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Difference between “notes” and “original contributions” in journals
I noticed that many, if not all, journals have two main type of papers:

A short self-contained original research article of 10 pages or less, focusing on a particular result that does not provide enough material for a full-length contribution.
Full-length original research article of more than 10 pages.

What is the actual difference between the two? What does does not provide enough material for a full-length contribution mean?
In particular, I have a paper which is (or can be easily made) 10 pages. How should I know if it qualifies as a note or an original article?
Note that in most journals there are original contributions with less pages than some papers appearing as notes.
There are few other related questions, but none really answers (as far as I have checked) these issues. I am talking about applied maths,TCS.

And don't forget the 'Letters' journals of various flavors. If you look over the past several centuries of scientific publishing, one will find quite a wide variety of formats.

It depends on journal, and many has specific editorials guidelines that distinguish the two: not only lengths, but scope or urgency, too

I think this is one of those things that "you know it when you see it".
Very roughly, the distinction in my mind is that a full paper ("original contribution") should actually advance the state of the art in a specific, intentional way.  A note is more along of the lines of "I noticed this thing, it seems interesting and I think the community might like to know about it too."  Maybe it doesn't fit neatly into a larger research program, or its implications aren't immediately clear, but you think it is worth having in the permanent literature.
As you've observed, an original contribution can be short, if you have made a significant advance that just doesn't take that much space to write.  So the distinction isn't really about length per se.  Notes do tend to be short, mostly because the author may not want to spend a lot of time writing something massive (thus distracting from their real research program), and also because the simplicity or brevity of the result may be part of its appeal.
I think the distinction becomes more clear with experience.  So if you are not sure about your paper, try showing it to someone more senior in your subfield and asking their opinion.

Thanks for the clear answer. It is indeed very complicated. For example I noticed that the review times of Notes are not necessarily short and, on average, similar to original contributions (so I guess, wha's the actual distinction, and why shoul'dn't just send it to a Letters journal?) That raises also another point: what is the status of published Notes? I mean, how should they appear on CV (clearly as Notes?) And does it make any difference?

I am not surprised that the review times would be similar.  Review times in math fields tend to be dominated by "how long until the referee gets around to it", and after that, checking a proof is checking a proof, regardless of the type of result.  Sometimes a note will use particularly novel or unusual techniques that might take the referee longer to understand.  I think the point here is just that this journal is willing to publish papers of both types (not all journals are) but they want you to tell them which kind yours is to help them evalute it more efficiently.

@PsySp: We don't really have "Letters journals" in my field so I can't speak to that, but if there is another journal that seems better suited to your paper, by all means send it there.  I've never seen people list notes separately in CVs, though often it's clear from the title ("A note on...", "A remark on...", "A new proof of...").

Thank you. Now it's even more clear. BTW, there are quite few letters in Maths: Applied Maths Letters is the one that comes immediately in my mind (although I can't immediately judge it's quality).

From what I can tell, there's no set standard (although I'm talking about this from a broader basis than just App. Maths) - it all comes down to what the editor/editorial board considers to be 'full-length worthy'.
If you're thinking of submitting it, you can always ask that it be considered as x, and the reason why you think it should be.
If you have submitted it (hence the question about 'What does...mean', then I'd suggest that they think it needs to be filled out more. I doubt you'd have got that response if they thought it wasn't good enough to be included, just that it might need to be padded out with further explanation and background.


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How to recognize/ judge whether the PI/ recruiter has selected me as post doctoral fellow?
I applied for a position doing interdisciplinary research work in my field. The PI contacted me, took my interview and told me he would contact me again for my presentation. My interview went for one hour.
After three months the PI returned and asked me to present my work on Skype. My presentation went for one hour and I answered all possible questions except for my experience with in vivo applications. I answered that being a foreign national I was not allowed to handle in vivo techniques. Finally he mentioned that he would get back to me.
I am not sure whether he selected me as post doc fellow. How can I recognize if he selected me?

@NateEldredge Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote for it?

The only other way to figure this out (until a letter arrives): is to ask the PI.

There is a very easy way to recognize when you have been selected: you will get a signed letter offering you the job.
If you haven't got one, then you haven't been selected (yet).
Everything else is irrelevant. I can understand that it's tempting to try to guess from subtle cues, but it's really a waste of time.

I have only done industry hiring, but I suspect it works the same way. At the end of the interview, I would often not know whether I was going to select that candidate. I needed to interview the remaining three people on the short list and consult with some colleagues before deciding.

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What can I do if my advisor wants me to keep working, even while I'm on medical leave for severe depression?
I'm a Master's student right now. Due to previous incidents (What can I do if a student in my lab threatens to tell lies about me, and my advisor doesn't want to fire her?), I'm clinically depressed and currently on medical leave as a result. My adviser however, still wants me to do experiments for my thesis. I have 0% energy. I don't want to wake up, and I sleep 16-18 hours per day.
He still demands results, but all I want to do is sleep. I'm seeing doctors and psychologists, and all of them agree that I should take a break. I don't feel safe at the lab anymore.
In my country, people with mental illness are incredibly stigmatized. I don't know how to deal with this whole situation, and it's causing me undue stress.
My adviser wants me to work while I'm on medical leave. Actually, I did the majority of my experiments while in that situation, but I can't take it anymore. My physician knows this, and my therapist knows too. I never took my two medical leaves fully because my adviser still wanted me to work.

Is there some kind of worker's union at your university? That sounds like the kind of cases they love to help with...

@T.Verron  No, we don't, unfortunately....

I'm sorry you're going through this.  That really sucks.  But you're not alone.  Post-secondary education is an extremely stressful time, and everyone I know (including me) has faced some form of depression in graduate school.  Your environment sounds difficult.  Is it possible to change advisors?

@PatDevlin Yes, I could change advisors, but I am going to the last year of my Masters in 2017. I don't know if there is sufficient time to develop new research.

The most important thing right now is for you to get better. Even if focusing on that would mean delaying your education for a year. If needed be bold (but polite) to your supervisor about it, but honestly, there should be nothing more important for you right now (and ever) than yourself. Get well. Also, you are not alone. Depression in academia is too common. Best wishes.

If you cannot perform the work required of you then you cannot perform it.  All that remains is how (whether) you make arrangements for that.  It may be that you can arrange for a leave of absence from your studies and research.  It may be that you can change advisors and research.  If you're not so lucky, then you might need to withdraw from the program.  The way you describe your situation, however, it sounds unlikely that you can complete your studies on your present schedule.  It would be better for all concerned -- including you -- to handle that as gracefully as possible.

Does your programme have a Director of Graduate Studies or something like that? That would be the ideal person to approach. I would approach that person or, failing that, any member of faculty you trust. Depending on where you are, your advisor may be acting illegally or at least violating university policy. Your advisor may not realise the severity of the situation.

I can just tell you that in any company in the UK, you are not allowed to work when you are on sick leave. What your advisor wants you to do is absolutely and totally inappropriate.

Let's face it: OP does not seem to have any institutional support whatsoever. So the question is: how much time would be "wasted" if OP would drop this Master's project and start one somewhere else? This needs to be counterbalanced with the threat to health, the ensuing loss of time and the time still required to complete the Masters. I am not sure that, taking into account loss of time and health, and the toxic environment, as in the present case, the balance would be so much in favour of staying.

Whatever you do, know that you're not alone.

@ÉmileLebacq building on Captain Emacs comment, do you actually think you would pass at all if things continue as they are? From the question it seems unlikely your advisor is interested in changing. a 3 or 4 year delay to heal and start over elsewhere is better than no Masters at all.

Émile, you might see if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armodafinil (or modafinil) is compatible (or even synergistic) with your current medications. This can allow you to be awake for a normal span of time. It does  not necessarily make you productive, but some activites may still be blocked and others not; e.g. you might read and study but not set up labwork. It also allows you to get some needed exercise which will be good for you and theraputic too. It can be enabling.

There is only one suitable course of action I recommend, as an advisor and a physician. Stop with anything that has a potentially detrimentally effect on your health and focus on your treatment (thus if you believe so also your MSc commitments).
Indeed, your work is likely contributing to your depressive symptoms (irrespective of the differential diagnosis between burnout and depression; e.g. Bianchi et al, Soc Psych Psych Epidemiol 2015).
Much more importantly, if you do not treat yourself now in the best possible fashion you might fail the treatment and even face substantial complications early or later, even life-threatening ones (e.g. Mann, New Engl J Med 2005).
I would definitely inform your physician that your advisor's attitude is likely a contributory factor to your condition.
Finally, notify any oversight committee at your institution, as individual or organizational issues impacting on your depressive symptoms could and probably should be addressed thoroughly (e.g. Theorell et al, BMC Public Health 2015).

My advisor wants me to work while I'm on medical leave. Actually, I did the majority of my experiments in that situation. But I can't take it anymore. My physician knows that, and my therapist knows too. I never took my two medical leaves 100% because my advisor still wanted me to work.
P.S. My advisor is a physician, ironically...

@ÉmileLebacq Even physicians make mistake, and if he is not an expert in the field, he may underestimate your condition. I would equate depression to heart failure. If your condition does not allow you for whatever reason to fulfill your commitments, then there is no medical or academic reason to force you. Anything else would be unethical and illegal, at least as far as I can tell.

He can make my life a living hell. He could treat me to cut my funding.

@ÉmileLebacq Then consider bringing this up to his supervisors or oversight committee, or the funding agency itself.

I'm obviously ignorant about legal and financial matters in your country, but why is your advisor still funding you if you're on medical leave?

Like @AlexanderWoo, I don't know the laws, but in the US, medical leave is protected by the government. Requiring work while under the care of a physician with approved medical leave is at best unethical and detrimental to an institute's reputation, and at worst grossly illegal and grounds for a lawsuit. Here, any threats your adviser would make about that would be an easy job loss for him and likely worse up to legal ramification.

@ÉmileLebacq: Here's another way of thinking about it. You can push yourself to run these experiments, to do the research instead of following your physicians' and psychologists' advice. In the process, you (1) find yourself hating the research that you used to enjoy, and quite possibly (2) find yourself even more horribly depressed, to the point where you act out of desperation and harm yourself further. Or, you recognize that mental illness is still an illness, and just as you would take care of yourself if diagnosed with cancer, so must you now.

@Anoplexian - in the US, a grad student who had an extended medical leave wouldn't be paid!  Laws requiring medical leave only require unpaid medical leave.  Chances are that the student would be required to take a leave of absence from their graduate program.  If they are lucky, they are covered by an insurance policy that provides for long term disability payments.

@AlexanderWoo True, but I didn't mention pay specifically for that reason. The bigger issue is the "working requirement" that the adviser is setting forth. Whether it's paid or unpaid, requiring any work at all would fall under some legal jurisdiction, although I can't say specifics as IANAL. He's within his rights to remove funding, but not to require work.

@ÉmileLebacq Forgive me for being a little blunt, but isn't he already making your life a living hell? =/ I only say that because I think realizing it may give you some perspective.

You are on sick leave. Take it and take it seriously.
You didn't take the last two sick leaves seriously, did work, and still remained sick. It's just as if you had a broken foot and kept walking on it and asked why on top of the first fracture not healing, now you have a stress fracture on the other foot.
So:

Do not go to school for any reason except one last time to pick up personal items. Better yet, send a friend to pick them up for you.
Set your e-mail auto-responder to "Émile is currently on leave and will return on xx/xx/xx and is not answering e-mail. Questions regarding the xxx lab should be referred to xxx@yyy.ac.xx."
Your telephone answering machine or voice mail should have a similar message.
Do not check your e-mail or voice mail. You will tempt you to break your isolation for just "one last emergency" - but it will quickly become a habit. They can fight their own fires and find their own copy of that datasheet you tucked away.

Go to what we Americans joking refer to as an "undisclosed location" (it can be your apartment, but it can also be out of town/country) and treat your illness seriously. Again: don't pick up the phone or e-mail. Set up a separate e-mail address or skype just for your close friends and family. Work on healing.

+1 specially for the analogy. In fact I'd go even further and say that it's as if OP has a broken leg and keeps walking on it as he undergoes daily training as a professional soccer player or something.

I am not an expert of any description, but I have seen situations like this before, especially in academia. If your situation is like the ones I've seen, the following advice is apposite. Of course, it may not be, so take it for what it is.
It sounds like you are suffering from a burnout, or something very similar. A burnout often happens when the patient feels trapped in his work environment. Something is convincing the patient that there is "no way out" but to keep working. In your case, you feel that if you don't work, you will lose your funding, lose your master's, and lose your career. It's all or nothing and there's no escape.
The first thing to realise is that there is always a way out. If you continue down this path it can kill you (that's not an exaggeration). It's certainly not going to get better. That's the choice: get your master's later with a different supervisor, or continue to destroy yourself until you end up in the hospital. It feels like there's no way out but there is.
The important thing, and most difficult thing now is to control how much you deal with your professor. He is a major factor in your illness, and you need to drastically reduce the amount of interaction with him. Tell in no uncertain terms that you are on sick leave, that you will not be checking your email more than once a week, and you will not meet him face to face for the foreseeable future.
He may not believe in mental illness (which really sucks for you and you have my sympathy), but that just means you need to assert yourself more. Of course, that's difficult and that's a big source of your problem, but it's the only way you'll get healthy again. Your therapy is going to require plenty of energy, and if you spend it all on the interactions with your boss, you won't have any left.
Use your sick leave to get better, not to worry about the future. There is a time to start thinking about reconstructing your professional life, and it's several months from now. You don't have the energy yet.

Reading the circumstances leading to the OP taking medical leave, it seems more than burnout.

Immediately break contact with your advisor.
Normally I would advise you how to defend yourself from the demands of your advisor, but you are already telling us that you are sleeping too much. It confirms what you are already knowing: You have no power to defend yourself.

Draw the cable from your phone.
Remove the battery of your mobile.
Do not use e-mail. If necessary, forward the advisor’s mail to another address automatically.
The best thing you could have would be stationary therapy.
I do not know how bad the situation in your country is, but if you can't have stationary, ask a friend if you can stay a time apart from home. Or a hotel. Or your family. Anything where you cannot be reached. The doctor/friend/family is your shield; instruct them to document any contact attempt, but  they will not tell him anything about you.

Continue therapy and recover yourself. If you are ready again, you could read the other answers how to handle your advisor.

Your advisor is not the only advisor in the world. Your school is not the only school in the world either.
Also, people, and any other living being, must do two things: Excrete and die. Nothing more. There is nothing that binds you to yor lab and your advisor; only you.
Sometimes the best way is to burn all bridges to ashes and move on. Your comments on your advisor and your labmates suggest me that they are totally worth cutting off.
Ask the faculty office for 1 year pause because of health issues. If you are in EU, look for Erasmus applications and ask if you can defend diploma thesis there. You can also discontinue your studies and apply at different university. You exams may be accepted there, so you will study there for a year (new thesis, some exams the don't accept). Don't stick only to your homeland, you can build a fortune in different country...
If you have some spare funds, travel for a year or two; you can also try some jobs...

One can leave without having to "burn all bridges to ashes".  That's rarely good advice.

@MarkRogers If the workplace is healthy, it is bad advice. But when one is subject to a bully; thick solid line behind is the way to have healthy relationships in future. Key words are Sometimes and Can, not Always and shall.

@MarkRogers Well, if we follow the whole story of the OP, this was a nuclear incident. The bridges are radioactive. You can still cross them, but it is not a good idea. Really, this group sounds toxic and needs to be left as soon as possible.

The previous answers suggest you complete your medical leave. This is of course right. But how to remove the burden of your advisor not understanding what a medical leave is?
Even though you don't have a union, there's probably a department director, a director of the program, any faculty member in your institution that stand above (in organization) than your advisor. You could refer to them and ask for advice and help.
Many institutions also have some kind of person you can refer to if you have problems: an ombudsman or a department dedicated to helping students. Seek advice from any of those.

Émile, I was depressed in graduate school, and I truly feel for you. It really is your life. Whatever you do, remember that.
I'm glad that you have a therapist and a physician. Talking things through with someone helps. Perhaps you could talk with your therapist about the consequences of different ways of handling the situation with your advisor.
I admire you for taking care of yourself. Your advisor may respond positively or negatively to what you do, but keep a focus on the big picture - health, happiness, career, family.
I practice yoga, and I've learned that I don't need to push my body past the threshold of pain. I like going further with my poses, so when I get to the threshold, I stop, and think, "Someday I will go further, but today I have gone far enough."
Take care.

This should be a comment and not an answer.

Thanks for the feedback, Chris. Ordinarily, I would make it a comment, but in this, I actually consider it an answer. In my opinion, Émile would benefit most from me sharing my experience and giving a few reminders. Ultimately, talking things through with a support network more intimately aware of the situation is probably the best course, but I hope that our words support him.
I will honor whatever the moderators want to do.

Speak neurobiology to people who don't believe in the mind.
First off, recognize for your own sake that this is a neurobiological problem. That's kind of trivial, the mind appears to be some sort of neurobiological phenomenon, and this is some big systematic problem with your mind hence your neurobiology. Your advisor does not seem to recognize it as such and thinks it is "just a mental thing", it's just some small issue of tastes or preferences and you're being a prima donna by making a big stink about it.
But you can speak to such a person in their language. It is not hard to give an explanation that will give scientifically-minded people a feeling of the importance. Here's a try at one:

We all have this stress hormone called cortisol in our brains that, when we get a dose of it, it makes our stomach churn and the world seems more silent and your eyes get more open in a sudden panic. I happen to have had a lot of exposure to it, and my brain is now doing something like an allergic reaction, where when it sees something mildly stressful it gives me an unbelievably huge dose of it. My doctors say that I need to get away from situations that are causing me stress so that the levels can go down so that hopefully my body stops having this stupid reaction. Because the lab causes these minor stresses that seem like nothing to you but explode in my brain, I cannot come into the lab for the rest of my leave-of-absence. I can of course come in after that but this is a real problem that requires my rest and attention, just like how you don't walk on a broken leg.

I'm not even saying that this is your problem; I'm just saying that if you rephrase it in those sorts of objective terms rather than "I am really sad all the time and I have no energy," people who normally would say "suck it up and get back working!" will instead say "oh, that totally makes sense, I'll see you in a few months."
Tips on resolving conflict better.
Now, one thing that makes depression worse is that people don't really understand how to talk to each other about situations of conflict. I will summarize quickly a conflict-mediation course and say: you cannot change how your advisor talks to you, but you can change how you talk to your advisor. You can make certain choices which will make him feel subconsciously less threatened and more likely to open up, and once he is open to that relationship this will at least allow him to hear your needs and hopefully work together with you to find a solution that meets everyone's needs together. You may not be able to do this with people with certain "personality disorders" like psychopaths and shameless narcissists, but for the average person you can. The first two take a little more explanation, the last two pieces of advice are pretty straightforward:

Take note of his value-judgments about the situation like "this is awful, how am I supposed to run my lab if you're off being lazy and sleeping all day", so you notice that he tried to express value-judgments like "awful" and "lazy". Most people quietly absorb that negativity and lash out back with other bad feelings: but you can also take a step back, "he is no world authority on awfulness or laziness, so I'm just going to observe that that's what he said but not think that it's really the truth, or even what he really feels." Observe it more neutrally and then it will "get to you" less.
Repeat what you've heard and try to ask him about what's making him feel those ways, getting him to focus on real causes. Now this takes some work because if you ask someone "why do you feel I'm being lazy?" they'll say something like "because you're doing lazy things!" and get trapped in a circular reference. One key is to ask "what does he have at stake in things?" and more generally "what fundamental human needs that everyone has, does he have, which are being threatened by these events?". So it's better to ask something like "are you saying that you're worried about laziness because  you want to keep seeing progress on this other student's work, and you're worried that it will get slower and lead to slower publications if I can't help out?" or something specific like that. And if the answer is "no," then hopefully they follow it up with "it's more like, I have to meet this or that deadline otherwise the grant people start asking what's been going on and I don't have anything to tell them" and you can maybe make progress to what's really bothering them. (To the extent that value-judgments bug us, they either impinge on our desire for a good reputation or else only our own value-judgments bug us. If someone else says "I hate you" you either respond "what's wrong with me?" or "what's wrong with him?!").
You can try to give the other person's needs and wants a thorough hearing in this way before you try to raise your own, "here's what's at stake for me, how do we pursue a better course of action together?". Most couples will have an argument like "He never listens to me." "Of course I listen to you, I always listen to you." "See! You're doing it right now!" -- you can sidestep all of this stuff by instead focusing on that need-to-feel-heard.
Before you say something, try to see whether your language implies that something they did was intrinsically, morally wrong; people usually get very adversarial when they get accused of wrongdoing, which kills the prospects of negotiating a better outcome for the both of you. Instead of offering your own value-judgments, try to offer neutral observations. Don't say "you obviously hate me" or even "you're yelling at me" but "I don't know if it's intentional or not but I've noticed your voice getting a bit louder." Because the follow-up to "you hate me" is "I hate you" and the follow-up to "you're yelling at me" is "stop yelling!" but the follow up to "a bit louder" is "I'd feel more comfortable at this volume" which opens a sort of common communication channel. Neutral observations give the other person the room to wriggle out of the blame that's in their own psyche, and normal people will respond to that room by giving you more room.

Talk to the right person
At both the European and American universities I've studied at, you shouldn't be talking directly to your professor about this issue. The right person to talk to is probably someone who coordinates students' successful graduations from the Master's program. This person usually has to look through every Master's student's transcripts and say, "do they have all the required courses" and then look at their internship write-up and say "did they do a plausible bit of work at that internship?" and then eventually they rubber-stamp the thing and send it on.
Even if they don't know directly how to resolve the issue, they probably know a better person to talk to about the issue. The issue from their perspective is, there is an obstacle preventing you from completing your Master's in a timely fashion. This could be lab assistants who do not work safely in the lab or who threaten to hurt you; but it could also be professors who try to get you to work when you need to focus your attention on getting well. They will give you information on how much can be transferred to a different lab with a different professor, if that's the issue. Or they will tell you, "hey, he can't actually do that and here is the ombudsman that you need to file a report with" or so.

Have your treating physician and therapist come up with a treatment plan?  Does the treatment plan specify a target date by which you will be ready to go back part time?
I do understand that when a person is in the depths of a clinical depression, the person may experience a strong and extraordinary need to sleep.  However, I am not sure that just crawling into a cave indefinitely is a true solution.  Thus, I'm not sure that getting your advisor off your back is really going to solve anything.
People are very good at crawling into caves and ignoring various demands family, work, and society put on them, when things are very, very bad.  I trust you will do that if things get that bad.  I hope they don't.  Broken bones, assuming they are set correctly, mend by themselves over time.  Depression doesn't necessarily go away by itself by just sleeping it off.
I hope you can work out a workable part-time schedule that allows you to make some progress while you are in treatment.
However, if you really want a clean break, short of withdrawing for good from the program, I suggest you work with your university administration to arrange a formal leave of absence for a specified time period, such as one semester.  This shouldn't be too hard to arrange, with appropriate documentation from your doctor.  This would mean withdrawing from all your current classes, and not registering for classes for next semester.
If your institution publishes its policies online, see what they have to say about "leave of absence."  Here's an example from a university in the U.S.: http://bulletin.printer.yale.edu/htmlfiles/grad/policies-and-regulations.html#leaves_of_absence

The OP already did arrange a medical leave of absence. The issue is that the advisor asks the OP to do experiments even while on leave.

@ff524 - "Medical leave" and a formal "leave of absence" are not necessarily the same thing.  The former could be for two weeks.  The latter could be for a semester.

"Medical leave" is a short form of "medical leave of absence".

@ff524 - I've seen doctor's notes requesting the patient be excused.  That could be "medical leave".  I'm suggesting something longer term and more formal.  In a "leave of absence," the person would not even be enrolled during the specified period.  It's different, at least in the U.S.

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How to deal with lab meetings with a difficult advisor while being depressed?
This is the third installment of the series (click here for part two: What can I do if my advisor wants me to keep working, even while I'm on medical leave for severe depression?)
I'll try to make it short: I will have a lab meeting with my advisor and my colleagues in a couple weeks to show my preliminary results. However, I was on sick leave for a long time and I didn't do half of the work that I should have done (I have little data). My advisor is known to say "mean things" when we don't fulfill his expectations at those meetings.
I think I'm going to be humiliated in front of the entire lab. I don't want to make excuses about my poorly made work, but I was sick and I am still very very sick. I thought about changing advisors because of the previous incidents, but I didn't have time for that. Sometimes I feel I've lost the will to live.
EDIT
If my advisor starts being rude and agressive towards me at the lab meeting, how should I respond?

I think it's been well-established that your advisor thinks poorly of your sick leave -- so if he's saying mean things, there's not much you can do. However, humiliation implies that other students will be saying mean things as well (laughing at you, making snide remarks, etc.). What makes you think that the other students in your lab will be doing this too?

@tonysdg I think they won't say anything (they will be quiet the entire time, that for sure). My advisor will do the job.

What about after the meeting? Are they going to head back to the lab saying "Haha, look at Émile?" Or are they going to be saying, "wow, our advisor is a jerk, Émile's been having a tough time and he just stomped all over him?" If the first option is the likely one, then find a new advisor and a new group, because the one you're in is not supportive. But if the second option is more likely, then remember that you have nothing to be humiliated over. You're fighting a real illness -- no different than cancer/lupus/what-have-you -- and you're doing the best you can.

Above all else, you said that Sometimes I feel I've lost the will to live. Émile, this should be your first, last, and only priority right now. Please, please, please, before you take any self-harmful action, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (if you're in the U.S., or your country's equivalent). You are not alone, and no degree is worth your life.

Émile, I'm sorry you're not feeling well.  Have you and your health or mental health provider drawn up a treatment plan, as I suggested in your referenced question?  Have you spoken with your department administration to arrange to take some time off without duties, for example a semester leave of absence?  I can't come up with helpful advice without some response regarding my previous two specific suggestions. // You may want to use a different username here.

Is this for a PhD program? Are you even reasonably paid?

I was on sick leave for a long time and I didn't do half of the work that I should have done — The only thing you should have done during your sick leave is to focus on your health.  That's what "sick leave" means. — If my advisor starts being rude and aggressive towards me at the lab meeting, how should I respond? — Gather your things and walk out.

It appears, at the very least, that you (and other colleagues) may be on the receiving end of what's known as "Workplace Bullying". You aren't alone. I've been the victim of it many times. You can easily perform a Google search on that term to get much more information that may benefit you and others. I'm sorry you are dealing with that if you are. Keep seeking help for your depression. I've been dealing with it myself. It's no picnic. You aren't alone.

I have reviewed more than 700 re-open requests. This is one of the toughest one for me to decide. I have read the OP's other questions and this question more than a few times. I let it sit there overnight (I live in Asian Pacific). Finally I decided to vote to "Leave Closed" because I don't see anyone can have useful advices besides the OP's doctors and therapists. I believe only professionals can help the OP. So, please see them as soon as possible. Good luck!


text:
I wrote a major report and our client put it online. How to present it in a CV?
Last year I spend a few months working on a 100-page design report for a client. I was the primary writer, and it was reviewed by my supervisor and then signed off by HIS supervisor. According to them, the report is a major technical publication, but the "publication" section entails the client putting it out on their webpage as a PDF.
From the perspective of academia looking through a CV, is such a report respectable? How would I cite it?

Can you call it a white paper?

I would suggest calling that document technical report and list it in the corresponding section of your CV (whatever the name of that section is).

It sounds eminently sensible to put that into your CV to me: it shows you can write articles for a technical audience, and get the articles past some kind of review process, which in some sense is a researcher's job.
There's no law on how to express it, it depends how the rest of your CV is arranged. I might adjust your "Presentations" header to be "Selected presentations and reports", and then right at the top,

I was the leading author on 100-page blah blah report for a commercially vital client of $xyz billion dollar turnover company; report available at www.xyz.com/


text:
What is the Measure of an "Incomplete" Undergraduate Thesis?
My undergraduate thesis was not what I would consider a complete product. I did due diligence in the background and theory of the topic, but while I have attained results, my output of validated analysis methods and observed trends was notably missing the data that motivated this work. It wasn't done. On the other hand, it was due.
I received a general attitude from the chair of my department, that this is OK. My chair's thoughts could be summed up as "it's not a Master's or PhD thesis". This would be a public document with my name on it, and I wasn't fully happy, but my institution seemed to be.
What are your thoughts on the expectations of an undergraduate thesis, and what you feel is an acceptable product from undergraduates? Does this significantly differ from a PhD or M.S. thesis in factors other than depth of work?

Honestly, my expectations for undergraduate theses are very limited.  Any well-written discussion that demonstrates significant understanding of the research area is probably satisfactory.  A doctoral dissertation is supposed to demonstrate significant research skill and the ability to perform cutting-edge research.  A master's thesis is supposed to demonstrate the ability to perform some useful research in the subject area.  An undergraduate thesis is supposed to demonstrate that a student knows something worth knowing about a topic, and original results are not generally a requirement.
In a way, it is good that you are unhappy with your undergraduate honors thesis.  That demonstrates that you know what you have actually accomplished and also clearly understand the weaknesses of your work.  It may be unfortunate that you have not had enough time to complete all the work you would have liked to complete, but if you continue along an academic career path, you will get ample opportunities to pursue more complete research projects.
(As a personal note, I should add that as I am writing this comment, I really ought to be providing comments on the thesis draft that I received the other day from my own honors college student.  This is a really good student, and he has already appeared as an author on a paper in a top journal, based on his work over the past year.  On the other hand, his written thesis is lacking in both contextualization and descriptive detail.  To bring his work up to the level where I would like it to be would be a significant undertaking, and it is probably not going to get to that level in the limited time we have.  To some extent, that leaves me disappointed, but I do not want to lose track of the fact that this is a really first-rate student, and what he has produced---imperfect as it is---is quite remarkable for an twenty-one-year-old undergraduate.)


text:
verifiable research statement
UPDATE:
So, am I to understand there is no such thing as a "verified research statement" besides an actual "recommendation" ? I already have a sense of the department(s) and professor's in the target phd proram know me from some elementary classes (but not that familiar with my academic background/research etc...)
ORIGINAL QUESTION:
I am planning on applying to graduate school (phd). However, before that I plan on talking with relevant professors at these schools, I would like to take a portfolio if research work I have done already. So, can I goto my current/previous professor to write/sign my research statement to PROVE/VALIDATE the contents of the research  which I did under them. Although course description/syllabus will have general statements about research, specifics can only come from the professor. I do not want to wait till recommendations for application to mention my research experience.  Questions are:

Is this the norm ?
If not, what is the alternative way?

So, am I to understand there is no such thing as a "verified research statement" besides an actual "recommendation" ? I already have a sense of the department(s) and professor's in the target phd program know me from some elementary classes (but not that familiar with my academic background/research etc...)

Not really, if you did a senior thesis and if there is a signed cover page, then I suppose you could include that with your application portfolio. But really, if you said you worked with Prof. X on project B, then if there is any doubt, we'll call up Prof. X and ask her.

If you're just going to talk to professors ahead of the application, you don't need to bring a portfolio and certainly don't need to bring letters. That's just overkill.
Just come prepared to talk about your work. If you have any publications that came out of it, you could bring those. Or even a brief summary sheet.
Verification will come later when the letters of reference come in with your entire application package.
Use your early visits to get a sense of the departments and the faculty who might be enthusiastic about your project and possibly serve as a PI. You'll impress them most by being enthusiastic about your work, being able to articulate its importance without having to fumble through your briefcase for external validation, and being able to express great interest in working in that particular discipline with that particular department and PI.

Thanks a lot Karen. What is PI ? Secondly, do some departments have something where you can do "free" research without them/you committing to  PhD and if it worksout, we can start at some later stage (next semester/year). Obviously,  the professor has to agree it too...

In case you don't have recommendation letters at hand already, then some the items that seem to be helpful would be like:

mentioning any published research (conference papers, journal papers, etc.)
Research projects that are already finished and the professor can check out the results and outcome of the research him/herself.

However, note that a recommendation letter from your previous professor would be valuable.

Can a professor give you a recommendation letter in hand i.e. not the one they submit when you apply but something  which sums up your research etc.. ?

You can your professor for such a letter and let him/her know that all you need is a list of research areas covered under his/her supervision.


text:
How to diagnose problems in a paper rejected in pre-review?
Two weeks after sending my manuscript to a journal, it was rejected in the pre-review stage and hence, there were no comments from reviewers about problems with the paper.

Can poor scientific writing be the reason for this fast rejection?
What do editors do in the pre-review stage?
How can I diagnose problems with a rejected paper?

Thank you for submitting your article to AIDS.
Unfortunately, your paper did not receive a high enough priority
  rating, and the Editors have decided that it should not be accepted
  for publication in AIDS.
Decisions regarding acceptance of papers in AIDS are made in reference
  to the Editors pre-review and also in relation to the standard of
  other papers submitted. Our rejection rate is more than 70% and to
  save time the Editors of the Journal collectively evaluate submissions
  and consider whether a panel of other reviewers should review the
  article by determining if it would be of high enough interest to be
  selected for publication. On this occasion the Editors assessed your
  article without asking for formal reviews. There are therefore no
  reviewers' comments.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your work. We
  regret that we cannot publish your paper at this time, but we hope
  that you will consider submitting future papers to AIDS.

The pre-review stage is generally a very quick assessment of the manuscript in which editors go through it to check primarily whether the article matches the scope of the journal, the level of novelty of the study, and how interesting it would be to the target audience. For a journal that has a 70 percent rejection rate, I don't think they would give enough time to a paper at the pre-review stage to reject it on the basis of the writing style, unless the style is really very bad. They would probably just read the cover letter, abstract, and results and discussion section carefully and skim through the rest of the paper.
I don't think there is any way to learn more about the reasons for rejection from the journal. However, don't get upset or think that the quality of your paper is not good. Since this journal has such a high rejection rate, it is natural that only the very best or the most path breaking studies will find their way to this journal. This journal might not consider your study novel enough or interesting enough, but there are many other journals that will find it interesting. At this stage, there isn't much that you can do to improve your paper, as you haven't received any reviewer comments. You will have to just submit it to the next journal and hope that the paper goes through peer review.

Going by what was written in the letter, the editors did not consider your paper sufficiently relevant for the journal from a quick assessment. In this case they are unlikely to accept a revised version of your paper (unless you add research that increases the paper’s relevance). The only hint at how your paper can be improved is that you might better highlight its relevance, in particular in abstract and conclusions – which were likely the only thing the editors read and based their rejection on. Except for this, nothing needs to be wrong with your paper (of course, it may be, but only peer review will tell). I once had a paper rejected for a similar reason, which was later accepted by another similarly ranking journal with minor changes.
However, some editors put little effort into telling you what’s wrong when desk-rejecting, resorting to some canned text. I once had a paper desk-rejected with a comment that it failed to meet the criteria of “high quality, scientific interest, and being an important contribution to the literature” and when asking which of these criteria it failed, I was told that the editors did not consider the paper to be in the journal’s scope. Thus, if you politely ask whether they could give you any hint as to what’s wrong with your paper (without disputing the decision), they might give you more to work with.

How can I diagnose problems with a rejected paper?

The best way is to have a it “privately peer-reviewed” by a colleague. If you have doubts of the quality of your scientific writing, you should choose somebody who is more experienced in this matter. If your doubts are about language quality, the obvious choice would be colleague with good English skills (but this alone helps little, if they are not knowledgeable on your subject). If those are not available, try to find somebody with a different native language.


text:
Do I have the legal right to demand information on plagiarism of my work from another university?
A student of a German institute has translated my Russian thesis word by word to English and submitted it as her own work in 2014. I informed the university providing them with my work in Russian and presentations of the work I made in 2013.
Upon receiving my email, university examinations first asked for a legal translation of my work. To which I replied that my work was written in Russian and that is a reason why it was stolen – for translation – and also that the legal translation of even one page would cost a lot. And since I was the victim in this case, I suggested that their university is responsible for preventing the acceptance of plagiarised works and has to either translate my work or ask one a professor who speaks Russian to confirm the match. Also, I suggested them to look at numerous tables with hundreds of numbers and match them (providing pages).
Two months have passed since then, and I still haven’t received any update. I called the examination office, and the woman re-directed me to her colleague, who then told me that:

Me not being a student of that university, I have no right for any information.
If there was any plagiarism, their system would recognise it.
I should ask the student who I claim has stolen my work on any information.

Yet the problem is:

Their European plagiarism system has no access to the database of university in Russia, and moreover my thesis is in Russian, while she submitted translated English version. So plagiarism is untraceable by their system. Which they apparently ignore.
Asking me to talk to the person committing the plagiarism, who in the first place lied to me when stealing my work, and declined my request for her to come forward and recall work. It is the same as police would tell the assault victim to go and talk to the criminal.

Is there any legal way for me to get the answer on the plagiarism case from this university? Shouldn’t the university be checking the translation of my thesis rather than requesting me to make an official translation? After all it’s their job to prevent plagiarism! And given their system has holes – I did part of the job for them already – identifying that the work is plagiarism and its up for them to check.
Yet they completely brush me off saying I am not involved and have no rights.

"If there was any plagiarism, their system would recognise it." What.

Didn't the Russians abolish copyright??

If this is a matter related to a PhD thesis rather than a master's thesis, you need to contact the Promotionsbüro of the faculty where the thesis was submitted, rather than the examination committee (or office).

@BenCrowell Plagiarism and copyright violation is indeed not the same. But there certainly is overlap between the two. I would expect most cases of plagiarism to also be copyright violations. And the university might even be violating copyright laws if they are involved in producing copies of the thesis.

To see the bright side, you do now have an english translation of your work ;)

So are you going to let the world know about what this shitty school is or are you gonna let people continue to be associated with such scummy behavior?

If all else fails, threaten with publicity.

If this is indeed true and the actions were as egregious as stated by the OP, I think I can speak for many of us when I say, go take this person down.

The typical employee from administration is probably just not able to cope with an incident like this, reluctant about the extra work and hassle, and not yet sensitized for the severity and implications of plagiarism on the institutions reputation. I think it is all about contacting the "right" people, that is, the professor in charge for study/thesis cases!  Has your work been handed in as a Master's or as a PhD thesis at the German university? (Both are handled very differently at German institutions, so this is the first thing we need to know to point you to the right search terms.)

Requests for legal advice are generally off-topic for this site.  We're not lawyers, and can't give legal advice.  If you need legal advice... see a lawyer.

While it seems you have better answers than this, I do want to point out that you would probably be able to get by without a full translation if you were copied so completely. Strategically chosen paragraphs of both high and low importance would establish he's probably copied the whole thing.

Ask a german lawyer what it costs to sue. If you win (and you will) usually the other party has to pay your costs!

@Josef "has to" != "will". i.e. they might "have to" pay, but what if they, well, just won't? (asking it is still a nice advice, though)

@Lohoris "What if the losing party does not honor a verdict in a civil case?" That's like saying "sure I can sue him for smashing my windows, but what if he doesn't pay up after I win?" Systems of law have mechanisms to enforce verdicts.

@Lohoris if they don't pay, everything above the winimum needed for living can be taken from them until the dept is paid. If a court verdict gives you the right to get some amount of money from someone, the only way you can't get it is if the person you would get it from doesn't have any. THe chance that someone with a university education will live without any money for 30 years just so he doesn't have to pay, is slim.

While shaming the perp is discouraged, is there any chance you could link to your own allegedly plagiarized work?

In my opinion, what seems to have gone wrong is that the examination office employees do not have an interest in pursuing this issue. After all, the student having handed in your thesis may sue the university if the thesis gets rejected. After the degree has already been awarded to the student, it is quite difficult to retract the degree. This is probably why they asked for an official translation. By the way, the examination office does not rate or examine anything - they are concerned with the administrative processes of examinations, and are thus probably unable to deal with this issue correctly. They might have felt that they need to deal with this issue, though, which is why they asked you to provide an official translation. As you wrote, you shouldn't be expected to pay for this.
As a suggestion, you may want to consider contacting researchers at the university directly. Point of contact number one should probably be the advisor of plagiarizing student. Other points of contact may be the secondary examiner, or the dean of studies. Provide them with bibliographical information about your thesis and a PDF of your thesis. At larger universities, there may probably be Russian PhD students that they can ask for a first look. In the east of Germany, it is not entirely uncommon that older professors can read Russian themselves. Once they have some indication that your accusation may be correct, they are likely to arrange for a closer check.

German universities have been prominently revoking a lot of degrees in recent years and have much more to lose by not doing so. Also, German examination offices do much more than collecting data but handle almost all administrative issues regarding examinations. If I presented some reasonable evidence or even a strong claim of plagiarism to my (German) department’s examination office, some responsible professors would very likely become aware of this within the day.

@Wrzlprmft I think that depends on the University - at some universities, they are very far away in the hierarchy and seldomly work with any professors directly. At others, the examination office can actually be part of the department and be in close contact with the dean (of studies). At least the OP had no luck with getting the request elevated on its own. I'll adapt the wording of the answer regarding the administrative questions, though.

In another note, the advisors responsible for the thesis are actually among the few persons at the university having a good motivation to have this thesis not revoked, as they are the ones who are actually (to some extent) responsible for detecting plagiarism and, if the asker’s account is correct, spectacularly failed to do so. Thus, I would not contact them.

@Wrzlprmft - Maybe. But it may also be the other way around. The advisor may actually want to pursue this before anyone else in the University does, as this gives her a bit of control of the process (and hence allows her to deflect against damage as well as possible), by, for example, being the point of contact for the examination committee ("Prüfungsausschuss"). The only way to reasonably detect this kind of plagiarism is when the Russian thesis is actually known to her, which provides a sufficient line of defense against most "attackers".

+1 I would be extremely pissed if this were to happen to me (of course). I would write a detailed email, provide as much evidence as possible (I agree with OP not to pay for translation), and then send it to the thesis advisor, the department chair, the graduate chair of the department, as well as the dean of the school. This will escalate the issue...but it will escalate the issue. It will have everyone's attention while leaving a written trail. And it puts everyone in check so it will be impossible for the advisor to cover up unless the entire university is in on it.

@DCTLib: Of course the supervisors would like control of this process, but I strongly doubt that they will use it responsibly, as the amount of plagiarism we are talking about here is very unlikely to be pulled off under a remotely responsible supervision. The supervisors will be aware of this and have good reason to do everything in their power to make the plagiarism look as mild as possible. Giving them the power to deal with this is like having a case of corruption being investigated by the direct superior of the accused.

I definitely think that contacting the thesis advisers would be a useful first step. If this were one of my own students I would make sure they got kicked out and lost their degree. But then, I also know what my students are doing and know that what they write they came up with by themselves -- plagiarizing a whole thesis requires an advisor who has not been paying attention for multiple years :-(

Contacting relevant professors is a great idea. These are the people who will have to make the embarrassing phone calls if the student gets out the door. "Dr Predrag, remember that student I said you should hire as a postdoc? Well, About that..."

@Wrzlprmft I would not say that the supervisors "failed spectacularly" but failure to act quickly and decisively on what appears to be credible and substantial proof of plagiarism should be grounds for dismissal. I am not in Germany (maybe the situation there has aspects that I am unaware of), but from where I sit (still in Europe), your overall attitude strikes me as cynical. There was a time when academic fraud was tolerated in some circles, but I would like to think that those days are long over.

My advice to the OP would be to escalate within the German university first, then (if at all possible) try to obtain the support of his Russian university if that fails. Once you reach the right person, action should be quick and merciless, because not only the German professor's, or department's, or even individual university's credibility is at stake here. (But it strikes me as misdirected to view it as a legal matter. There may be legal implications as well, but academic plagiarism is the jurisdiction of the educational system primarily, not the legal system.)

@tripleee: The supervisors’ spectacular failure I am talking about does not necessarily contain knowlingly tolerating the plagiarism. Under a proper supervision, passing a translation of another thesis as your own is extremely unlikely to succeed, because 1) the topic is very unlikely to exactly match your topic and your supervisor’s ideas 2) you have no plausible progress to discuss with your supervisor and other group members (or it does not match the thesis) 3) you cannot react to requests of your supervisor (“can you plot …?”) 4) you will have difficulties to properly defend the thesis.

@Wrzlprmft Good points, but I imagine there are situations where it would not come off as suspicious if somebody with a good grasp of their subject matter would approach a department with an "almost finished thesis" and not raise any suspicions. Lack of expertise would be obvious, but a reasonably competent expert who lacks original ideas (or the time and money to properly pursue his or her own ideas) could probably easily fool most of the people most of the time.

@tripleee: Sure, there are situations, but how likely are they? Even the famous German plagiarisers plagiarised at most large parts of their theses from multiple sources and that was in fields where you do not have tables with numbers in theses. Moreover, “approaching a department with ‘an almost finished thesis’” is very uncommon in Germany, at least as far as I know, and should raise suspicion by itself.

Does Germany have "external examiners" as we do here in the UK?  The external examiner or examiners are meant to be people with a scientific competance to read the thesis, and no direct professional ties to the student.  If there is some person or persons in that role in Germany, it would be ideal if you can figure out who they are and bring them into the discussion.

@JoeCorneli External examiners are very common with PhD theses (as reviewers and member of the board that decides whether the defense was sufficient), but relatively uncommon with Master's theses. Master theses are commonly reviewed by 2-3 members of the faculty. There may be differences in this among the universities, though.

The behavior of the University does not surprise me. A plagiarised thesis is considered an image damage, so the Univ. is not interested in any investigation.
I don't think there is much you can do. If I were you, I would try the following:

Write to her supervisor or her professor, tell the about the plagiarism. Maybe they are interested in investigation
Write to DFG http://www.dfg.de/en/. They should feel responsible for this, but the chances that they would do sth. are pretty bad.
Write to http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/Home/English about your case, in particular that the Univ. (and the supervisor/professor, if they don't react to point 1) blocks your investigation. This page is more concerned about plagiarism in Doctoral theses, but maybe some member there is also interested in your case.
Write to Debore Weber-Wulff, author of this blog http://copy-shake-paste.blogspot.de/. She is an anti-plagiarism researcher and might be interested in your case.

+1 for the researcher point, since they might have contacts which will result in action being taken.

If you write to the right people at the DFG (see my answer) the chances that they take some action aren't that bad as they have a special committee for such cases.

The VroniPlag link is dead.

http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/Home works fine but is obviously in German, dunno if they removed the English information, or never had any?

As a personal opinion I think it is more image damaging to brush off people for such cases than to take proper investigation steps and appropriate action. The latter is to me an indicator of a highly professional and ethical university. The image damage could only come if the facts are reported with bias by media.

The brushing off you describe looks like you just raised your concerns to the wrong persons in the depths of the administrative system.
The German Research Foundation DFG has an  ombudsman committee (also with its own website, however unfortunately only available in German) to investigate academic misconduct.
As stated here

The Research Ombudsman [...] is an independent committee that provides assistance to all researchers in questions involving good scientific practice and scientific misconduct. The Research Ombudsman can be contacted directly, irrelevant of any connection to the DFG.

The contact to this committee is kept confidential throughout the process. From what I have heard in some presentations they really take things seriously and don't easily reject cases if there are serious hints of misconduct.
Although the site of the ombudsman of the DFG itself is only available in German, they have an english contact form where also the procedure is described that will be exercised in case of a notice:
If, after an evaluation of the documents that the inquirer provided to support their claim, the committee comes to the conclusion that there might be at least a case of infringement of the rules of good practice, they will ask the accused party for a statement. If it turns out that it wasn't just a minor infringement but some serious misconduct, they will transfer the case to a special investigation committee for further investigation.
Also, if the work in question was related to some DFG funded project (to my experience a vast majority of research groups at German universities receive at least some funding from the DFG) and the investigators come to the conclusion that there was a serious misconduct, then one of the consequences could be that the funding for this is cancelled or reduced. Therefore the Ombudsman committee has some lever to make people act, since just sitting it out might put the financial situation of the people involved at risk.
Above that every German university should have a local ombudsperson with basically the same function but it may be somewhat complicated for someone external to find out who that is, so I would stick to the one of the DFG and give it a try.

Very helpful answer. I didn't knew of the existence of such role.

I am aware that this is very annoying to you, but I think you need to understand two things:

Treating this as a legal issue is probably a bit of a dead end. Yes, there is a copyright infringement involved, but following through on a copyright case that is, in the global sense of things, very small-scale (the "financial damage" to you is basically zero) is probably not financially attractive to you. This is much more about academic misconduct, and in such matters, judges and lawyers do not typically get involved. Basically, "plagiarizing" is not a crime.
It is, unfortunately, not overly surprising that the university staff initially brushed you off. If correct, your accusation will lead to loads of work for university staff as well as damage to the reputation of the university. There's a good chance that they saw a chance to brush this under the rug and went for it. Given their initial reaction, you should assume that they will not be helpful in making this right until their hand is forced.

I agree with user12956 that your best bet is to make your case public. Especially in Germany, there is quite a platform for serious cases of plagiarism, and there is a non-trivial amount of publicity for egregious cases. Once you have hit a certain level of publicity, I would assume that the university in question will start to become much more open to start a real investigation, to prevent further damage to their brand. However, this is of course all going to be a lot of work for you.

I don't think that the financial damage is small, it is a substantial amount of intellectual property stolen, ghostwriters would charge tens of thousands of $ for that. The financial benefit for obtaining the degree would be also big. I am not a lawer, but I think there does not need to be a 'crime' to make a legal claim (if your rights were violated).

@benroth at least in the US copyright damages are limited to actual damages and profits of the infringer while in Germany nonpecuniary damages are also covered although I do not think it covers what you are talking about. I have no idea what copyright law in Russia covers.

I am the person named in user12956's answer and have been active with the German-language plagiarism documentation site VroniPlag Wiki for the past 4 years. I do apologize for the English-version of the home page disappearing, I'll see what I can do to get it back.
This is indeed not a legal issue, as copyright claims have to be made in court and the chances of getting anything happening in this area in Germany are almost zero. Going through the university is indeed the only way to go, and unfortunately, as some have noted, they are not all happy to hear about cases like this. I have informed universities about over 120 cases of plagiarism, so perhaps I can offer some perspective here:

The first question is: is this a doctoral thesis or a bachelor's or master's thesis?
If it is a doctoral thesis, then it must be published in Germany. It can be found in the university library or the German National Library (DNB). The person to contact is the dean of the department that granted the degree. I get marginally better response rates by CCing the president/rector on my email. But in over a third of the cases I did not even receive an acknowledgement of my email (that includes careful documentation), so I had to ask back two weeks later.
If it is a bachelor's or master's thesis that happens to be published, then I would also contact the dean, but not CC the president.
If it is a bachelor's or master's thesis that is not published, you will need to contact the Prüfungsausschußvorsitzender, not the Prüfungsamt. Trying to find this person will be very difficult, as German university web pages are in general not in English and/or up to date. The idea of contacting the advisor or having your advisor contact someone at the university is excellent.
The Ombud people at universities or Ombud der Wissenschaft (no longer only for DFG-financed projects, but for all cases) tend to get involved in authorship disputes, data ownership disputes, and the like from within the university. They are generally not equipped to handle plagiarism accusations, as they have practically no resources. Some university ombuds will try to keep you at bay by requesting things such as a translation of your thesis or additional documentation. They, too, generally have no resources.

The problem is that German universities do not have honor boards or even a collective notion of what constitutes good scientific practice and how to deal with academic misconduct. Often it will indeed be classified under data privacy laws, although most universities indeed have a process codified that includes telling the informer what their decision was and giving reasons. But even I, a known German researcher in this area, end up writing letter after letter trying to obtain knowledge about how the university has dealt with a case that I informed them about years ago. I've just published a paper together with a colleague about this miserable situation: "Viel Licht und noch mehr Schatten – Wie Universitäten auf Plagiatsdokumentationen reagieren". In Forschung & Lehre, 4/2015, pp. 278-280.
There is no central German body to which you can apply, and I don't have the time or resources to investigate all of the many cases that show up. If the case involves a published dissertation, then it is possible for you to document it on the VroniPlag Wiki site. There are theses in German, English, and Spanish documented on the wiki. There would have to be at least one other scientist who reads Russian, though, as the cases must all be verified before they are made public. But since it is an open platform, it is possible for someone to be found who can verify this. There is no "magic" software that is used, and translations are not (easily) discoverable with software anyway.
If the university does not answer you, you can send documentation of your attempts to get the university to take action to the Kultusbehörde of the German state the university is in and ask politely what you need to do to get the university to answer you. This can indeed get the university to wake up. But don't do this until you have tried honestly to get information from the university.
It is not the job of the university to prevent plagiarism. The universities in Germany operate on the (unfortunately no longer valid) assumption that students learned how to write and do research and understand mathematics in high school ("Studierfähigkeit"). The universities should become more proactive about plagiarism prevention than they currently are – many just purchase software and figure they are done. They don't realize that software is only a tool and both identifies non-plagiarisms as plagiarisms and misses blatant copy & paste. I have tested such software since 2004. They need policies and they need to communicate them and they need to teach the students how to be good academics. But all this costs money, and the universities are trying to save money where ever they can. I don't want to excuse them, but help you to understand the problem.
I do encourage anyone who is confronted with something like this to take action – eventually, one hopes, the German universities will wake up to the problem and begin to deal with the very serious plagiarism problem that present today.

+1 for posting this! I am not the OP, but do you have any pointers for getting started on documenting a case on VroniPlag?

Drop by the Freenode chat #vroniplag https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=vroniplag during the evening hours in Europe and make yourself heard. The documentation is in German, but all people speak English and can give you pointers. I have blogged on the topic here: http://copy-shake-paste.blogspot.de/2012/10/how-to-find-plagiarism-in-dissertations.html

Is there any legal way for me to get the answer on the plagiarism case from this university? Shouldn’t the university be checking the translation of my thesis rather than requesting me to make an official translation? After all it’s their job to prevent plagiarism!

I am not aware of any law requiring universities to give you informations about their internal procedures (other than: “we are looking into it” or “your request has been rejected”) and would find it very odd, if one existed, as most information would be a violation of privacy regarding the accused student. Also, it is not the university’s job to totally prevent plagiarism (that’s plainly impossible, even in times of the Internet) – rather it is among the ones being damaged by this case of plagiarism.
However, if your account is accurate, the office you have been contacting is not properly dealing with your case. I would thus suggest the following steps:

Compile some evidence, containing in particular the copied tables and other evidence you have that does not require somebody to speak Russian.
Make sure that you have the right office. In Germany, departments often (if not always) have their own examination offices² – which you should address your request to. Also, departments usually have some professor responsible for examination issues, which is another person to contact.
There may be legal offices for the whole universities, but these may drown the issue in bureaucracy (and I would guess that you contacted one of these). These offices are usually only loosely connected and just that one is entirely incompetent or ignores the case does not mean that another office does the same thing.
If you do not get any constructive reply¹ to this (within a few days) or already did do the above, threaten to mildly escalate the situation, in particular to take this one level higher (i.e., to the faculty head) or to the student body.
If this does not work, escalate the situation as described above.
If this does not work either, threaten to completely escalate the situation by taking this to the university head, press, known plagiarism hunters and similar (see some of the other answers). Be aware that these are rather heavy threats and I would only advice them as a last resort.
If this does not work, escalate as described above.

If your case is as clear as you are describing it, the university has much to lose about this and will not take this lightly.
To back some of this up: I am at a German university and know at least some of the administrative structures here. As academia varies much even inside Germany, this might not universally apply, but in this case you should notice quickly.

¹ Which includes “We are working on this.”
² Called Prüfungsamt, Prüfungsbüro or Prüfungssekretariat. You can usually find it by searching the web for one of these terms combined with the German word for your field (e.g., Physik for physics) and the German name of the city (e.g., München for Munich). In a full example, search for Prüfungsamt Physik München. If you can, let somebody help you searching who speaks German.

"the ones being damaged by this case of plagiarism" -- which in this case is prospective future employees of the student who allegedly obtained a degree fraudulently, as well as the university's other students, whose degrees are all very slightly devalued by being indistinguishable. Also the questioner, a bit, for potential loss of recognition of his work, but that's not the concern that's personal to the awarding institution...

@SteveJessop: If a blatant case of plagiarism becomes public, there may be more than a slight damage to the university’s other students, in particular those who graduated under the same supervisor. And that in turn may pose a significant damage to the university itself, as its degrees are losing value. As far as I have experienced it, German universitys were very strict with all the recent prominent plagiarism cases, and they had good reason to be, even from a purely egoistic perspective.

You are treating this as a legal issue, and I am pretty sure plagiarism is an ethical issue. I am not a lawyer, but you may have a legal case that the student (and potentially the university) have engaged in copyright infringement. Copyright infringement suits are difficult enough and one centered on translated material is going to be even more difficult. The university has made the decision to ignore you. If you really want to pursue this, you are going to need a lawyer (and probably a legal translation). If your suit is successful, you might be able to reclaim the costs of the lawyer and translation as damages.
As for plagiarism, you might be able to put ethical pressure on them, especially if the plagiarised thesis is available via the university's library. You might want to check with COPE to see if they would treat the thesis as a publication and the university as the publisher.

In the middle ground, the OP can treat the university with a law suit for copyright infringement.

@J.C.Leitão isn't that what my answer says?

I understood that you meant file a suite. I was imagining treat the suit, not necessarily start it.

@J.C.Leitão do you mean threaten? I am not sure you can scare a university in that way.

Any suit would only be against the submitter of the thesis, and it would have to be published in order for a copyright case to be made. The university is not part of any copyright issues. COPE is only for journals. They have some useful flowcharts, but they are not in the business of informing universities or enforcement.

A counterpoint to responses that discourage you from pursuing it as a legal issue. All universities have very clear guidelines and policies on plagiarism, including steps and penalties for where plagiarism is discovered in a thesis. Since this is a German uni, these guidelines may be in German but you might try translating the site with Google Translator etc. and find the right documents. In any case there are most likely clear rules.

Call the University Graduate School office and find out who investigates these kinds of issues. (Here in the U.S. this would be some office within the Graduate School, which is an administrative entity within the university that deals with all affairs involving graduate students and sets relevant policy. I suspect there is an equivalent in German uni's.) Make sure to find and contact the appropriate office that administers the thesis requirements, most likely they are also in charge of enforcing plagiarism policy.
I like the idea of contacting the student's advisor(s) listed on their thesis. Academics tend to be highly sensitive to plagiarism claims, and since the advisors' names are on the student's thesis, it's in their best interest to care because their reputation is indirectly impacted. You need to get this point across to them. However, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to confirm your claim of plagiarism. So attach your thesis (in Russian), as well as any official-looking forms that confirm that it was published earlier than their student's thesis. Also include clear page numbers for the numerical tables that you mention, so they can verify the duplication even without knowing the language. When you email them, also "cc" the appropriate office at the university's Graduate School. Do this in parallel with your attempts to reach their Graduate School directly about this issue.

Overall, you need to educate yourself about the university's rules as much as you can so you can give the impression that you know what you are doing in pursuing this matter. Also, make sure to say explicitly that you will not cease to complain until this matter is resolved with official investigation. In other words you want them to understand very clearly that the problem will not simply "go away" when you get tired of pursuing this.
Instead, tell them explicitly that if the matter is not resolved at the departmental level of their college of the Graduate School, you will be contacting the Associate Dean and the Dean of the student's college, the university's Faculty Senate, Ombudsman, and the Office of the President of the University directly (in that order). Faculty are not very fond of getting mired in administrative dirt, especially if there is a chance of long-term damage to reputation. You want to take the issue to them and make it personal, show that them that you will press on until an investigation is conducted.
As one effective strategy, you may want to have a small selection of pages (say, 3-5 total) professionally translated into the language in which the plagiarized thesis was written, and attach with your communication to advisors, etc. This will show that you are putting your money where your mouth is, and have the means to pursue it. Yes it is an expense, but if the principle is worth more to you, I encourage you to go for it. Good luck!

I like the idea of contacting the student's advisor(s) listed on their thesis. – See my comment here.

Thanks and already noted, although I would side with @DCTLib's counterpoint.

What is the German equivalent of a graduate school?

If you do all the stuff that everyone else said and nothing gets done then I think you should shame the University, the Student, and their Supervisor.
Post it all over the internet that the University promotes Plagiarism and gives out fake degrees.
I already know people are going to down-vote me, but It's your hard work and if you let them get away with intellectual dishonesty once they will keep doing it.

Be careful, the OP might get sued for defamation.

Joel, if the university is too lazy to correct such a wrong in order to avoid the tarnishing of their name then I highly doubt they would sue for defamation because it would just put more attention on the inadequacies of that university and tarnish their name further.  Also I don't think they can win any lawsuit if he only posts the truth of the matter.

I'm not hearing anything about your own PhD advisor. (He or) She would typically also like to protect you against plagiarism; she might have informal contacts in the German university in question; and with high probability, if she contacts the German university directly, then they will listen more carefully than if you do.
Is it possible to involve your advisor in this?

Are you sure you have been speaking to the right people at the university? The examination office is in many cases a strictly administrative function, with little to no ability to help you in this kind of situation. They are often the people who books rooms and makes sure there are enough papers for the students to write on and such... Not exactly the right people to speak to in this case.
Does the university have a disciplinary board? Many European universities do, and they are typically required to investigate any report of academic misconduct. I would recommend trying either to contact the disciplinary board or to contact the "Rector" or "President" office at the university. They have the duty to do something in a situation like this.

The rector’s office is definetely not the first or even the second institution you want to contact in such a case in Germany. They are busy with administrating the whole university and will hand this to the respective department (where it belongs and which would be the right body to contact first).

You might have more up to date information about the German system than I do, but as far as I recall from working at a German university the disciplinary board was a part of the rectors office... But that was 10 years ago.

That may be, but they will not be the first ones that will deal with this case as they do not have direct access to the works in question and are also not versed in the subject of the thesis. They are responsible for dealing with the issue, once it has been officially identified (and of course they are a possible body you can address when escalating things). Going to them first is somewhat like reporting a crime to a court of law instead of the police.

This is a professional issue and you are up against a large body of entrenched interests that will be publicly embarrassed should your claim prove true.  Consequently, the onus will be upon you to press the issue.  Legal matters are quite beside the point.
Presumably you and the alleged plagiarist are active in the same field and are subjected to the same scrutiny of your work by the same bodies.  I would look to your supervisor and the department from which you earned your degree as allies and discuss your options with them.  They will certainly provide better advice than we can.
Should you proceed, with or without their assistance, then I would make representation to those journals and academic platforms most closely involved with your field.  You must be prepared to provide sufficient evidence and that may require expenditure of significant money because, as the accuser, it is up to you to prove your case.
Bear in mind that Stephan Ambrose obtained his masters and doctorate, and made a career with a very good living, off plagiarism. And this in the face of repeated accusations.  Thus it is all but certain you will face an uphill struggle to make your point.
However, if you value the integrity of your profession you really have no other choice.  You must at least make a formal written protest to the senate of the university granting the fraudulent degree and establish the trail of evidence against the perpetrator.  They will do this again and the more evidence that accumulates the sooner they will be brought to account for their actions.
I would also take some pains to follow this individual's career and to press your claims at whatever institution or enterprise they end up at or pass through.  Again, you must have reasonable evidence to support your claim.
You discovered this plagiarism in some fashion.  Thus some evidence must exist.  The thought comes to mind that a statistical analysis of the citations used in both works compared against similar dissertations in the same field might prove interesting if not conclusive.  This would avoid the necessity of translation.

You could contact the accrediting organization (I believe it is the Wissenschaftsrat) about this problem. Granting diploma's to students who are known to have commited fraud is damaging for the value of university education

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text:
Why do we call a research paper, a "paper"?
I am curious to know why we call a research paper, a "paper" in the singular form...?
People put a huge effort in writing this "paper" ... when you talk to an outsider (non-academic) about a "paper" they think its just a single paper. It is very funny.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about academia. Possibly on topic on the English Language Learners SE.

@CapeCode I agree that it's out of scope here, but I doubt that it's in scope at ELL - mostly because it is called some variation of "paper" in other languages as well (e.g., 'Papier' in German), so it does not seem to have anything particular to do with English.

@xLeitix: Regarding the use of paper in German.

I think the OP might be interested in Paul Graham's assessment of the essay and find it to be in the same vein.

http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1879

Although I agree with Cape Code that this is not a question related to academia and should be closed, I know this one of the top of my head so i'll save you some Google-ing.
The reason is because the first mass production of "paper"s of a standard size where printed for distributing the news. The word "news" is a very funny English word, for all sorts of reasons. It ends in an "s" but is not plural, eg "what are the scores?" is correct, but "what are the news?" is not. Furthermore, it is uncountable, so although it can be followed by a singular verb, you cannot count it like "Do you have a news for me?". People instinctively know "Do you have news for me?" sounds unusual, and so they often pop in an "any" into the middle to make it sound more grammatically compliant.
For this reason, early usage of "news paper" referred to a collection of 1 or more printed news. "news papers" referred to several of these collections. This eventually became 1 word, newspaper, which as a single noun now plays by the rules a bit better, masking the weirdness of "news". However, the concept of a "paper" being one or more sheets of printed information stuck, and is still used in academia and elsewhere where some form of news is being printed, but not as a newspaper.
For the record, I know all this because I got into an argument with a colleague about it, and I insisted it must be because of paper (the material) is what people are referring to. "I brought the paper!", since the common person would have only seen paper in relation to multiple sheets of it. I was wrong.

From newspaper:

A newspaper is a serial publication  containing news, other
  informative articles, and usually advertising.

The first alleged newspaper was printed in 1605, the first scientifique journal in 1665, le Journal des sçavans. It contained obituaries, church history, and legal reports. "Journal"  is the French for "newspaper". Many scientific publications are still called "journals". The work "paper" is indeed more general, and also denotes identity or legal documents.
All in all, the proximity between the work of a researcher and a journalist, as well as the proximity in time, may explain the use of the same terms.


text:
On writing critical review: is there any threat?
During my research on a specific topic, I found two interesting papers by same authors. So, I decided to implement their proposed idea but it was not possible. At first, I thought that I was wrong but after thorough exploration of the papers and reading other papers in the field, I found many mistakes and errors within those papers.
For examples, some of the standard and common rules were presented mistakenly. Since the papers published in highly-esteemed journals, it should be considered as a real drawback. Frankly saying, I take it as some type of betraying to the science and research community.
It seems that either they did not have adequate knowledge to write such a paper or they intentionally added some noise (!) to the paper to make the simulation by others impossible.
So, me and my supervisor have decided to write a critical review for those papers. However, I'm afraid of the consequences.
Can this be a possible scenario that the authors - specifically the somewhat famous ones - affect my future researches, for example trying to reject my papers through their relationships with other editors and researchers, i.e. blacklisting me.

I can't speak from experience here but I am inclined to say "probably, but that shouldn't stop you". Do try to keep your criticism professional and focused on the results not the people. In your writing, assume the best, not the worst, and don't include any sentiment near "betraying the science and research community". In other words, don't allege anything you can't prove, just write what you can prove.

Also, depending on the field and the circumstance, you might consider reaching out to the corresponding author with your comments as you prepare your critique. If this is the work of one shady individual and a bunch of lab mate co-authors that didn't read it, it gives everyone else a chance to disavow the work. That might open a can of worms too, but it softens the blow.

@GrotesqueSI, Unfortunately none of the authors answered my emails. It should be stated that I've not any personal problem with them because I even do not know them in person. The main point here is that there several critical problems with the papers that make me to loud my voice as a researcher. They claimed something novel and unprecedented has been proposed but what we are witnessing is not anything but a bunch of erroneous and unproved statements. Of course, I will be polite and nice in criticism because it's for science not for me or anyone else. :)

Can you write a positive paper that builds on them instead? If someone writes on "Spoons as bread-cutting devices" you could write a comment discussing the errors of their ways, but a better approach might be to write "Serrated knives as superior bread-cutting devices" and demonstrate how your method is superior and in the process discuss how the previous result with spoons might have been based on some false assumptions.

@BryanKrause, got your point but I'm not such type of guys who only look for others' mistakes and errors to show off how they are wise. I say that this paper, despite how much the proposed (and claimed) method is effective, shows the wrong way. Further, it seems it's intentionally because it's impossible that anyone who can come up with such an idea could not aware of those basic or common things. So, I think writing a critical review can make the journal aware and also prevent other researchers to be misguided. Also, yes, I'm working on another working method of this kind.

@Eilia Yes, I just meant that sometimes showing what is right is better received than showing what is wrong. Not that critical review isn't useful, but "Further, it seems it's intentionally because it's impossible that anyone who can come up with such an idea could not aware of those basic or common things." - that's actually a pretty serious accusation, so be careful.

@BryanKrause, Totally agree with you and I never express such a claim in the letter. It's just my major motivation for writing such a review. Are you agree with GrotesqueSI on sending the review to the authors before submitting to the journal?

@Eilia The first thing you should do is send it to your advisor and get their advice.

Just phrase it nicely.  You gain nothing by going on a personal attack or nitpicking.  Your goal when writing your lit. review is to show gaps; it is not how many problems exist with a piece of work.

Have you tried talking to the authors directly?
Reach out to the authors before you publish.  Don't phrase it as a criticism.  Try something like.

I'm confused by how your paper used X, Y, and Z.  The normal interpretation is W.

Unfortunately, none of them responded to my emails!

@Eilia, of course. Academic ghosting. Careless authors who ignore emails exposing the carelessness of their work. I think to write a critical review is an excellent choice by you and your advisor.

@Dilworth, thanks for your support.

If you are correct in your analysis and can back up your ideas then there should be no long-term consequences. Truth will out. But in the short term, there may be some disruption.
Science only advances based on valid work. Calling out problems in old work helps move us forward.
But be straightforward in your "criticism" focusing on the work and not the motives of the authors. The latter can get you in trouble.
And, of course, make sure you are correct.

Many scenarios are possible, depending on the authors' character. You might even earn their esteem and gratefulness. However, if they write intentionally misleading papers and don't answer emails, they will surely not like that you denounce their errors (or worse).
Nevertheless, another flaw of human nature is working in your favour: there is nothing like a good polemic for attracting attention. If the authors are belligerent, you could be starting a polemic that may take a lot of your time, but may also make your reputation.

According to the comments and responses I've came up with a new idea, perhaps best of the two worlds! It may be more useful and less threatening (both for me and the original authors) if we write a comment referencing their paper including some questions and some other suggestions for improving the works.
It's far moderate than a critical review with the aim of questioning validity of their works. Moreover, they have right and opportunity to respond to that comment, by the way.

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