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Do professors in Germany have other payment than their standard salary?
I checked the salary scale for a W3 professorship position in Germany. The annual income is about 75K Euro which seems pretty low for someone managing about 20 people. Is there any other payment beside the base salary? For example, some additional payment from DFG/EU projects or for supervising students?

@phresnel -- that seems (i) not based on facts, (ii) opinionated, (iii) unfair. At least in the applied mathematics and engineering area, basically all professors I know of work far more tha 40 hours and manage a stable full of people.

This is nonsense, at least for any science profs at good institutions. The work load is well well over 40 hours a week (often involves the weekend),  directly managing 10-20 people, managing a large budget and producing your own research also. This guy @phresnel just knows one exception and has extrapolated.

@Benjamin: You can also talk to me directly, I don't bite. I know many profs, perhaps the schools they teach on are not good? I admit my comment was overly general, but yours was way more speculative than mine.

@WolfgangBangerth: Your observation is just as biased as mine, and as a math and engineering student, you know that. Your bias stems from good universities, mine from bad ones, or at least from courses that are not too heavy for the prof. I admit my first comment was too gross. --edit: removed it, as it was indeed unfair

@phresnel -- my observation is not as a student but as a professor myself. I think I have a fairly good apprehension of the workload of my colleagues there, including all of the advising, committee work, etc that goes beyond teaching. I'm not saying that all of them work significantly more than 40 hours (or that there are no slackers who, having obtained the position, mentally retire), but the majority definitely are!

@WolfgangBangerth: I am not a student either, call me an outside observer who has some contacts to both sides of the fence. I admit my first comment was too harsh and overly general, but looking at the most nearby universities, there are only few who (seem) work their arse off. There is not much publication; it's mostly just teaching, and some did not update their material in like 25 years. My observations are primarily on business schools, though; not technical ones.

If you compare the salary of professors internationally you should also take into account the living cost. As you might know Germany has a very good  social framework. So cost for privat insurance might be much lower if compared for example to USA.

Putting a bounty on a question is a nice idea, but this one already has 14 upvotes and 1427 views. This is huge compared to other questions asked around the same time, so I don't really know whether it will get more attention through the bounty. If you are looking for more thorough answers, I'd suggest you edit your question and clarify what else you are looking for. Good luck!

... well, you did motivate me to edit my answer and give more information ;-)

@StephanKolassa Well, I have to make a decision for my entire life, and therefore, I have to know different aspects of academic carrier very well. Your answer was the most comprehensive one so far and I didn't mean to show that it has some flaws. But it would be good to hear more on this topic.

Sure, that's quite reasonable, and I'd also be interested in additional info. I see in your profile that you are physically in Germany. You may be able to discuss your question in general terms with your supervisor, too. Or even consider contacting the DHV. In any case, salaries as a professor in Germany will likely be lower than in industry, or than at R1 universities in the US. Don't stay in academia for the money!

As Dirk writes, W3 only gives the Grundgehalt (base salary), which varies by state. As a public servant, you will automatically get a few hundred EUR on top if you are married and/or have children (Familienzuschlag). Note also that in some states (Bayern, Hessen, Sachsen), your W2 or W3 Grundgehalt will currently increase in two steps after 5/12 or after 7/14 years.
You can supplement the Grundgehalt with various Zulagen. These are pay increases, not one-time bonuses. You can get Zulagen either for a set period (befristete Zulage, i.e., a temporary one), or for the rest of your working life (unbefristete Zulage).

You can negotiate so-called Leistungszulagen (a performance bonus), for instance if you manage to get lots of third-party money, publish a lot, or supervise a lot of dissertations, or similar things. You typically discuss multi-year targets with your dean and/or university president or chancellor.
Some German states (Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg) currently give you a non-trivial Grundleistungszulage without any preconditions.
You may get Funktionszulagen if you hold particular offices, like being the dean or managing a larger group, or managing a specific institution or institute.
If you get an offer from a different university, you will start haggling with both the new university and the one you are at. Both usually want you, so both will offer you a Berufungszulage (a "job offer pay increase", at the university that extended the offer), or a Bleibezulage (a "staying pay increase", at the university that tries to keep you). In contrast to industry, this kind of haggling is normal. (In industry, if you get an outside offer but stay in exchange for a higher salary, your manager will usually assume that you won't stay much longer.)

As a brand-new professor, you may be able to get a small initial Berufungszulage, but most other Zulagen will only be negotiatable after a few years.
The Deutscher Hochschulverband is a good place to look for additional information. This is basically a union for professors and almost-professors in Germany, and they offer coaching to their members. Very much recommended in your first (and subsequent) salary negotiations - they know what you can reasonably demand and what not. A membership is definitely worth the dues. They also publish the pay scales currently here, in German, although this link will likely rot over time.
In addition, you can get additional money from outside sources:

You can have consulting contracts in industry. You will usually need to clear this with your university, and your outside commitments will likely be capped at 8 hours per week or similar, but this can of course still mean serious money.
If you are a professor at a medical school or a Universitätsklinik, you will be able to see private patients and take home some of their payments, although this has been getting less lucrative in recent years, with the clinic keeping a larger cut from younger professors. You could set up your own practice on the side, but this would again be subject to limitations set by your employer.
As Wrzlprmft notes, you can get a little money out of the Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort, or VG Wort - see some information in English here. It essentially disburses monies as payments for people using your copyrighted works (they get their money from various sources). It's a very German institution. This will usually not be a lot of money, especially if you publish with a lot of coauthors. Here is what Academia.SE knows of VG Wort.
However, if you do publish a book, you will be able to keep any payments from the publisher. This will again usually not be a lot, and it's not specific to Germany.

Finally, note that a professor in Germany is a Beamter (public servant). This means that you pay far less in social security contributions, since you by definition can't lose your job (so no joblessness insurance contributions), and the state will pay your pension (so you don't need to contribute - although saving for your old age is still a good idea). The state also pays for part of your medical bills and those of your dependents (Beihilfe), and since you are a good risk (see above on not losing your job), you will get good deals on remaining health and other insurance policies. Bottom line: out of 75k EUR, you will take home a larger fraction than if you earned the same amount in industry.

The public servant aspect is quite significant. The professor as a public servant pays about 30 % in taxes and no social security, while an industry employee with the same gross salary will pay the taxes and about 20 % in social security.

@silvado Jeez! Is that 50% tax in total?!

@ArthurTarasov: 30% average tax rates are quite normal if you earn 75-80,000 EUR. 20% social security is also a good estimate. However, the German tax system is quite complicated (which country's isn't?), and you can do quite a lot to reduce your tax burden, like marry and/or have children, and there are also quite a few transfer payments and other free things, like higher education, so nobody graduates with a crushing college debt in Germany. Pros and cons, as everywhere.

http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/beamte is a good and not rotting source for the pay scales. The site is maintained by the respective unions, frequently updated and also calculates the respective Familienzuschlag.

No, in general there isn't. The catch is, that the salary you quote is the base salary and this is negotiable. The actual salary can be considerably higher.
If you are a post doc and get your very first offer, then it may happen that your offer will be the base salary. However, if you manage to build up a group of 20 people that you supervise then there will be no problem to negotiate a higher salary. Exact numbers on how high the salary can be are hard to come by (Germans tend to not talk about salary too much and professor's salaries are usually highly confidential). I don't know a an upper limit of the salary both for W3 or W2 but I know that raises can be that high that some W2 professor makes more than another W3 professor. A monthly raise of a few hundred euro is not rare and I suspect that a raise higher than a thousand euro is also not rare. Here is some article that quotes average W3 salaries between 6.300€ (about 75k€/year) and 7.500€ (about 90k€/year) (depending on the state) which indicates that there are still higher salaries. This article says even a raise higher that 5.900€/month is possible (i.e. about 100% on top).
Moreover, as a professor in Germany you may have "Nebeneinkünfte" but I can't say too much about that…

Are those "Nebeneinkünfte" ("side salaries") not exactly what the OP was asking about ("other payments than their standard salary?")?

@xLeitix I was searching for Nebeneinkünfte. The salary for each state is on the internet. But it was good to know that you can also haggle.

Not sure - I thought that the question was triggered by the apparently not that great base salary and the presence of "Zulagen" changes this considerably. (If you manage 20+ people in your group your salary will certainly be somewhere above 100k€/year.)

"I don't know a an upper limit of the salary both for W3 or W2". Even though there are rumors about exceptions, the respective laws ("Besoldungsgesetz") typically state an upper limit: The sum of all "Zulagen" must not exceed the amount of the base income, which means that at max you can double your respective W2/W3 "Grundgehalt".


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Are academic associations obliged to comply with the US government?
I'm shocked by the news that IEEE is forced to ban Huawei employees to be editors and reviewers.  It makes me wonder if, hypothetically, the US government determine to "ban" a certain group of people, which happens to include some academics, then under US law, are organizations such as AMS, APS, ACS obliged to comply and ban these people from academic services?
This question is different from Elsevier actions following US sanctions on Iran in that Elsevier is a publisher for profit.  IEEE might also count as a publisher for profit.  But the organizations that I'm asking here, namely AMS, APS and ACS, are purely professional associations.  If they are legally in the same status as Elsevier, it was not previously known to me, and possibly not obvious to others.

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

IEEE announced on June 2, 2019 that they lifted the restriction.

The organizations you mention, while not controlled by the US government, still need to obey all applicable laws and regulations; employment laws, for example.
But the government, sometimes by presidential decree, has wide latitude to set regulations related to national security. In many cases the claims don't actually need to be proven. That is the nature of "national security". The fear is that it may be too late if you have to wait for congress to act or for solid proof.
Whether this is good or not is a long standing debate as the power can be abused.

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

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What to do in dealing with scientific mistakes in an article?
Recently I've read an article in a journal and find out numerous scientific mistakes in that paper. I decide to write a note to the editorial board of the journal.
First of all, I want to know is there any credit for writing a note about scientific mistakes in an article?
Then I want to know what should be the subject of the note, errata, corrigenda, or retraction note with respect to the scientific mistakes and probably falsified, mistaken data?
It should be noted that I am fully confident of the paper's mistakes and have no desire to communicate with the author of the article.

Are you a student? What does your advisor think?

Dear Bryan, I am a M.Sc student of chemical engineering and my adviser agrees with me on mistakes. Actually he encourages me to write a note about these mistakes.

Dear Richard, I mentioned in my question that these errors are scientific one and I believe that experimental results somehow are fake because they are fitted to the wrong modeling.

I think the editor is likely to expect you to start by talking to the author directly, since everything will be much simpler if either (1) the author can convince you that there is no significant error, or (2) the author agrees that there is an error and is willing to approve a corrigendum.  The exception would be if you are actually leveling a charge of intentional scientific fraud, but you had better be extremely certain before doing that, and be willing to accept some blowback.

To your first question: the most you can expect as far as "credit" is something like a note in a corrigendum: "We would like to thank Mark Vozofskian for bringing this error to our attention."  It isn't something you would put on a CV, and it won't advance your career in any measurable way.

@markvozofskian I recommend you to use PubPeer. In PubPeer you can put comment on any paper anonymously (it has some sort of moderation so you need to comply with PubPeer commenting standards) and sent it to the authors and expect their response. If they did not answer your query or if it was not satisfactory you can bring it to the attention of EiC.

@markvozofskian Another point is that cause you are a student, keep in mind that you need to have a "neutral" language in all of your comments and queries sent to the authors or EiC even if you are 100% sure that something is wrong with their paper, otherwise they could charge you a defamation case.

An additional question here is the reputation of the journal. If it is a predatory journal you can probably ignore the issue safely enough.

I sent a version for a model that was much more succinct than the explanation in the book - the next version showed "my" method and I had an email of "thanks"... I was happy - I did not even expect that but was glad I had contributed.

Without knowing you it is somehow difficult to answer. It could be that you have found a long list of minor mistakes. Although those mistakes shouldn't be there, there is nothing worth of an action, for example.

First of all, I want to know is there any credit for writing a note
  about scientific mistakes in an article?

There is usually little credit for this kind of thing, unless it is a very important article in your field (for example published in Nature or Science), this will not help you improve your status.

Then I want to know what should be the subject of the note, errata,
  corrigenda, or retraction note

These are all different things. Errata and corrigenda are written by the authors when they find minor mistakes in their work. If you feel these are appropriate, you should contact the authors and explain your concern. A retraction of the paper can only be done by the editor and is reserved for cases of fraud and/or severe flaws that invalidate the article entirely. Unless it is with the consent of the authors, an editor will not retract an article without some serious investigation. Typically, if fraud is suspected, the authors will be asked to provide their original data which may then be evaluated by a third party. The author's host institution will also likely carry on an internal investigation to determine if fraud was committed. Retractions due to fraud severely harm the careers of the perpetrators (as they should), so it is not something that is done lightly.
The other option you have left is to write a comment on their article. Comments are not too different from regular scientific articles. The title of your communication should be 'Comment on: Title of their article'. The content should contain a very brief description of their work followed by a discussion of the flaws in their measurement procedures, interpretation etc. The authors will be invited by the editor to reply to you criticism in an article that will be published as 'Reply to: Comment on ...'. This reply will often appear in the same issue as your comment. Comments are expected to provide a scientific critique of their work and not an allegation of fraud.
Note that there is a world of difference between 'falsified' and 'mistaken' data. The former can end the career of the people who engaged in fraud and alleging someone has falsified data is a serious accusation. On the other hand 'mistaken' data are not uncommon, few studies are methodologically perfect and most will contain some flaws of varying degree of importance. The usual way mistaken studies are addressed in scientific literature is not through the use of note/corrections or comment articles but instead in the discussion section of other scientific articles. For example, if I am communicating data that are in conflict with a prior study, I may write a paragraph where I propose some reasons for the observed disagreements. Among these reasons can be a critique of the previous paper experimental methodology.

I am fully confident of the paper's mistakes and have no desire to
  communicate with the author of the article.

Being fully confident of their mistakes shouldn't stop you from communicating with them. In any of the options outlined above, the authors will be contacted and given an opportunity to defend their work anyway.

In this kind of scenario, write a letter to the editor. To quote:

In academic publishing, letters to the editor of an academic journal are usually open postpublication reviews of a paper, often critical of some aspect of the original paper. The authors of the original paper sometimes respond to these with a letter of their own. Controversial papers in mainstream journals often attract numerous letters to the editor. Good citation indexing services list the original papers together with all replies. Depending on the length of the letter and the journal's style, other types of headings may be used, such as peer commentary. There are some variations on this practice. Some journals request open commentaries as a matter of course, which are published together with the original paper, and any authors' reply, in a process called open peer commentary. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals now allows unsolicited letters to the editor (and authors' reply) to appear in the same print issue of the journal, as long as they are sent in the interval between the electronic publication of the original paper and its appearance in print.

Example of such a letter, and the authors' response to it (and other letters criticizing their original results).

I recommend you to use PubPeer to put comments on any paper and ask question about an article from authors. Authors would be notified via email if their email is already included in the system but if it is not included you can add it manually by simply finding their emails in their webpages or just find the corresponding author email in the paper. If authors did not answer your query or if their response was not satisfactory, you can go ahead and bring this matter to the attention of editor-in-chief of the journal to investigate.
Keep in mind, in all stages of your comments and queries, you need to have a neutral language even if you are 100% sure that something is wrong with their paper. Otherwise, nobody will take you serious or even worse, they could charge a defamation case against you. I would recommend to discuss it first with your adviser, and then write your question with proven claims or facts in PubPeer to show why you think something is wrong or there is a mistake in that particular paper. Then, if still your question is not answered, you can think if it worth to put some time and efforts to bring the matter to the attention of EiC and administrative body of the author's institution or not.

As an author, I would ignore PubPeer and treat it as spam. Personally, I would prefer an email or phone call instead.

@RichardErickson Any reason why you ignore the PubPeer? Maybe because it has anonymous comment option?

@AloneProgrammer I'm not Richard, but I'd ignore it because I've never heard of it.

I've never heard of PubPeer and there enough "social media" for researchers sites already (e.g., Research Gate, Publons, Mendley, ORCID, Acadmica) I do not need another one in my life.

@RichardErickson it’s not like RG, Publons, etc. It’s a journal club that it’s main feature is that anybody could ask question about any paper anonymously.

Thank you for your guidance. The authors are not in PubPeer and honestly I believe every researcher has a bias on his/her work, therefore it is difficult to convince them. I think contacting with the journal's editor in chief or other corresponding editors is the most appropriate way to solve this problem.

@markvozofskian what do you mean “authors are not in PubPeer”?! Nobody is in PubPeer cause PubPeer is not a academic social media like RG or Publons. PubPeer basically is a platform that just send your question anonymously to the authors email addresses and that’s it. If you prefer to work as your real name, ok go ahead but expect it’s probable bad impacts on your career.

@AloneProgrammer Are you affiliated with Pubpeer, do you know personally its authors, or are you in any conflict of interest position?

+1. I've used PubPeer before after receiving no response to multiple polite inquiries about an error to the first author of a paper. It's an easy to use website that can serve as a simple announcement of a potential error if one doesn't feel like publishing more formally.

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PhD adviser moving to another school - Should I follow?
I'm a doctoral candidate in Biomedical Engineering. I've finished my coursework and I'm in my first year of PhD research currently - I had 3 more yrs. to graduate. My PhD adviser has decided to move to another university (50 places lower-ranked). I will not need to be a TA after the move, and can fully concentrate on my research, a perk offered by my adviser.
Setting up the equipment all over at the new place will cost me 6 months. But since I can concentrate only on my research, I am expecting I will make up for it.
In my current university, there is no other adviser working in the same field as my current adviser. If I choose to find a new adviser at my current university, I may spend an yr. extra, learning about the new subject area. I will also have TA duties all throughout, which will ultimately push back my expected graduation date by at least 1.5 yrs.
I am unable to decide between

a more valuable peer group at the current university (better overall experience and exchange of ideas) and
earlier graduation possible at the new university.

Please share your advise and help me decide (I see the benefit of extra 1.5 yrs. towards post-doctoral experience, but I may be missing something).

I am reading other questions that aren't specific, but which received answers. May be this is not place for these things, as you pointed out. I got misled by the other questions. Anyway, thank you. Adieu Stack Exchange.
PS: If there was a specific question, I could have procured data myself and made an objective conclusion. The problem is with experience-related ones.

In my opinion, the research subject and the advisor are always more important than other factors. If it's the subject you are so interested in and the advisor gets along with you very well (this is extremely important, you would be surprised how many questions on this site are about sour relationship with the advisor), I would go with the advisor and do good research and produce excellent papers. Once you have those good research and papers, rank of the school becomes a much smaller issue.

Yes, I do share a good relationship with my adviser and I like the research area I'm pursuing (although not my primary interest). Perhaps, I'm being too picky. Thank you for that perspective.

Consider option 3, move to a third university which has a group working in your area of expertise, a high ranking, and does not require you to teach.

It would be useful if you specified your post-graduation goals (Do you want an academic job? How strong are your preferences?). Also, perhaps you could compare the record of publications and placements for your advisor vs the Professor you would switch to...

Having a good advisor and working on a subject you're interested in are the most important things during a PhD in my opinion. I've seen many fail because they were fed up or just didn't click with there advisor for whatever reason.
Also consider your long term goals. If you moved, set up a new lab and worked closely with your advisor for the next few years, could that be the beginning of a research group at the new university, which you could be a part of? Otherwise if you're looking to move out of academia afterwards, does either university have partnerships or close contact with employers that you'd be interested in?

Based on your description about your new situation I would like to suggest moving. Ihe cons of moving clearly outweights by the pros. 6 months is good enough against a 1.5 years delay.
And your risking also on losing a good adviser which far more important than a university you are in.

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My supervisor published our work without informing us. Can we retract the paper from the conference in anyway?
We (myself and my thesis partner) worked on a research problem in 2017 as part of our undergrad thesis course in our university under a supervisor. We successfully defended our thesis in our thesis defence in our university and prepared an IEEE-formatted paper as per the request of our supervisor as he told us that we would be publishing it in a flagship conference in the following year. I personally mailed the final version of the paper to our supervisor.
We followed up with him till July 2018 as the proposal had to be sent to that conference by July 2018. But our supervisor told us that he didn't want to publish it in that conference. He rather told us that we would publish it in a good journal in the immediate future. We tried to follow up with him on several occasions about that but he somehow skipped through the conversations.
At the start of this month, my partner was searching through some research work in IEEE where he saw a paper titled exactly to that of our thesis work. When he dug in, he found out that our supervisor published the paper in that same conference without our names. The conference was in October 2018 and the paper was published in IEEE Xplore in December 2018. We collected the paper and saw that it was the same paper with the same title that I emailed my supervisor (only a few words here and there have been changed, about 90-95% is the same).
He along with his name added his PhD supervisor (who is a dean of a renowned university in our country) and a Korean professor in that paper as authors. One similar case is here in which the victim was yet to confront his supervisor directly and also told later he was acknowledged at the end of the journal. But in our case, we didn't get any acknowledgment. Also when we confronted our supervisor with the matter, he told us that he forgot to include our names which sounded more like preplanned. He also told us to not raise the issue further and offered us to help to publish the paper by extending it in a journal in the future.
We have talked to the department head about this. Although he was hurt by it, he hinted that the department won't be able to help much as there were two renowned and influential professors involved. Because our department gets benefited from them in several ways.
We have worked so hard for this work for nearly one and a half years as well as spent some huge money to buy some equipment for collecting the dataset. We're totally distraught and shocked by this incident. We would like to remove that paper from that conference somehow as we've worked so hard for this.
Is it possible though? If it is then what are the procedures of retracting the paper from that IEEE conference? Or should we just accept our supervisor's offer and move on from it?
For your kind information, I have the email proof of sending the paper to my supervisor as well as our thesis book with our name in it as an acknowledgement that it is our work which was signed by our supervisor, department head, and an external professor during our undergrad defence.

If the situation is as you describe, I think your work has been stolen and there is no real way to cover that up. Legal advice, however, must come from a lawyer, not here. The department head also seems to be acting unethically.

Please see the update. @DavidKetcheson

Can the paper be removed from the conference in anyway? @Buffy

That is up to the conference. Contact the conference chair.

Do you have proof that you paid for the expensive apparatus/equipment? This may be a critical point to establish ownership, beyond purely academic authorship. If you do not aim for a future scientific career, you can aim for the big guns (retraction, etc.) if you do however wish to continue, then you need to estimate whether your supervisor is indeed saying the truth about the journal paper (perhaps not, I wouldn't trust such a person ever again!) or whether the results are so important that it is worth going for a fight in any case.

Depending on your current position, I am asking to others what would be if the omitted authors get in contact with the editor showing proof? This is a quite extreme behaviour and I have no idea. ...

@Alchimista I would expect, if Niloy and his thesis partner contacted the conference editor showing proof (as they said, they have a complete e-mail trail and a full version of the manuscript from before it was submitted by their "prof"), they would be obliged to retract the paper for the reason of severe plagiarism. Niloy and his thesis partner wrote the paper (and also did the research) and then their "advisor", by submitting it without their names, claimed he wrote it (90-95% the same) - passing his students ideas and words as his own. Slam dunk case of plagiarism.

All of that if the OP has as clear a proof as he is claiming (e-mail correspondence ending with sending a full manuscript off to their "advisor"). And following an incident like that at an IEEE conference I would not be surprised if that "influential professor" was subsequently blacklisted from IEEE conferences.

The boldface text here really isn't helping readability. It's not terrible, but it's not helpful.

Disclaimer: IANAL.
As you evidently realized yourself, your supervisor had no right to do that. It is a completely unethical kind of behaviour which breaches academic rules to a great extent.
First, you must carefully weigh your options. In particular if you and your partner are still in this department and plan to stay there doing your PhD for example, be aware that your actions might have serious consequences for the people in this department (especially the supervisor obviously, who would face disciplinary sanctions), and they might resent you for that; it could damage your chances there.
If you decide to proceed, I would suggest to contact an appropriate instance at the level of your institution (not your department, since it proved useless). I'm not sure which one is the most relevant: I would probably start with a students representative or union, otherwise ethics board or legal office. I'm assuming that they would support you and in the end force the supervisor to retract the paper.
If this doesn't work for any reason, you can raise the issue directly with the editor. IEEE is likely to take this kind of issue very seriously, they will check your evidence and probably ask the supervisor for explanations. If they are convinced the paper will be retracted. In this case the consequences are probably worse for the reputation of the supervisor, the department and the institution: this a public sanction by a renowned editor, as opposed to the official author asking themselves to retract it.


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How should I politely address an email to two professors, one who holds a PhD and one who does not?
I am planning to request an override via e-mail for a class which is taught by two professors; one of them holds a PhD, while the other hold a master's; I have never met either of them. Usually my first line would be something along the lines of:
"Hello Dr. X, Dr. Y"
However, I feel like if I say
"Hello Dr. X, Mr. Y"
it would seem a little weird. I don't want to be over the top formal, but I still want to be polite. I've thought of using "Pro. X, Prof Y" but I'm not sure. How should I address them?
My location is the U.S.

This might depend on where you are. Some countries are more formal in general than others. You might even have a problem with 'professor' in some places.

@Buffy My location is the U.S., I've just added that to the question; in general the professors at my school are not extremely formal.

If one is an assistant to the other, you could just address the one, actually. But the answers already given are fine.

I've never found it particularly rude to simply dispense with the greeting line and get right to the message. E-mails have more structure in common with memos (what with the various headings like To, From, Subject, etc) than letters.

Given that they're professors, you can just use "Prof."
Having said that, don't worry too much about salutation. I'm sure lots of people have received emails calling them "Dr." when they don't have PhDs, or "Prof" when they aren't professors. Heck, I've even seen emails calling someone "Mr." when they're actually female, or vice versa. We learn to ignore the honorific and concentrate on the email text.

In the US, it's perfectly fine to say "Hello (or dear) Professor X and Professor Y", or something like Dear Professors. Another widely-applicable option is to avoid names altogether -- my favorite is simply "Greetings."

"Greetings" in an email puts me in mind of a nice Nigerian man looking to offload some millions of dollars...

@awjlogan "Greetings, dear kind sirs and madams. I am the Prince of Azbanath, of the Kingdom of Saluqua. It is your privilege and opportunity to obtain a portion of my immense wealth. I am currently stranded in the Kingdom of Oglbard, but if you wire me £1,000,000 I can buy my passage to freedom and reward you handsomely. I await your reply with anticipation."

I simply title my emails with “Hi,” and then ask my question.

If it is an option to send them separate emails, I would do that and address both as "Professor." As someone who holds a Ph.D. and worked in academia with colleagues who have a Ph.D. and others who don't, I would say that no one would be discomforted by being addressed as "Professor" even when they don't have a doctoral degree. Since they are teaching college level, it is appropriate to address them as such regardless of their degree.
PS: I am assuming this is for US colleges. Although I think the academic etiquette practiced in some other parts of the world might be similar, I can't speak for it informedly. And you get an "A" from me for caring to ask this question :)


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Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science?
Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science?
That is, while some countries may have a higher proportion of women in science, while others have a lower proportion of women in science, if you compared the gender ratio in physics compared to the gender ratio of biology in a country, would you always see the same or similar results? Or could you see a higher proportion of women in physics compared to biology in one country, but see a higher proportion of women in biology compared to physics in another country?

Perhaps someone else can complete this: I remember having read in the Communications of the ACM that in some middle-east country, the vast majority of computer science the students are women, and that was specific to computer science). This may be a starting point for a search to a proof for a "no" answer, depending on how narrow you define the term "science".

@DCTLib Romania, if I recall correctly.

Are you looking for an answer based on supporting documentation (as opposed to answers that say "It seems to me from my observations...")? If so, please add the [tag:reference-request] tag.

Discussion about imbalance, segregation, etc. moved to chat.

Within Europe alone there are huge variations in the number of female mathematicians as documented with lots of graphs and maps here.

I find the Netherlands/Belgium difference particularly striking.

It is a misconception that women are underrepresented in science or STEM fields fields in general. The reality is that women have entered some STEM fields to the point where they are no longer underrepresented (e.g., biology) while largely forsaking other STEM fields (e.g., computer science).
Today, more women than ever major in so-called STEM fields. More than 58% of all bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in biology are being awarded to women.Within certain University biology departments, women also make up nearly half of the faculty. And within the department of behavioral and social sciences, 70% of faculty members are women :

However, women comprise only 18% of students receiving bachelor's degrees in computer science and engineering, and those figures have actually dropped over the past couple of years :

And in spite of having an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in any STEM field, women remain underrepresented as faculty members for those fields as well. Policies to attract more girls and women into subjects such as computer science, physics and engineering have largely failed.
These trends in gender representation are consistent internationally. For example, if we look at Britain, we see that women are eg. less than 20% of all engineering and computer science undergraduates, but more than 60% of all biology undergraduates and even more than 75% of all veterinarian undergraduates :

If we look at Europe as a whole, we see that 40% of the 17 million scientists and engineers in the EU are women. However, men are particularly overrepresented in manufacturing (83% of scientists and engineers in manufacturing were male), while the services sector was much more balanced (55% male and 45% female).
Further, we see that women are in the majority in all of the EU Member States among students studying for Master’s degrees. Yet, we also see that there are considerably more female than male students studying social sciences, journalism, information, business, administration or law, with women accounting for 57.6 % of all students within this field of education :

Even if we look beyond Europe and North-America, we see a very similar gender distribution across different fields :

My girlfriend and I, both living in Belgium, are a perfect reflection this pattern as well : I work as a programmer in corporate R&D and have only male colleagues, while my girlfriend teaches bio-chemistry faculty at a local university and has mostly female colleagues.
Obviously, there still remain differences in the gender gap on a per county basis. Peculiar about these differences, however, is that women are actually less likely to enter a STEM field in countries with greater gender equality :

One possible explanation for the aforementioned gender distribution is the high "geek factor" in fields like computer science, physics and engineering. Another would be gender stereotyping transmitted through our interaction with others. However, there also biological differences to consider, like the difference between men's and women's brains.
Men may simply be more driven by a biological urge to build things, whereas women may simply be more driven by a biological urge to help people. It would be foolish to underestimate the impact of sex hormones on our individual preferences when even among monkeys males prefer to play with trucks and females with dolls!

While I appreciate the data, I don’t think it is relevant to the OP’s question. They want to know if there’s always about 10% of woman in physics 15% in math, 65% in medicine, etc (numbers are made up). While you have cross-country comparisons and you have by-field breakdowns, none of those graphs do both at the same time. This is what is shown to be inconsistent in the other answer for mathematics, and I have seen similar results for Economics and Physics (though I can’t find data easily on Google).

@StellaBiderman : I disagree. All these datasets clearly indicate that (1) more women than men obtain a bachelor's degree, (2) women are overrepresented in social sciences & biosciences (>50%), (3) fairly represented in mathematics & physical sciences (up to 40%) and (3) significantly underrepresented in computer science & engineering (20% or less) throughout the West and - for most part - the world as a whole. This, both with respect to education choices & career choices, although gender gaps are greater for career choices than education choices.

@JohnSlegers Which graph shows that the % of women in biology is constant across countries? The closest I see is that the average in the EU and the average in Europe are close together, but you’d expect that even if it wasn’t particularly consistent.

@StellaBiderman :  Graph 2 : Bachelor's degrees in biosciences earned by women in the US : 58% —— Graph 3 : Bachelor's degrees in biosciences earned by women in the UK : 61% —— Sure, there are only two countries, but the those numbers are surprisingly close when considering the ocean physically and many social & economic differences culturally separating both countries. —— I would have loved to include data on degrees obtained in biosciences for other countries, but I've thusfar been unable to find such data.

I removed off-topic parts from the answer and moved all pertaining comments including comments that I consider obsolete comments to chat. Please stick to the question.

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


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Submitting a paper to a journal and then the system breaks
I've submited a paper to a journal and was able to see the peer review process of the submited paper on the system of the journal. However, after some time it looks like the system has broken! If I type the webpage of the journal or try to enter the system from where I want to see how the peer review process is going, I get the following mesage on the screen:
"Composer detected issues in your platform: Your Composer dependencies require a PHP version ">= 8.0.2"."
It's been more than a month like this. I've written an email to the editor of the journal about the issue, but I didn't get any reply.
What should I do in this case?

was this an established, reputable journal?

@Sursula I can say it didn't looked like a predatory journal. It's scope was narrow and it was registered in relevant databases.

I'm not familiar with this error message, but assuming it's not a problem on your end, then see if you can reach the journal's publisher who should be the ultimate authority to resolve technical issues like this one. One month is a long time when the error is disabling your website, they should do better.

In fact its publishers web page that shows the error. Here is it's web page: https://www.m-sciences.com (if this information can help).

@Emo The publisher might be dead then. Presumably the journal (if it's still alive) will be transferred to another publisher. Would have to wait for a response from the journal's editors to know; in the meantime probably submit elsewhere.


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How problematic is going by a preferred name while publishing with my full name?
I grew up with a nickname, and I prefer to be called as that. It is quite different from my first name. When I introduce myself I usually just use the nickname.
I plan to use my full name in publication, and I have published papers using the full name already.
My question is, how problematic is this choice? Should I try to change it? I would imagine someone not relating me to my papers/ not able to find me from the nickname.

Are the old papers in your current area or are they like REU papers?

@NoahSnyder they are reu papers, so I can actually switch name without causing much troubles.

I don't think this will be a problem. A large part of the research community will know you through your publications, and as long as the name is constant across those, you won't have a problem.
Amongst colleagues/researchers who also know you personally, this wouldn't be an issue since you can convey the dual name to them during interaction. For instance, your email signature could be something like Jay (John Doe). Similarly, if you use academic networking sites, you could either give the full name or the dual name (i.e. Jay (John Doe)).
The only case where this could potentially be a problem is, X talks about you to Y as 'Jay', and Y searches for 'Jay' (s)he may not come up with the right results. I think this is largely surmounted if you use Jay (John Doe) in written communication often enough, so that X passes that information along to Y. I have had colleagues tell me about a person, and also what name he publishes under, so that I can find him. If people hear it often enough, they make a strong association.

There are a number of mathematicians that go by nicknames. The one that springs to mind is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jaco

To be identifiable on publications you could give your name as

"John (Jay) Doe".

I've seen this several times, especially by people with Asian names working in English speaking countries where they use a different first name. (However, I do not know if these different first names are in any way official, but anyway…)
MathSciNet is able to collect your paper under a single profile (with a little help sometimes) and also a Google Scholar profile page can do the same thing.

How effective this choice is may depend on the characteristics of your name. How distinctive is your last name? If you have a very rare last name, going by two names is unlikely to confuse search results or people. Also, does your nickname start with the same initial as your full name?
Some colleagues I've known with very common last names make it a point to use the same form of their name everywhere, and create online resources (personal web page, LinkedIn, Google Scholar Profile, Orchid, etc.) that explicitly connect all their work together (especially when a journal or a citation format just uses initials + last name). (See, for instance, this question from an academic with a very common name.)
If you feel comfortable with your nickname in professional circumstances and it does not have negative connotations, I would encourage you to keep doing what you plan and set up some sort of web presence that explicitly makes the connection. Your CV should also reference your nickname, and including both in your email signature (as user153812 suggests) is a great idea.
EDIT: Given what you added about the previous papers being from an REU and being open to using your nickname professionally, you can also just opt to publish that way. It feels nice for even new colleagues to use the name I feel connected to. Your institution will not care. (Source: My institutions have not cared about my nickname. It's sometimes slightly annoying for people to look me up in the system for admin reimbursements, etc., which has my full legal name, but it's usually just a matter of writing on a form: "Nickname (Fullname) Lastname.")

On the one hand I don't think it will be a big problem either way.  On the other hand, I see no good reason to stick with your legal name and a several good reasons to go with the nickname:

The nickname is probably less common and more memorable.
The nickname will make it easier for people to connect the name on a paper with a person that they met at a conference.
As cactus_pardner points out it's likely to be more easily googled.


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How much percentage royalty do I get from Springer (as the paper's author) and how I can apply for royalty payment?
I have submitted a paper to a Springer conference and it has been published. The publisher will charge 24.95$ to anyone who would eventually download my paper and 201 copies of my research sold by Springer official site.
How much percentage royalty do I get from Springer (as the paper's author) and how I can apply for royalty payment?

I would be extremely impressed if they actually sold 201 copies of a paper for $24.95 each, it would imply your paper is truly groundbreaking.

Also, if you want royalties, you need to negotiate before your paper is published.

The others have already mentioned that you get nothing. Also I think the site shows the number of downloads, and not necessarily the number of people who purchased the chapter.

Sold or accessed? Oftentimes those who read a paper are part of a university that has paid access to entire journals through a subscription.

@Allure, do you know of any publisher/conference that will actually pay royalties on papers, under any circumstances?

Just complementing @Allure's comment. A researcher most probably has (virtual) access to a paper via a library (e.g., in a university) and the library pays the publisher to have access to a huge set of papers at once (just like people don't pay for each movie on netflix). Sometimes it is also possible to download legally and for free "pre-print" or "full" versions of a paper that are actually almost identical to the paper sold by the publisher. Not to mention sites like sci-hub, where one finds a ton of papers... So usually people don't pay for a specific paper as you implied in your question.

The fact that Springer profits from your work and you don't is yet another excellent reason to avoid commercial publishers altogether. I prefer to work with academic publishers and publications of professional societies; at least if they make money, it goes back into the discipline.

@Buffy in the sense of royalties as a percentage of revenue? No, I am not aware of any. Even for review volumes (where there is a more explicit negotiation prior to publication), the chapter authors usually do not get such royalties, although the editors usually do, and the chapter authors get other forms of remuneration (typically free books and discounts on other purchases from the publisher).

@Buffy there is this though: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63619/how-much-revenue-do-academic-authors-make-on-their-published-books/135554#comment152700_63631 One would have to ask Bob Brown for details (it's apparently not a journal/conference paper in any case, although one could arguably say it's a chapter in a conference proceedings).

@Allure, yes, but, as you note, that is a chapter in a book, not a paper or a conference proceeding. Royalties are normally paid for books and in Prof Brown's case, it may have been by invitation.

@GregMartin: The one ("professional societies") does not necessarily preclude the other ("commercial publishers"). A journal may be published by a commercial publisher on behalf of a society, which then gets paid. (Since journals are sold to libraries in packages, the precise distribution of the income is an art.) Case in point: the International Journal of Forecasting, published by Elsevier on behalf of the International Institute of Forecasters.

BTW depends on your Country of origin, as an author you might be able to get royalties from your local societies, for example in Germany, you would get member of vgwort: https://www.vgwort.de/verguetungen/auszahlungen/wissenschaftliche-publikationen.html

Sounds like something that should be asked to the publisher directly

@GregMartin not beeing paid is not limited to commercial publishers, and in fact it’s not the worst thing, it’s mich worse if you have to pay a fee for being reviewed or published.

To collect royalties from Springer, you have to write a successful book.  A paper for a conference, nothing.  Same for all publishers, big or small, for-profit or non-profit.

You get nothing: Welcome to academic publishing.

The OP won't get money. But, they get fame which is not nothing.

@scaaahu Indeed. But, the question asks about royalties.

Isn't academic publishing great?! /s

@JSLavertu Enriching

Publishers, including Springer, pay royalties on books, not on papers, and the details are worked out in a contract prior to publishing and prior to copyright transfer. Actually, for some authors, the exact copyright terms might be negotiable also. But this is only for books.

@scaaahu I like your comment, and it reminds me of a quote from "The Sound of Music"... where a promoter is discussing their plans to make a singing group famous ... "They get fame, you get money."  "It's unfair, I admit it. But someday that'll be changed. I shall get the fame too."

"You lose! Good day, sir!"

They get to keep their job, which pays money, so indirectly they get money.

@user2768 the only royalty here is the guy who gets the business class ticket and hotel paid by Springer, and that’s rarely an author.

@scaaahu Exposure is something you die of

Actually you do get visibility, cite-ability and peer review. Compared to predatory publishers who will ask you to pay a commercial publisher like springer is not so bad after all. Not to mention recognition at your local institution with potential bonus or career benefits from being published.

@eckes Yes, but the question explicitly asks about royalties.

You get absolutely nothing.
When you submitted the paper to the conference, you (very much likely) transferred the copyright of your paper to the publisher retaining just a couple of rights, but not that of being paid by the publisher.

Depending on where you are, you can get some money. Just not from the publisher. In Germany you can register with VG WORT to receive some money that is collected from libraries as well as printer/copy machine sales in exchange for it being legal to copy arbitrary copyrighted works.

As a point of reference, for a single ~30 page paper VG WORT paid about 240€ for the year 2019. This gets divided by the number of authors, whether they actually receive anything from VG WORT or not.

@Roland Really, I was thinking online only publications also count (-> METIS). Thats why they have web counters.

@Roland I mean the profit margin is close to 100%, given that there are virtually no costs involved. I don't think their absolute profit per paper is all that impressive. They just publish lots of papers.

@AndreasH. Theoretically, yes. However the publisher would need to include those counters and at least Springer does not. (Since VG WORT was sued a few years back for giving part of the money to publishers instead of authors, they pretty much have nothing to gain from doing so either.)

@Maeher The profit margins are more in the 35% range: see https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science  There is staff to pay, and investment needed to keep the technology going.  Springer doesn't invest much in the back-end and their author experience is not great.  At least Elsevier does invest in technology and their journals are run much more efficiently.  35% is still quite a good (almost predatory) margin...

Here's how academic publishing works.

You write the paper. Your peers review it for free. The journal charges people to read the paper to cover copy-editing/hosting costs, and to make a profit.
You write a paper. Your peers review it for free. The journal charges you to cover copy-editing/hosting costs, and to make a profit, then gives it away for free.

Unfortunately you're not allowed to save money by doing the copy-editing yourself, nor are you allowed to use your institution's infrastructure for hosting. You can't submit to a university-run committee to organise the peer review.
To be taken seriously you have to publish in the well-known and established journals of your field. To publish in those journals you (or the tax-payer or funder) have to contribute to the publisher's profits.
To answer your question more directly, they won't be giving any of those profits to you.
Edit: forgot to say, for anyone who can't afford to pay for scientific articles (or who wants to make a point), you can access the majority via Sci-Hub.

There are a few truly open access journals where neither you, your institution, libraries, or the readers pay for accessing journals, but they are sadly not common enough. Everyone should do all they can to support them though!

@curiousdannii How do those journals pay for operating costs?

Some (open access) journals issue vouchers to reviewers, that can be redeemed to reduce publication fees.

@gerrit from external funding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access#Diamond/platinum_OA). There's no such thing as a free lunch.

"Business Model", arXiv, currently shows their 2020 financials.  They claim 1,960,442 USD in both revenue and direct-expenses (which balance out to zero).  Apparently the costs exclude support contributed by Cornell (which they cite at 723,670 USD) and the value of volunteers' time (which they don't price).

"by doing the copy-editing yourself" - this may be field dependent, but in some fields, the author indeed does most of the copy-editing (which does not prevent publishers from charging the described costs all the same).

@gerrit External funding, but since copy-editing in papers is negligible, hosting doubly so, the cost is rather minimal.

note that scihub is not legal, but with the profit margins journals must have (and the tax-payer funding most research has) I would hesitate to say whether it is immoral or unethical to use scihub.

@TheV Some would even say that publishing in most academic journals (those that profit from free work of others) is immoral and unethical ;-)


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Should I refuse to be named as co-author of a low quality paper?
During my bachelor I did a research internship in another country for a few months and contributed to a research project which is now, a few years later, going to be published. The research is in a specific field of computer science, but the responsible professors' main interest is focused in another STEM area. So now his grad student approached me and asked if I would review the paper. I read it and I think the quality is not good. There are many writing errors, the papers to which the results are being compared  are quite old (around 6 years) and the datasets used to evaluate the algorithms are from the 90's. This is quite old in a fast growing field like computer science. The techniques which were used are correct, as far as I can judge, but not new.
I know that the professor and his grad student are no experts in this field but I now pursue my masters degree in this specific field of computer science. I recently learned about more modern approaches and I think that their methods are not worth being published in a paper. I wasn't experienced enough to notice this when I was with them in this internship. It would also be too much work for me to fix all these issues I named.
Now I wonder if it could give me, as a computer scientist, a bad reputation to  eventually  co-author a paper which (I think) is outdated and poorly written. Can I decline being named but allow them to publish it? On the other hand, if I would be named as a co-author, this would be my first publication and maybe this would count as "better than nothing", or people would acknowledge the fact that I contributed to some okay-ish research in my early bachelors. I am not sure yet if I want to pursue a career in science or in the industry.

Have you considered offering to rewrite the paper yourself to bring it up to your standards? It might be welcome if you approach it correctly.

@Buffy Good advice in general, but in this case, OP writes, "It would also be too much work for me to fix all these issues I named."

@JeffE, true, but it might not be necessary to fix everything. Just bring it up to a better standard.

@JeffE is right. So far I fixed the typos and grammatical errors which I could spot, that is what I could do

@Buffy Perhaps.  But given OP's criticisms of the content of the paper, it really sounds like bringing it up to OP's standards (which I interpret as OP's perception of what would be publishable) would require starting over from scratch.

Yes, @JeffE, but that is the OP's judgement to make.

See this related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1869/17254.

One of your jobs as an author is to fix poor writing, so you shouldn't hold that against the draft.

First, if you think the manuscript is not worth submitting even after major revisions, or in other words, if you as a referee would recommend its rejection, then the answer is clear - you shouldn't be coauthor.
However it seems that you evaluate the manuscript as ok-ish, and the main concern is that its content is somehow outdated. I would do what your old group asked you to do: review and possibly improve the paper. Do this to the maximum extent you can - given the fact that your are likely busy with other tasks and research - and then leave the main responsibility to the first author and your old group.
After all, you are still a young student / researcher. This paper could be your first entry in your publication list, and some more time and more papers have to come before you get concerned about your papers being all of the very best quality. A published paper normally cannot be too wrong, and various journals can accommodate different quality or differently tailored papers. So perhaps try to influence also the choice of where to submit, especially to avoid a non-ending revision phase.
At this stage of your career, you can only benefit from a published article. To those who read it, it will show that you actively entered the research of a group even when you were younger than now. To the rest of the community, it will be just a publication. And that is better than no publications.
The main point is how much you can improve it, and if there is space for it. As a "publish as it is" decision seems to be highly unlikely, you must be prepared to work on it further. But again, leave the responsibility to the group from which the research originated.
See it as an opportunity to publish, and not as an annoyance.
The above applies to a salvageable manuscript. For a better and definitive answer I should be a specialist in your field and evaluate the manuscript myself.
Rejection would also fix the issue. Although I always tried to avoid rejection even as coauthor, I don't think it should be your concern at this stage. Nobody will know except the referees, and even they won't blame or remember you.
edit: I want to make clear that the recipient journal should not be a predatory one, or one with such a low reputation that is not worth working to publish therein. The above answer assumed this.
Also, above I wrote " A published paper normally cannot be too wrong, and various journals...". Beside that "normally" means what should be the normality, this doesn't mean that errors and, even worse, frauds, have no room in literature. It must be seen a concern for the whole community and is not related to the OP situation. If the manuscript will be accepted, it will most likely stand as an acceptable paper, indeed. Not to say that the manuscript is in the hands of the OP. With this respect, the paper cannot be too wrong already. Otherwise there wouldn't be this thread.

Thank you @Alchimista ! You metioned a good point: the paper is not good, but okay-ish and that might be enough for now. I fixed the severe typos and grammar mistakes. We'll see if the paper gets accepted and if it does then it's at least the start of my career and I can improve on it.

"A published paper normally cannot be too wrong" -citation needed

@David Ketcheson. It is why library pay for. Yes normally a published paper cannot be too wrong. At least not to the point of not being part of the normal development of science.

@Alchimista looks at the recent controversies about errors and lack of reproducability in published papers I'm not so sure about that.

There are some recent papers about error rates in some research areas. For example, oncology.

I am aware of the the issue of lack of reproducibility and the like. But this cannot be brought into this discussion. It is a problem for the whole community and surely not for the OP. Those concerns would apply to every one of us, potentially. And to every publications list.

Being co-author on a paper is formal acknowledgement that you endorse the publication of the paper. I would not accept this if you feel there are major errors. Can you request an acknowledgement (in the acknowledgements section) so you have some formal record of your contribution to this work, but without exposing yourself to potential issues of being an author of a bad paper?

I strongly concur with this when there are "major errors". I wouldn't even want an acknowledgement in a paper I thought was actually wrong. However, the question seems to be more concerned that the paper has stylistic issues and may be somewhat out of date, not that it is actually wrong. I'm not sure this advice applies in that situation, especially for a very early career researcher.

huh, I somehow missed this answer and posted essentially the same thing, a few days later - my apologies!

On the other hand, if I would be named as a co-author, this would be my first publication and maybe this would count as "better than nothing", or people would acknowledge the fact that I contributed to some okay-ish research in my early bachelors.

In general these considerations are probably more important.  The "not-too-bad" (although you have assessed the paper as "too-bad") is better than the ideal.  Most people don't have ideal situations and need to make the best of what they have.
Potentially publication might give you something to work on further.
If you are unsure about pursuing academic work, it kind of doesn't matter.  Most of my work life a single published paper on work I did as an undergrad was helpful in interviews in industry.

Applying known stuff to applications outside of your field is of much value, especially for theoretic fields like Math, Computer Science, or Physics. For such papers its less about being on par with the latest research in the original field, but to identify problems where new methods can be applied. It is often difficult for people from applied fields to understand all the theory and to grasp the downsides or subtle problems that might prohibit the use of a method.
You helped them with this difficult task. It might not be difficult for you, but they seems to value it. Accept the paper's co-authorship and rest assured, there will be people graceful that you shared your knowledge and translated to a way they can understand.
And for the future, always look for possibilities to apply your knowledge. Others might not know about and can profit from it.

Another thing to consider: depending on the fine details of the publication in question, it may be possible for you to fix as much as you can before submission, wait for the feedback, and then make additional fixes.  I'm not suggesting that you submit a paper with errors in methodology/conclusions, but rather that reviewers may be willing to work with a paper that has a good method / conclusion, but needs to be improved for readability.
No, it's not an ideal submission; yes, it's more likely to get rejected if it's too hard to read.  But, spending your time on methods / conclusions while ignoring readability errors might be a way to move forward and take advantage of the opportunity while not devoting more time than you currently have.  In other words, can you prioritize your time and submit, knowing that it's a process, rather than thinking your initial submission will be what goes into the publication?

As you have described the situation, you have been offered inclusion as a co-author in exchange for reviewing the paper.  My feeling is that a courtesy has been extended to you, and where no obligation to do so exists.  If you feel comfortable enough in your relationship with the actual authors, voice your concerns in as diplomatic manner as possible.  You should probably be prepared for any criticisms you offer (positive or otherwise) to be ill-received.  Regardless, the paper will - in all likelihood - be submitted for publications, and with, or without you as a co-author.  That choice is solely at the discretion of the principle investigator.  Additionally, poor quality will not necessarily be a bar to publication: if 'where' it is published is a concern for you, (that is also outside of your control), perhaps you should decline to be included amongst the co-authors.

I would write them a letter saying that my name should be removed from the excellent paper, because I cannot find in it any contribution that came from me, and therefore it would be dishonest for me to obtain credit from it. In other words, hide your real motive under a generous heap of its precise opposite. If they give you assurances that it's okay, insist that you might be questioned about that paper (for instance in some future interview), which will create an uncomfortable situation for you.
The real reason (wanting to withdraw from a mediocre paper out of embarrassment) will likely create a bad feeling. It is unnecessary "collateral damage" in pursuit of the simple goal of getting your name removed.
In life, try to get things done without collateral damage, whenever possible.

I don't agree with such a method, I think that in life you should be honest, but respectful.

@TheCoocy There is an objective measure of disrespect inherent in the honest reason for withdrawing from the paper; no amount of diplomacy in wording can diminish it below that.  In life, you don't have to be honest about your personal feelings to strangers. Don't lie to your mother, of course; but some researchers you collaborated with once as an undergrad are not your mother.

@TheCoocy If you're in an elevator with someone who is fat and smells, do you remark upon these two observations? Why not, it's honest!

@Kaz No, I keep my mouth shut. Your answer seems to be saying that I should tell the person that they're remarkably slender and smell of roses, and that I'm leaving the elevator because I'm not fit to be in their presence.

@DavidRicherby I didn't intend that to be a complete analogy for the situatiion in question. Those exaggerated words would be weird and obviously cynical, but I think many people would smile and say "have a nice day" if leaving the elevator for that reason. Normally, we don't require permission to leave the elevator or have to give reasons for doing so, but should such an odd situation arise, I'd carefully consider what I say. In further consideration of your comment, perhaps there may be a way to withdraw from that paper without giving a reason.

In the world of the paper, the "smile and have a nice day" option is saying "Thanks but I don't think it would be appropriate for me to be an author" and leaving it at that. No need to be hurtfully honest ("Your paper sucks") or deceitfully praising ("Your paper is amazing -- I'm not worthy!")

@DavidRicherby A word of praise for the past collaboration, without going overboard, is a good idea. How about that it is a good memory, or was an enjoyable experience or that angle. Just some positive note.


text:
What actions can I take about an I-do-your-homework website offering academic fraud services for money?
I came across a website specific to my country (EU/Hungary) that offers to commit academic fraud. Basically, they offer to solve assignments, homework, even online tests, for money. The student sends them the assignment and the money, and he gets back the written solutions. No coaching or live discussion involved.
This website is actively advertised in sponsored posts on a Facebook page that is very popular among the student in my country - more than 50.000 followers - so I'm sure a lot of them this.  I feel like something must be done against a service offering services that are "academically illegal", even if they probably made up some half-sound legal ground.
I'm worried about the existence and widespread advertisement of this "service". I don't like that it enables unfair advantage of rich students, who can pay them for every assignment they have. Also, maybe some desperate students use their service and gets in big trouble. Even it's very existence degrades the common belief in academic integrity.
Should I take some actions, or let it go? What are the best actions I, a student, could take against this website?

This is called contract cheating.  It is an old and very well known problem.
Students cannot do anything about advertisements for contract cheating.  Since the sellers are usually unaffiliated with universities, universities cannot punish them either.
If you have evidence that someone is purchasing contract cheating services, turn that evidence in to the person responsible for academic integrity at your university.

Those services provide assistance with homework assignments, which reveals a critical flaw of such assessments: the school can't be sure that the student really did the assessment themself.
Hell, even without such online pay-to-do-my-homework services, a student could ask their parent, friend, or another classmate to do the assessment for them.
The way the school can balance this is by putting more weight on in-person examinations, where they can be sure the student is the one doing the assessment (by checking ID etc).
As a student, you can bring such issues to their attention, and if your school only does homework-type assessments, you can persuade them to also do in-person examinations.


text:
Should I resend CV if I just have an accepted paper after submitting the application?
I recently applied for several assistant professor positions. Today I was just told the paper I submitted was accepted. Also, I just had a presentation accepted by a conference.
In this case, should I contact the universities I applied for to update my CV?

What's your field? Most STEM-related searches are about to be over by now.

Most searches move slowly, so if you contact everyone with an updated CV, you may have to update them again later (and later again and again), which will really annoy some search chairs (I can attest to this, having served as chair on search committees).
Best approach? Wait until there is another reason to interact with the search committee. For instance, if you are going to talk with them on the phone, see them at a conference, or even if they call you to clarify something, then you tell them that your CV has been updated and you want to send them a new CV. If your initial CV was fairly strong.
Did you indicate that these works were under review when you first submitted your CV? A good rule of thumb - when on the job search, put the titles of papers on your CV as under review and leave off the name of the journal you submitted to in order to.
Good luck!!!!