extent for how well you are known, not how good an institute you have been associated with.
So I think postdoc at Tier 1 is best.


text:
Withdraw manuscript from peer review after finding a major error
I just received a major revision decision (1st round) for a manuscript I submitted to a reputable journal.  After looking into one of the reviewer's comments I found a major error in my analysis.  The conclusions of my research are almost completely different as a result.  I also don't think the reviewer realized the severity of the error.
I would like to withdraw my manuscript from the journal because of the major error.  However, I don't know how to approach my co-authors or the journal about this issue.  I've always been able to complete major revisions for other papers I've written, and so I've never had to deal with this type of problem before.  I also realize that the editors and referees have already put a lot of time into reviewing my paper.
I would like to ask this forum for any suggestions about withdrawing a paper once it's in review.  I don't know how common it is to do this, and how it is generally perceived in academia.

Is this a "everything's ruined, nothing can be salvaged, toss the whole thing in the bin" kind of major error, or a "everything changes, but we still have a paper" kind of major error?

I would say an "everything changes, but we still have a paper" but only after doing an extensive amount of additional work (i.e., include another data set and more simulations, rewrite intro and discussion).  It really may not be worthwhile.

But if you say "it really may not be worthwhile", wouldn't that then equal the "everything's ruined, nothing can be salvaged, toss the whole thing in the bin" category (if perhaps we insert "with reasonable effort" after "salvaged")?

@Thomas: It seems to me that the OP is saying that (they believe that) they still have a potentially publishable result, it's just a completely different result from what they originally thought they had and so would take a lot of effort to (re-)write up. That's very different from realizing, say, that your experimental results were just random statistical noise or that the axioms from which you'd proved a bunch of remarkable results were actually self-contradictory.

@anonymous47 "but only after doing an extensive amount of additional work". Well, I would guess that's what major revision is supposed to mean...

@mathreadler "major revision" usually means that substantial parts of the paper have to be changed/improved/extended based on the remarks of the reviewers. If I am a reviewer and I recommend a major revision, I don't expect to get a paper with completely different conclusions. OP should notify that editor about the problem and resubmit the paper as a new paper. No harm done.

@trunklop it quite often means new actual research work has to be done for which the result is not known.

There are two parts to your question:

How to broach the matter with your colleagues.
How to withdraw your paper from review.

The trickier issue is how to broach the subject with your colleagues. If you feel there is absolutely no way for you to finish the revisions on schedule, then you owe it to your co-authors to tell them of the problem. However, this should be a dialogue, not a unilateral decision. They may see the issue as being less onerous timewise, and that it may be possible to finish the work within a reasonable period of time. Or they may agree with you that withdrawal is the best option. In either case, it should be a team decision, and once that's made, you can proceed with notifying the journal.
Notifying the journal is the simpler issue to handle. Most journals usually set a timeline for submitting major revisions. Just send the journal a note stating exactly what you wrote above. There is nothing wrong with independently withdrawing a paper because of significant errors. (Better that you do so now than need to retract it because of errors later on!)

If you want to withdraw the paper, don't just let the deadline pass. Do it explicitly so the editor and journal staff don't waste their time sending "Hey, your revision is overdue -- do you need more time?" mails.

I had a similar thing happen -- the journal was happy to accept my later, substansally improved paper, sent it to the same reviewers (I believe), and it was accepted. Remember journals are usually run by fellow academics, they will understand problems arising,

If you feel there is absolutely no way for you to finish the revisions on schedule, then you owe it to your co-authors to tell them of the problem. - If there is a major error to fix, you owe it to your co-authors to discuss this with them regardless of anything else.  That should be the first thing you do.

I don't think the OP should notify the journal before discussing it with the co-authors.  If I was a co-author and someone withdrew a paper without consulting me, I'd be seriously angry.

I’m not saying he should. The first step is the discussion with the colleagues to determine what to do.

Perhaps the "independently withdrawing" phrase is being read differently from what you meant, by some people.   I think you mean that the authors (plural) withdraw their paper instead of having it rejected.  But I think @StephenG interpreted it as "independent of your co-authors".  Add an "after that" at the start of the last paragraph, and/or some other phrase that makes it clear you only do this if / when the group of authors decides to give up (at least temporarily) on this publishing deadline.

@PeterCordes If that's the case, perhaps changing "independently" to "proactively" is another way to clarify the meaning.

The whole point of the peer-review process is to avoid that any sub-standard garbage gets published. That is the reason your "reputable journal" is reputable in the first place.
Here, the review process pointed at a major issue in your work. That's great because that's why your paper gets reviewed in the first place. (I would even argue that whether or not the reviewer actually realized the gravity of the implication of their review is secondary.)
Now, you're currently in the following situation:

Presumably, you have already invested a lot of work to get to the current point in the research for this paper.
To conclude this part of your research, you've now realized you need to spend a whole lot of additional work.

Naturally, the question then arises: are you either (1) willing to spend the additional work or (2) completely scratch all the work you've already done?
The option that's missing here is: (3) pretend nothing happened and publish the current paper after addressing the outlined revisions. Clearly, you do not intend to go for that, so the decision is between (1) and (2). In both cases, you will have to tell your co-authors and the journal that the paper will need more additional work than anticipated.
But I don't quite see the problem with that. The journal did their job, so if you honestly inform them about what happened, I can't imagine that it will lead to any bad consequences for you. It is in their interest too, after all, that only high-quality results get published. So, why not thank the reviewers and inform the journal that you will (1) withdraw the paper completely, or (2) resubmit at some point in the future but probably not within the specified time frame for the revisions they asked for?
Also: I would probably discuss your newly gained insights with my co-authors as soon as possible. Not only so they are informed but also because maybe there's a different angle that you're missing and that would put the whole situation into a different light again? One of your co-authors might have some relevant insights that might change how you will move ahead.

Thank you for the very thoughtful response.  It seems that the sensible thing to do would be to discuss the error and any future plans for the manuscript with my coauthors.  I'd be willing to do the extra work if my coauthors also think it's worthwhile.

If you keep the journal editor informed then if you end up resubmitting to the same journal they may try and use the same reviewers (which may speed up the process).

@anonymous47 I would suggest also to be gracious to the editor when you inform them of your decision. Their selection of reviewers has saved you some substantial potential embarrassment, and the "system" worked.

I'd say the problem is that you're trying to tackle this and make decisions alone.
Contact your co-authors and explain the situation just like you explained it to us. Don't tell them "we should do XYZ", just explain what's already happened. Let them make suggestions first, then make your own suggestion (or support somebody else's).
Your discussion with your co-authors will dictate how to inform the journal, but - the swifter the better. The only thing reviewers or editors may be angry about is delaying this kind of notification.

" then make your own suggestion if at all" this reads like you're implying that OP shouldn't suggest a course of action, or that it would at least be a bad idea? Why?

@Cubic: Edited to clarify what I mean.

It is possible to ask extra time on major revision and it certainly is alright to modify the paper in a major way. Talk with your co-authors on how to proceed. If you agree on to fix the paper, explain the editor that the modifications required to solve the problem pointed out by the reviewer would take longer than the allotted time. You might receive extra time to fix the issue, or you might need to resubmit later on. If the editor decides to give you the time you need, no work will be wasted. Just make sure you act swiftly.
Even if you do not get the chance, you should not feel sorry about the time invested in reviewing the paper. The system is worked and the mistake is found. The reviewers do reviews willingly for multiple reasons, one of which is to ensure their field is not littered with papers having wrong results.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Do author name(s) dominate the content of the paper?
Suppose I did not publish any papers till now in reputed journals and I want to publish a paper with a novel idea. Colleagues are suggesting me to ask any expert to proofread the paper and then to include his name as one of the authors. But I don't want to involve any other person and want to do everything on my own and if any revisions are there, I revise my paper according to the comments by reviewers.  In addition to that that are saying that there is a possibility of immediate rejection without seeing the content if authors are new and English is poor.
Some are emphasising that the author names with a good track record can influence the reviewers to fasten the process of reviewing and avoids immediate rejection.

Note that mere proofreading is not usually considered enough for authorship (see, e.g., the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, aka the "Vancouver protocol").

You did not mention which field you are in. While all fields theoretically focus on quality and importance of the product, that is sometimes hard to fully assess. In some fields it is a fairly open secret that reputation and reputation of who and what you cited can be used as a factor in assessing quality, especially in a first pass.

What is the review process for the journal you're submitting to? If it's blind / double-blind then it shouldn't matter, right? Are you only concerned about rejection by the journal, or also about broader acceptance of your work by the research community / getting a higher citation count, etc?

For what it's worth, there are academic editing services that specialise in helping get papers up to publication-grade English. It's not a trivial expense, but it is an option if you're concerned about being rejected for poor English.

So what's your question, in the end? I guess "how much would it hurt my chances to get published if I decide to go alone rather than involving an academic", but that's not very clear altogether. And it's difficult to answer without having an idea of how much you are familiar with the field.

Can you please rewrite to better focus on the focal question? I am now voting to leave it open... this time.

In what you have written, you are confusing together two things:

Is the author known to the reviewers? (e.g., "names with a good track record")
Is the paper well written? (e.g., "English is poor")

While some sub-fields may have "cliques" that exclude people who are not part of them, most reputable scientific publications have a basically honest review process.  Reviewers are human, and so even honest reviewers will tend to look more favorably on a person whose work they already respect---and thus many publication venues have double-blind review to try to eliminate this possibility.
If you haven't published in a well-reputed journal before, however, there's a good chance that your paper will not be well-written. Writing scientific papers is a skill, and that skill takes practice. Moreover, writing well is often much harder if you aren't writing in your primary language.  And even if you write well in general, writing effectively to a particular scientific community requires being conversant with the current state of that community, in order to understand how readers (and reviewers) are likely to think about what you write.
Thus, I would strongly agree with your colleagues that it is extremely useful to get an expert to look at your paper.  I would strongly disagree that means that expert should become an author---merely reading and commenting on a draft is definitely not sufficient for authorship.
If the expert finds problems in what you have written and is interested to become involved, however, it might be very good to begin a collaboration in which they work with you to refine your work and connect it better to the community of interest. In that case, the expert would indeed become a co-author: not because their name is valuable, but because their expertise has helped to improve the paper into something much stronger than it was before.

The double blind systems I am aware of are only blind to the reviewers and not the editor, so names with a good track record can still help move the manuscript along (and I am not sure that is a bad thing).

@StrongBad True---editors almost always see all the names, and it can matter significantly for "glamour" journals with high desk-rejection rates.  For many reputable journals, however, desk rejection is rare and so it should matter much less.

Colleagues are suggesting me to ask any expert to proofread the paper...

That's a good suggestion, although I would start by asking such experts to listen to an "elevator pitch" of your idea before you ask them for a more serious review. Also, what about your advisor, if you're a graduate student? S/he should help you with that.

...and then to include his name as one of the authors.

This part of the suggestion is inappropriate. Don't add his name unless s/he has made a significant contribution to the paper.

But I don't want to involve any other person and want to do everything on my own

That's the wrong attitude. Part of the experience you're missing is knowing you shouldn't, and should not want to, do "everything on your own".

and if any revisions are there, I revise my paper according to the comments by reviewers.

Don't rely on journal / conference reviewers to do the work of a colleague examining your paper. The reviewers should only need to make sure you haven't missed anything, and that the work is significant enough.

there is a possibility of immediate rejection without seeing the content if authors are new and English is poor.

You need to make sure and write your paper in proper English. Consider improving your writing using a short book on the matter such as The Elements of Style, or taking a university course in academic writing. If that's not enough - pay or find someone to do literary editing in English for you, to improve your skills and not get auto-rejected.

The review process has multiple stages. The first is an administrative/editorial review making sure the paper meets formatting requirements and is vaguely related to the area of specialty for the journal. At this stage the author's names do not matter since the person looking at the paper generally does not know everyone in the field. Really poor language very well may result in the manuscript being returned to the authors. At the end of this stage the manuscript is typically handed to the Editor in Chief or an associate/handling editor.
The EiC may also halt the process. The decision to precede at this stage might depend on the authors. If the EiC is unsure of the topic area, but recognizes an author that may help them decide on which AE to pass the paper to. A failure to recognize any authors and if the EiC cannot determine which AE to hand the paper to, may result in the manuscript being returned to the author or rejected. At the end of this stage the manuscript typically proceeds to the AE.
The job of the AE, at this stage, is to determine if the manuscript is worth the time of reviewers and find suitable reviewers. If the AE is doubtful about the manuscript, but recognizes the authors, they might send it for review while if they do not recognize the authors (or recognize the authors for causing problems), and the manuscript is bad, they might (and should) desk reject the manuscript. Typically, the manuscript then proceeds to the reviewers.
At this stage, the manuscript is reviewed. Sometimes the review is double-blind which means the authors cannot influence the decision, since the reviewer does not know who the authors are. Even when a single-blind system is used, the hope is that the authors do not influence the decision. That said, there is concern that it does, since double-blind systems are gaining popularity.
At all stages a poorly written manuscript can result in rejection and will likely lessen the quality of the reviews.

I don't understand the down vote on this answer. It seems both complete and accurate to me. I encourage down voters to leave a comment for the author so that they can understand any objection.

@Buffy I find I tend to get down votes on answers that point out that reality is not always the ideal that we want it to be.

@StrongBad Not fair. Your comment points out that reality is not the ideal that we want it to be but it's a comment so I can't downvote it.

Short answer: having a big name helps, but in practice the names that are big enough to help are not in business of letting themselves being added to mediocre papers.
I've been in your situation before. English is my 3rd language and at the time it was a bit hard to write a paper up so it would seem on par with other papers in ranked journals. I went the solo route and don't regret it. The bottom line is you need to learn to write well by yourself. Your future career and earnings depend on it. Taking a shortcut now will become a huge technical debt later on in your career. Also, writing is soooo much more than just English grammar and style. You are the creator and the only one in command of the content and the structure of your paper. You need to have that control through all the revisions/resubmissions/rewrites your work will go through.
Practical advise: learn to proofread well and make time (~100 hours to proofread your own first paper is about right).
On proofreading by yourself:

read aloud. Your ears will hear what your eyes miss;
google search every phrase you are not sure about, in quotation marks, e.g. "till now" 41m results vs "until now" 199m results. Therefore you should write "until now".
a paper is finished not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Edit as you proofread. No proofreader can help you with this.

With that being said, its great when you can get someone to proofread your paper, but not at the cost of diluting your ownership.

One hopes that the process is more honest than your colleague fears, but no one can guarantee it. In general, I think it is a poor practice and dishonest to include someone as author if they didn't participate in the creation of the work.
The idea that you could get advice from a respected person is probably good, but not that they become an "author" for making suggestions for improvement. You could, however, in an acknowledgement section, thank other people who made some small contributions.
But your idea of doing it all yourself and relying only on official reviewers is also fine.
If you are submitting to a journal or are in a place where prior reputation is all important then the advice might be different even if not really the best. But in such a case it is very difficult for a newcomer to ever advance.


text:
How to address an Oxford/Cambridge full-time lecurer who is not a Ph.D.?
I am currently writing an e-mail to a member of Oxbridge staff. He is a "lecturer," full-time staff, who co-ordinates a well-known program, but does not hold a PhD, only an MA.
I can't call him "Dr. ," or even "Professor ," so is "Mr." sufficient? It seems too informal for someone in such a high-ranking position.

How about "Sir" ?

There is a similar question http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12346/546 , This one is specificly about UK (Oxbridge staff). I hesitate to vote to close as dupe yet.

@scaaahu I think the UK part might make it different, but the email part definitely makes it different.

I had this problem recently when I wanted to (verbally) ask an academic who happened to be sitting near me a question. I just decided to promote him to Dr :)

@TCSGrad : But "sir" is a knightly title. What if he isn't a knight?

@mathreadler calling someone "Sir Firstname" would indicate a knight (or baronet), but "sir" without a name is just a respectful way to address a generic man.

How about Heighness? ;)

A more serious comment - it he/she cares about titles, most likely you don’t want him/her as supervisor/collaborator

"Mr" should be fine (though note that British style drops the period from common  honorifics). For example, Trinity College Cambridge's list of fellows has two "Mr"s and four "Ms"s.
However, be very sure that the lecturer you're emailing doesn't have a doctorate. Most Oxbridge (and I believe UK) lecturers are equivalent to some sort of professor in the US system, and the title of professor is generally reserved for academics somewhere between "regular member of teaching/research staff" and "department head". Accordingly, most UK lecturers do have a PhD.
If you're not sure, it's probably better to go with "Dr" rather than "Mr", as if you do get it wrong one way or the other, that's the one that's less likely to offend.

In the UK (and most other European countries) only full professors would be addressed as professor, where in the US associate professors would be (equivalent to UK Lecturer).

@paul: In fact, in the US, it's usual to address any academic as "Professor", including assistant professors, lecturers, instructors, adjuncts, etc. (Also, if I correctly understand the UK system, a US associate professor is closer to a UK reader.)

UK style does not have a full stop for contractions, but does for truncations, hence Mr, Mrs, Dr, Prof., Col., etc. This does not apply only to honorifics, hence Lat., Gk, etc.

It is better to amuse your addressee than risk causing offence. A journal editor addressed me as "Professor" in all email correspondence, even though I (twice) told him that I was only "Mr". This amused me and caused no offence. But I can imagine that addressing a real Doctor or Professor as "Mr" would not be well taken.

Not everyone would be amused by this...

The journal editor was probably dealing with dozens or hundreds of emails and didn't have time to register who said what regarding their title, so erred on the side of rounding up to "professor", routinely, to save a little bit of brain power for the actual thinking about the paper.

While the etiquette for salutations in formal letters is pretty well established, email etiquette is less clear. While this question  on the English Language SE was not particularly well received, I particularly like this answer. The key part of that answer is that because of the prevalence of spam you need to establish who you are and why you are contacting the person as quickly as possible and not waste the valuable first line with a redundant salutation. If you drop the salutation (which some would say is the proper etiquette), you avoid the issue of how to address the individual.

Isn't that what the subject line is for? I delete emails based on subject line without even opening them... On the other hand, I consider the lack of any kind of adressing by an unknown person as rude (things are different in an email "conversation"). As the address line is usually followed by an empty line it is easily identified visually, so I don't consider it a waste of my time. For a student email requesting something it would add another point towards deleting...  (I'm not based in the UK, though - and maybe we're more formal in this respect over here in Germany)

The argument in the answer you link to is a bit strange. A letter just like an e-mail usually or at least often also comes with all the contact information one needs (frequently even on the same sheet not only the envelope). If there is an argument that there is significant difference between a letter and an email it ought to be based on something else

For  your answer, due to spam and if not spam then email sent in bulk, there is also the issue of knowing if an email is actually (and specifically) addressed to the recipient. In that sense a proper salutation is also relevant.

You probably have multiple aims here:

to be polite
to avoid being considered ridiculous
to get your email read

First of all, do your research: how is the person you wish to approach described on their institution's website? In extreme cases you might wish to consult a modern book of etiquette. For example, if you were addressing yourself to "Professor, the Right Honourable, the Lord X" you need to know that 'Dear Lord X' is fine and that 'My Lord' is now ridiculous.
Secondly, do not go over the top in honorific titles. (I still giggle at once being addressed as 'Your Excellency' in an unsolicited email.)
Thirdly avoid generic titles without a name, such as 'Dear Professor' or, even worse, 'Dear Doctor'. 'Dear Sir' might once have been OK, but these days it feels as if the writer has not done their research.
All of the above will probably permit you to avoid offending the recipient. But remember that, in the UK at least, a doctorate is not necessarily a requirement for a senior academic position. I have known very renowned, actually world famous, academics who never proceeded beyond an undergraduate degree and also some whose published books established a reputation before they had the chance to finish a formal doctorate so they never bothered. Some of those might have been mildly offended at being addressed as 'Doctor.'
All of this points to finding out something about the person to whom you wish to write before actually doing so.

Mr. is fine. Don't worry it's not that big a deal just because they go to a famous university. They are still just regular people. Just be super polite in the tone of the email.
Option 2 is to avoid using the term "Mr.", and just to write simply "Hi", or "Dear Sir"

also you should be aware that consultant doctors (very high ranking surgeons) are properly referred to as "Mr" in the anglo-saxon world

SURGEONS take on the title "Mr"/"Ms" etc, in UK (but not in US) because of the historical practice of barbers doing this work. PHYSICIANS do not do so, they stick with Dr.         An additional note, it is not very high rank, and not limited to consultants. It is once they pass the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons exam, which happens about 3-4 years after choosing to be a surgeon rather than a physician.

Nice, great and informative answer