text:
Pre-tenure faculty - should I ignore all possible troubles to get tenured?
I'm a tenure-track assistant professor who started in this fall. I heard that I should not get involved in any issues or conflicts to get tenured.  However, I am unsure about this situation.
I was in a romantic relationship with a professor in the school I was a graduate student in over 7 years in Illinois.  Recently I realized that he has been double-dating with a professor in New Jersey.  Actually their relationship was over 10 years.  Both are in my study field and they are pretty well-known.
I immediately broke up with him during this COVID-19. However, he keeps all of my stuffs in his place -- mostly books and personal stuffs (total about $5,000 books) and does not pay back the costs I spent for his trip (total about $15,000).
He says "just let it go".  He threatens me that he would contact my department chair and dean not to reappoint with me for my tenure if I bring any issues regarding my stuffs and the cost he doesn't send me back as well as his double-dating.  His point is "just stop contacting him".  Actually the relationship started because he kissed me during his office hours; he asked me to meet on Saturday to talk about my research and then he took me to his place....
The most important thing to me at this point is to get tenured in my current position.  Is it wise to let it go as he insists.  Or is it better to bring an issue like contacting his department chair to report his problems?
I'd truly appreciate your response -- it is very complicated because I am pre-tenured and all in the same research field.

What country is this happening in?

I'd be likely to say this relationship had strong elements of harassment/inappropriate conduct on his part: if he was your mentor and started a relationship with you, that's definitely some sort of conflict of interest, not to mention an unequal balance of power. I don't know how well your school handles that sort of thing, but I'd think pretty strongly about that and what to do about it.

It is a bit unclear what do you want to achieve besides tenure. Can I ask what would be your plan of action if you were already tenured?

I would like to take more strong actions like get in his place with a police to take get back all of my personal stuffs and the costs you took from me.

Is it correct that you are at university A, the professor in question is at university B, and his second date is at university C? And that all universities are unrelated to each other?

yes - you are correct.  however we are all in the same field (go to all the same conferences).

I am not a lawyer, but the threat to torpedo your tenure case sounds very possibly criminal. Keywords to google: extortion, blackmail, coercion. Sounds like a very messy situation, good luck resolving it.

Ouch. One Golden (or rather GoT-like) Rule is that "it is those who become professors who create the least trouble." You probably have tools at disposal to blow this person out of the water, but you are likely to sink your academic career with it. Do you have a chance of asking at least for your stuff back? It's worth $5000 to you, but perhaps less to your former romance. Another route might be involving a lawyer, discreetly. He may then understand that you mean business. This won't keep him from dripping poison behind the scenes, though. You should declare a CoI early on to your tenure board.

I recommend a confidential discussion with your Title IX office.

@DanRomik Quite so, but it requires nerves of steel (and hard evidence) to fight that. The strange situation is that a tenured prof would get a $15,000 trip "sponsored" by a postdoc (?). To quote the immortal words: "I have a bad feeling about this." In fact, I think, perhaps: "It's a trap." This guy is double-dipping with impunity, blatantly exploiting people far below his power not only romantically, but financially, making explicit threats across institutions. Clearly this person is happy to take elevated levels of risks. There's a name for such behaviour. Handle with care. Lawyer up.

@CaptainEmacs agreed. The suggestion to start by getting/consulting a lawyer is probably the most prudent and helpful anyone here could make.

@DanRomik is right, this sounds like a criminal extortion situation.  If you think the extortion behavior is going to continue or if you want it punished, consult a lawyer who can advice you about prosecution of the crime or restraining orders.

What do you mean by "the costs I spent for his trip"?

Before writing an answer let me make sure I understand the situation: you were a grad student that dated a professor and gave him $15,000?

There have been some good answers here.  Ultimately you have to ask yourself if you are willing to take a slight risk that you may not get tenure.  If so, then pursue the answers discussed here.  No matter how many precautions you take, there is always a slight chance that your ex can make good on the threats. I know that a lot of people tend to give an "ideal world" type of answer to these questions.  But in the real world, if you pursue this, you are taking some degree of risk.  Hopefully you are willing to take some risk and get your stuff back.  I doubt that you will ever see the 15k.

It is probably worth stating this up front: The relationship you describe has the appearance of an abusive relationship -- and I'm also going to say that I'm sorry you find yourself in this situation :-(
Part of abusive relationships are threats that, in many cases, can or will not actually be realized. While I don't know for sure, my best guess is that your former partner does not actually have much to gain from contacting anyone about your tenure: It would certainly reflect very poorly on them to have been in a relationship with a student, and whatever they would have to say about you would come over as poor taste and sour grapes, not deep insight in your abilities. As such, my best guess is that your former partner is not actually going to pull through with their threat, even if you moved forward with retrieving your possessions with the help of a lawyer.
The second part to keep in mind (and that is something you should definitely take pride in!): Your current department hired you for a good reason, namely that you are qualified in your work! They want you to succeed, and will support you in it. The advice to stay out of contentious topics is probably good, but your colleagues are there to help with get through personal things such as this as they have no stake in it. You will have friends in your current department, or at least people who have good intentions. You can rely on them to find a way through all of this.
My suggestion to be on the safe side would be the following. Write an email to the department head or another senior professor in the department in which you lay out the situation to make sure that it's on record before anyone might hear from your former partner. Maybe something like this:

Dear < department head >
I'd like to bring to your attention a situation that is primarily a personal matter but that might also appear in our professional lives. There is nothing for you to do at this moment, but I want this to be on the written record in case it ever comes up again.
In short, while I was at A University, I was in a relationship with professor X. The end of this relationship was contentious, and I have received threats from X as well as professor Y at B University (with whom he has apparently also had a relationship) that they would try to sabotage my career by writing to you about me.
As mentioned above, there is nothing for anyone to do at this moment. My goal is simply to ensure you know about the threat in case you do get emails from X or Y. When the time comes, in a few years, to thinking about letters of evaluation for the purposes of tenure, I will likely also request that neither X nor Y will be asked to write.
Sincerely, user128851

The point simply is to make sure the issue has been recorded in writing before anyone ever gets an email from X or Y, so that if they ever did, they can find the appropriate place for this email: The trash bin. It will also make sure that your department -- which, remember!, wants you to succeed -- will disregard anything coming from the direction of X or Y when it comes time to decide on your tenure. For example, in a faculty meeting about your case, if someone brings up that they heard bad things about you from X, the department head will say something like this: "We will need to disregard what you have just said. A few years ago, user128851 told me some personal details about her time at A university. I can't tell you what they were, but I will share that she and X had disagreements and that X threatened her. I believe that what X is now saying about her is not something we should trust." And just like this, the issue is gone -- the important point is to get out front of anything X might ever say about you.

@TheoreticalMinimum I think in practice, it's often what precisely that other person actually claims. Imagine for a moment that he writes an email to the department head saying "I've worked with A in the past and we had some draft papers at the time that we didn't seem to get around to finishing. I have now found to my dismay that one of her papers from last year is a worked out version of something we had 90% ready, but she has neither asked me to be a co-author nor informed me about the publication". This sounds credible and would worry me as a department head.

@TheoreticalMinimum Such an email would, however, have a very different impact on me if I had previously gotten an email such as the one I'm outlining above.

That letter could be career suicide.  Poster should look for a lawyer.

I don't think this is good advice.  It's much better to hire a lawyer.  There are too many ways your letter could be misinterpreted.

@AnonymousPhysicist and ScottSeidelman: How the heck is a lawyer going to help you with something that hasn't even happened yet? The only way the laywer could is by sending a letter to the department, but what message does it send if a young faculty member communicates with the department head by way of a lawyer? Or do you suggest waiting with bringing in the lawyer once tenure has been denied? We all know that that's not going to work. -- -- The lawyer is, of course, a good idea (as I mentioned in my answer) for getting back personal items.

@WolfgangBangerth 1. Prosecution of the extortionist.  2. Restraining order against the extortionist.  There is no reason to involve the department at all at this point.

"what message does it send if a young faculty member communicates with the department head by way of a lawyer?"  Nobody suggested that.

@WolfgangBangerth something alreadymhappened at the original campus that could land a title ix suit on the school.  The prof is probably frightened for his job, appropriately.  Anything could happen.  There's no reason to bring this to the new school.

So this might or might not be a good idea depending on your department head. I could see this working perfectly well with 2 of the 3 department heads I have experienced, but it would have been very awkward with the third and may not have made a good impression. You may or may not have the judgement to make this call as a new TT faculty.

I think it's naive to suggest this without reservations - if the department is really good and everyone does their jobs, sure, this approach will probably work. But in practice this is exactly the kind of thing that went wrong for decades before "me too" and is still going on in some places. People abuse power if they can, and some other people don't care or even aid their friends and peers.

The first paragraph of this answer is very good, but the rest is not.  Talk to a lawyer before you do anything!

There are three entangled issues here:

an issue of personal relationship gone wrong, your former partner
not allowing you to collect your personal items and not returning
the money you paid for his trip;
an issue of tenure which potentially gives your former partner some
power over your future career;
an issue with him being in a relationship with you when you were a
student, which can be considered academic misconduct and potentially
can be used to sabotage his future career.

From your answer in comments, I understand that you are not interested in (3), but mostly want to solve (1), avoiding issues with (2).
First, I suggest considering (together with a proper lawyer, perhaps) whether you could legally enforce (1) if all other issues were nonexistent. I don't know about laws in the US, but in many places it can be difficult to recover money spent in a relationship. Where I live, it would be probably illegal to simply

get in his place with a police to take get back all of my personal stuffs and the costs you took from me.

as you suggested in a comment on the question.
It is possible that before you get the police involved, you will need to take this matter to court. You will likely be able to get your personal items back, but as for the money, it may be not so easy. It is not uncommon for one partner to buy expensive presents for another partner, and typically partners can keep the gifts they received (unless there is a special law in your country that forfeits an unfaithful partner the rights to anything they received in the relationship).
If you and your lawyer agree that recovering your items and money is legal and legally enforceable, and you are willing to proceed, then do it. You will need to inform your Department that there is a conflict of interests between you and the professor. It is unlikely that they will require details, but if they will, you can ask to speak privately to the Ethics Lead in your Department (might also be called Title IX office, Ethics Office - check with HR if unsure). Usually there is a well-established process on how to deal with sensitive matters without compromising the privacy of people involved.
Normally, the declared conflict of interests results in him not being part of any assessment and decision-making process regarding your tenure. The panels are often not very big, and it is quite easy to choose the panel avoiding any potential clashes of interests. Also, even if you are not interested in (3), he does not know it, and it may serve as an extra reason for him not to stay in your way to tenure.
Good luck.

Given the issue of (3), I have to imagine the threats about (2) are mostly bluster. That said, some people can be extraordinarily irrational and act against their own interests, or may simply misjudge that they are at any risk at all from a position of power. OPs concern seems mostly to be about soft power through contact with people at OP's institution (with whom he may be personally familiar) rather than official influence through a tenure committee.

@BryanKrause That person seems happy to take quite elevated risks. Without having a history of past behaviour, it is dangerous to assume that the threats are bluster. OP should plan under the assumption that the threats will be carried out.

@CaptainEmacs Could be. It's also possible they are used to getting their way with threats alone.

@BryanKrause Maybe. But the "bluster hypothesis" basically suggests to OP to gamble with their career to find out whether this is the case. Not an action to be advised lightly; at least it should carry a proper warning tag.

@CaptainEmacs Did you read the second sentence of my first comment, or only the first?

@BryanKrause Yes, I read it. I found the warning a bit implicit, though. Don't get me wrong, many bullies are actually cowards, but this particular guy has gone so far into the deep, and exhibits such a string of systemic malfeasance (perhaps also some others OP even does not know of) that I imagine them going on the rampage once it starts to unravel, as they will feel they have to deter people from digging further.

I've never heard of an "Ethics Lead in your Department"? I suspect that's not a standard thing in the OP's country of residence.

@DanielR.Collins Many Universities have Ethical Committee or Panel. It is mainly responsible for ethical approval of research which requires it. But they are also involved with solving ethical issues in the workplace. In the US, Title IX office plays somewhat similar role. "Lead" is the main person representing the office.

Recommend that if "Ethics Lead in your Department" does not exist in the OP's country (which seems to be the case), and you instead mean that they should consult with their Title IX coordinator at the university level, that you edit the answer to reflect that, or some other more general phrasing.

Ex-academic here.
I would err on the side of caution. I would suggest that you:

Investigate your legal options. This does not need to involve your
school or telling anyone you work with - you have a right to keep
your private life, private. For example is there a small claims
court you could access that doesn't involve the school?
Get your documentation in order. Unless there is proof, it's your
word against his. This includes documenting your relationship.
Document everything you do, now. This includes all emails, calls,
and texts about this matter. If others know of the matter and
comment (or bully) you, write it down.
Keep this documentation forever. Times change; proof can be very
useful in the future, not just now.

Map out all your options and consider them carefully. Search for people whose relationships have been with people who have power over their career in your field1 and see how they end. I would absolutely be talking to a lawyer; you need a dispassionate advocate who can give you balanced advice while shielding you from manipulative and what sounds like predatory behaviour.
1 Every faculty/industry is different. In my (ex-)field, for example, the majority will back the older man / male-favourites over any injustice (with proof or not), regardless of reputation (just my lived experience and every other victim I've spoken to in my field).
All the best.

Just as an amplifier on earlier responses: if you don't have threats from him in writing, check out the legality of recording him over the phone.  In many jurisdictions such recordings are legal as long as one party knows about them.  If he's in a different jurisdiction it's probably trickier: two jurisdiction's rules plus possibly other rules such as US interstate rules, may apply.
But having legal recordings, as painful as it might be to get, could put you in good stead both with the court in trying to recover your belongings, and to get any negative input from the two dismissed if it prevents your eventual tenure.
You also don't seem the vindictive sort but if you were, I imagine his actions may be a violation of his employer's ethics code.


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How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers?
Critical reading is a very useful skill for most PhD students (and postdocs and researchers in general).
Instead of assuming that everything you read in a scientific paper is right, it's useful to learn how to evaluate the paper critically: e.g., to question its content, to identify shortcomings and limitations and ways it could be improved.
Experience with reviewing papers is a powerful way to gain experience at critical reading of papers. Writing reviews for journals and/or conference helps a PhD student learn to get better at reading a paper with a critical perspective.
Unfortunately, review opportunities for PhD students are rare.
For instance, it is rare for PhD students to be invited to serve on program committees or asked to review papers. In addition, some may think that PhD students are not competent enough to write correct reviews of scientific papers.
How does one solve this problem?  How can a PhD student get opportunities to practice reviewing papers?  What would you suggest to a PhD student who wants to do some reviews?

I think the first paragraph of this question ought to be re-edited to make it more useful. The assumptions about the critical ability of researchers "nowadays" are IMO baseless and speculative. They are also unnecessary for the main question which is useful and about reviewing articles.
I would change it to something like "Participating in peer review of journal article can help PhD students build up critical skills, but they seldom get the opportunity to do this...."

How does one solve this problem? — Every time your PhD student presents a paper, ask them directly, "So, is this paper actually good?".  If they say yes, look disappointed and ask "Really?  Huh.  Why do you think so?"  If they say no, look disappointed and ask "Really?  Huh.  Why not?"  In my department, we call this game "the qualifying exam" (only with four papers).

Are you in computer science? Familiar with programming languages? I have a few papers that need reviewing.

@Dave Clarke I am, I am. Just write to me: davide.chicco(AT)gmail.com and we'll discuss privately. Thanx

@JeffE - We have a similar process for the qualifying exam, but even more importantly, that's how my advisor ran lab meetings. Presenters were required to assign a "grade" to papers they presented and then justify the rating. It's a great idea, and it encourages critical thinking.

It's worth saying that some journals have a policy of requiring an extended record of publication in the field before you can be considered as a reviewer. In this case, as a PhD student, you may simply not qualify.

I'm going to address your question, but first, I have some issues with it generally:

I think that one of the problems of most PhD students (and postDocs and researchers in general) nowadays is that they don't read scientific papers with a critical judgement. They often think that everything is right in a scientific paper; they're not used to doubting its content...

This is manifestly not true in my opinion. Indeed in my experience (and I've seen this shared by others), I've watched faculty members reign in students who had torn into a published paper for what were essentially minor methodological flaws that wouldn't change the substantive findings of the paper one way or the other. I think a far more common problem is "failing to see the forest from the trees".

But, anyway, review opportunities for PhD students are not many.

They can be. I've reviewed 4 or 5 papers for journals in my time as a PhD student, and a disheartening number of conference abstracts.

How does one solve this problem?

There are three ways I've gotten papers to review:

Your advisor puts in a good word for you. Essentially, a journal asks them to review a paper (or if they're an editor somewhere, a paper hits their pile) and they redirect it to you, either formally or informally.
Publish. All of the papers I've reviewed are in areas where I already have a well received publication, which bypasses the "Journals don't think PhD students are competent" problem.
Some conferences put out calls for reviewers. Keep an eye out and sign up.

What would you suggest a PhD student who wants to do some review?

Publish. The strongest way I've ever ended up getting papers to review has been from papers I've published. Talk to your advisor. Look out for opportunities - I've seen at least three calls for reviewers in my time expressly open to students. This also gives you an experience being reviewed, which is important both for honing your own skills as a reviewer, and something you need to learn how to deal with.

Are there any open-to-review journals where one could train oneself?

You don't need a journal to do this. One of the most useful things you can do to train is to get a faculty member to support a journal club where, in addition to presenting the paper, the student writes a critique in the style of a review. Not only does this force you to read the paper you're presenting more closely, but it will let you learn in a protected, mentored environment rather than "out in the wild".

+1: Just publish.  If you haven't, you shouldn't be reviewing, and if you have, you will be reviewing.

"Some conferences put out calls for reviewers."  But skip the really bad conferences.

I disagree with the statement that a PhD student never doubt a published article (at least in my field).
This said, it seems to me that one of the first work of a PhD student is to read and "review" papers: for example, when we start a new project, my advisors always ask me to do a whole bibliographical work, sum up the papers read to them, comment them, try to find what is good and what can be improved in the previous work. Even after, I am also asked to always follow on the new papers that could correspond to our work.
I believe it is one of the work of the advisor to help her/his PhD student to learn to do this sort of work.
Then if one really wants to review unreviewed papers, there is always ArXiv (or other equivalent repository for papers) where one can subscribe to the rss feed, then work on reviewing for oneself (or for one's advisor) the papers read that are close to your work.
Since your question seemed to be how can we do a review, I believe it is not important whether it is an official review or not: the important part was to review a paper in the first place.

Just to add some personal experience to the other answers. I did quite a lot of reviews as my advisor and other people in my group who were on programme committees asked me to do some of the reviews they were assigned to do.
As far as I can tell, this is quite common practice in Computer Science. You would probably have more trouble avoiding doing reviews than doing them.

I can't see why not. You're not sharing the paper with the whole group but just delegate the review to a single person.

Officially it's called subreviewing (and some of the conference management tools offer explicit support for it). The review would certainly be properly accredited. As for passing on reviews, this is basically a necessity. A well-known person in the field would be on the programme committee for many conferences and would get 10-15 papers to review for each. You can't do all that work on your own and teach and do research.

@DavidKetcheson It's not "sharing manuscripts": it's the formal procedure. A programme committee member asking somebody to review a submission is exactly the same thing as a journal editor asking somebody to review a submission. Members of the programme committee are explicitly expected to find people to review the submissions for them.

I don't know what field you're in, but in my field, there exist journals with a public discussion phase. Anybody can comment. For example, this interesting paper explaining why there is no easy way out to anthropogenic climate change had a lengthy discussion (most papers do not). Assigned peer reviewers are required to comment, and naturally the author is required to respond. But in addition, anybody else can respond. Unlike Stack Exchange, there is no voting (-;.
In geophysical sciences, the European Geophysical Union has the following two-stage journals (as of July 2012):

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics & Discussions
Atmospheric Measurement Techniques & Discussions
Biogeosciences & Discussions
Climate of the Past & Discussions
Drinking water Engineering Science & Discussions
Earth System Dynamics & Discussions
Earth System Science Data & Discussions
Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems & Discussions
Geoscientific Model Development & Discussions
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences & Discussions
Ocean Science & Discussions
Social Geography & Discussions
Solid Earth & Discussions
The Cryosphere & Discussions

Possibly, there may be other fields where such kind of journals exist. Then you can exercise your reviewing by posting an unrequited review for a paper — note, however, that unrequited reviews (short comments) are not formally anonymous — although I have seen instances of people posting under a false name...
For a discussion on the wisdom of actually posting there, see: Pros and cons on commenting on public review papers

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Who decides whether to accept a paper: reviewers or the editor?
Is accepting or rejecting a paper the reviewers’ responsibility?  Or is it left to the editor to decide based on all the reviewers’ comments?

@D.W. As an assistant editor of a journal and organizer of multiple peer-reviewed conferences, I strongly disagree: this is definitely a practical and answerable question.  Whether the O.P. is currently experiencing it or just curious is beside the point.

@D.W. It's not remotely necessary for somebody to be setting up a journal to ask a question like this. Understanding the peer review process is necessary from all angles: in particular, if one is asked to review an article.

@D.W. If your original comment is obsolete, please delete it. Hypothetical questions, within reason are fine: this one is clearly reasonable. The question also provides all necessary detail.

Reviewers can only recommend acceptance or rejection (or a major or minor revision). It's the editor's responsibility to weigh the reviews, along with the manuscript, and decide.
After all, you will often have multiple reviewers. And they will usually not even know who else is reviewing a given manuscript. So how else could you decide what to do with a manuscript where two reviewers recommend a major revision, while the third recommends rejection?

Well, from what I have seen, the job of creating a mutual summary of all reviews, and a combined recommendation, (as well as requesting additional reviews in case the reviews diverge considerably and thus prove inconclusive) often falls to the "primary reviewer", who will then report that combined recommendation to the editor.

@O.R.Mapper: that is interesting. In the fields I am familiar with, that job falls squarely on the editor.

@O.R.Mapper Can you explain what a "primary reviewer" is?  It sounds like a synonym for what I know as "associate editor."

@jakebeal: The primary reviewer summarizes what the other reviewers have written and also adds his or her own thoughts, both in terms of understood paper content and most important/prevalent reviewer comments. In the notification mail, the normal reviews are then titled "Review 1", "Review 2", etc., whereas the review by the primary reviewer is sometimes titled "Metareview" or "Review X (primary)" ...

...  (where X is a number greater than the other review numbers, despite that review often appearing first, while the others are ordered sequentially by their number).

@O.R.Mapper. Thanks. Would you mind telling us your field?

@StephanKolassa: Not at the core of my personal topics, but as a possibly somewhat known example: Reviews from ACM's CHI conference are usually structured like that. Notification mails are structured like this: "Review 4 (...) Reviewer: primary (...) The Meta-Review: (...) Review 1 (...) Reviewer: external (...) The Review: (...) Review 2 (...) Reviewer: external (...) The Review: (...) Review 3 (...) Reviewer: external (...) The Review: (...)" Reviewer 4 has access to all other reviews and sometimes explicitly refers to them in his or her summarizing meta-review.

@O.R.Mapper Ah, this sounds similar to the way that AAAI splits their workload too --- in this case "primary reviewer" for a conference does appear to be equivalent to "associate editor" for a journal: they effectively make the decision, but the program chairs / chief editors have right of refusal on it.

Accepting or rejecting a paper is always left to the editor.  The reviewers, however, are typically expected to summarize their review by providing a recommendation to the editor for the paper's fate.  This is generally not just accept or reject, but may also have higher granularity such as "major revision," "weak accept," "reject but encourage resubmission," or "borderline."
As an editor or program chair, I appreciate this feedback (even if I may sometimes ignore it) because sometimes it is sometimes difficult to judge a referee's judgement from the tone of their review.  For example, a very long and harsh-sounding review may actually say something like: "I am being very strict in my review of this paper because I think it is good work that can be a great paper on revision." I might overlook it amidst the harshness... or the reviewer might not be so clear.

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What is the point of a PhD thesis whose content already exists in published papers?
In my area (computer science) it is standard to publish several papers during the course of your PhD and then only "write" your thesis in the last few months of graduate school --- often you only start compiling the thesis once you have secured a job for after graduation.
I realize that in other areas this is different --- your thesis is the primary output of your time in graduate school. However, in my area the primary output is the papers you have published and the thesis seems redundant.
Given that all the content of my PhD thesis already exists in published papers, what is the point of writing the thesis (other than to fulfill the university's requirements)? Why would someone (other than my committee) read my thesis?
I want to know what it is that I am trying to achieve when writing my thesis (as I am currently starting this process). Thus, an alternative question would be: How do I write a good/useful thesis, given that I have published all the results it will contain?
All of my papers have full versions on arxiv, which contain discussion of motivation, background, and related work, as well as all the details and some side results. (Unlike, say, mathematics papers, which tend to be very terse.) So in terms of exposition, I am not sure what would be added in my thesis.

"Why would someone (other than my committee) read my thesis?" - I personally read PhD theses that describe published work because there is often room to go into more detail in the thesis. If I read a published paper that I think will be very useful to me and I want to know more, I often go look for a tech report or thesis by the author.

@ff524 My papers have full versions on arxiv, so I don't expect to give more detail in the thesis. In fact, I might even give less detail. I have only once looked up someone's (masters) thesis, and then only because it contained unpublished results.

The first good review article is every bit as valuable to scholarship as the original reasearch. The catch is in that "good". If you can't add novel data to the thesis, you can still make it useful by writing it clearly and well. If you can't do that there truly is no benefit to being redundant.

I have seen theses that consist of a short one-page introduction, together with photocopies of a few published papers.

@GEdgar That sounds like a 'Ph.D by publication', which is perfectly legitimate but doesn't seem to be the route that OP is talking about.  A 'Ph.D by publication' would involve you pointing to (and quite possibly photocopying) a track record of cutting-edge contributions to your field, and evidence of that material having changed things.

@omar If you straight refuse to add anything, and your only effort is to copy paste your papers, what is the point of your question? If you want to confirm if it is ok that way, discussion with your supervisor is the best.

Clearly this varies hugely by department. I did a Computer Science PhD in the US. In my experience, it was definitely a formality -- I don't think anyone properly read my thesis, including my committee, my advisor, and myself. I just copy-pasted a bunch of papers together with light editing. Heck, I know someone who got a best dissertation award before he actually wrote his dissertation!

Some papers in physics(hep) cite various phd thesis. For example, in one last paper that I have read(Phys. Rev. D), the author who was more related to theory used various experimental techniques to check the validity of his theory by using  data from some experiments. Hence, the thesis might be used for people that are working in the a similar topic as you, but not so closely related.

Like @ff524 (comment above), I too have found PhD theses useful, and over the years I've collected quite a few of them. I've actually purchased at least 20 since 1992 from UMI/ProQuest. Unfortunately, I don't have access to their digital archive, but I have also photocopied more than double this number from various libraries during this same period. I have often found  them to contain fuller explanations and motivation, more historical details, and numerous minor tangential results, all of which tend to get edited out in the typical concisely written published papers (I'm in mathematics).
To answer your question, perhaps what you can do is to write an overview of your results and how they fit into the larger scheme of similar results on your topic that others have done. Even if no one else reads this, it can help by giving a useful summary of your work that you can siphon off when you need to give talks about your work (such as in job interviews) or when you need to write introductions or abstracts for future papers based on the work. Also, if for some reason you find yourself not working on this topic for a few years and thereby forgetting some of the details, and you want to return to the topic, your summary and overview will be very helpful in remembering what it was all about.

Thanks. That is interesting to know. I will try to include more background and side results, although I try to do that in my published results anyway (computer science is known to have much more "wordy" papers than mathematics)

I also just finished writing my computer science thesis. I think in the thesis you can do a more exhaustive related work section. typically, in conference papers there's not enough space to review related work in detail. also, you could add a background section in the thesis, which covers foundational aspects of the field your work is related to. this helps readers which are not familiar with the field. however, I did not do this in my thesis, because I think it's redundant. often, there is standard literature, which does the job (much better).

moreover, in the thesis you can go into more detail regarding technical and implementation details which one would typcially not expect in published papers. what I think is also important is "setting up the stage" in your thesis in the introduction. this is where you try to show the reader how all your papers fit into one commen theme, that is your overarching research topic. hth.

@ChrisWhite I don't understand your comment. Are you saying the point of the thesis is to compensate for insufficient detail in papers? But my papers should have enough detail in them already.

tl;dr there is no point.
EDIT: But sometimes it is helpful for the scientific community, especially in case you are dealing with an emerging area, so that your work can become a reference for many people wanting to join in.

That's a good question. And I'll be unconventional (as most my answers here seem to be unconventional), and claim the following:
Indeed, there is not much benefit for writing the thesis in areas, like some parts of CS, where you already published the full versions of your results before submitting the thesis. (A thesis is needed for historical reasons only.)
But this is not a problem, on the contrary: you should be happy, because your job is very easy now. Simply wrap up the papers, put them in some overarching perspective using the introduction, make sure the notation is consistent and you don't repeat the same information too many times, and viola, you have a thesis! Not only a thesis, in fact a thesis that will be successfully defended (with very high probability), since it was already peer-reviewed.
Comment: It is utterly crucial that you already have the full versions of your papers. They should be submitted or better accepted to a journal. Otherwise, I would claim that writing the thesis is equivalent to writing and submitting for a peer-review the journal versions of your work.

@ChrisWhite, the assumption is that the work has already been published in a reasonably-good conference, and the full version is submitted. I stand by my statement: if these assumptions are correct, the PhD will be granted with very very high probability. (for you, I added "with very high probability" in the answer).

Also, peer review is not only about correctness, but about merit. Peer review in a good journal is more serious than a PhD committee (from experience).

Also, note that the OP is talking about CS. Not about other areas. You might not know the conventions of this area, but they are different than other areas.

Thanks. This "pro stapler thesis" view is quite common. (Although it is somewhat disheartening to think that the thesis is a waste of time!)

@omar - In lots of other fields, such "stapler thesis" are unacceptable. In addition to being field specific, this might also be university specific. Then, the problem gets down to rewriting the peer-reviewed articles into a thesis, with lots of other details also peppered in, and then, thesis writing is quite a task. That's probably why Dilworth added "_ I would claim that writing the thesis is equivalent to writing and submitting for a peer-review the journal versions of your work._"

@Dilworth I strongly disagree with your view. See my answer for details.

@Ratbert, I disagree. See my answer there.

‘I want to know what it is that I am trying to achieve when writing my thesis.’
It seems to me that the first person you should be asking is your PhD supervisor.
Since you are here, however, I would point out that one significant function of your thesis is to show that you are expert in the wider discourse.
It should also demonstrate that you are able to communicate your work in a fully structured way (not simply as a sequence of little papers), and that you fully understand where it fits in the wider world.
Any professional thinker (including me, although ostensibly qualified mainly in humanities) can write clever code.  A Ph.D candidate, however, should be demonstrating a unified grasp of the field.  If you cannot do that, then your external examiner might well fail you.  (A friend and colleague of mine recently had to do that to someone.)
Your thesis is an opportunity to draw-together the bits and bobs that you have published (and probably some other material as well) as a cohesive contribution to the discipline.  At the very least it ought to be possible for you to write a Conclusion (and therefore also an Introduction) showing how your combined work adds something thematically useful to the field.
I published quite a few bits of my Ph.D research before I submitted, but the point of the thesis was twofold:  looking inward at my own original work to tie it all together; and also looking outwards to locate it in relation to other historical and cutting-edge work.
To put it another way...
Anyone can (in principle) come up with novel code, or make a clever film, or translate a German poem.
A real expert, however, can point to the full range of other approaches and techniques, and explain why this one contributes uniquely to the discipline.  As a consequence, your Conclusion should also be able to point ahead and suggest what new avenues your (accumulated) work has opened, and what further developments of it might achieve.
The fact that you are undertaking a Ph.D in the first place is indication of cleverness.  The thesis is about being professional, and delivering.

Often the answer is, as @DaveLRenfro has pointed out, more information and context. What you're describing is often called a "sandwich thesis", and may contain chapters at the beginning and the end ("the bread") that are not actually published papers. An introduction linking the papers together for example, or examining prior work and what has come before (and why your contribution is needed).
In the case of my dissertation, which was on a mathematical model of a public health problem, while the major results are all published, my thesis contains a pretty exhaustive account of how each and every parameter in the model came about - the logic behind it, calculations if it needed to be rescaled somehow, assessing whether some distributional assumptions I made were true, etc.

Thanks. In a sense my question is "why shouldn't I just create a stapler thesis?" Providing better exposition is definitely good, but I am not sure what I could add above what is already in my published papers.

@omar Context and more detail, exactly as the answer says. Three freestanding papers aren't necessarily a coherent body of work all on their own.

@omar, even a stapler thesis requires some connective tissue, and there's often some meat there, too.

A summary or overview to tie the papers is the idea behind the "compilation theses" that comprise around two-thirds of doctoral theses in Sweden

Writing papers is a good part of the job, and it seems you already know how to do it.
But there is another very important thing in research, which is the ability to conduct a research program over many years. It requires very specific skills to envision a topic than will span over multiple articles coherently, establish usefull collaborations,  drive students, reorient the project if needed, etc. Beyond the quality of the articles themselves, it is also those skills that the jury will evaluate.
Of course your supervisor has to take some part in this process. It's normal since  this is something difficult to learn. But if you didn't took the chance to manage your long-term project yourself during your PhD, you  really missed something.
Then, there is often an important part of what you did that simply didn't work, and therefore that you haven't been able to publish. Your thesis is the right place to put these attempts and to explain why it didn't worked and how much you have learned from these errors.

Yes, I agree that a long term vision is inherent to good research. I disagree that the thesis writing will take any substantive part in this, or that even the dissertation committee will seriously consider this towards rejecting the thesis. I claim that there is almost no example of a thesis rejected due to "the researcher failing to establish a long-term vision, or carry out a research direction by him/herself" (assuming that the papers have been accepted to reasonably good conferences/journals).

I think the supervisor is supposed to be responsible for the vision part before graduation to get the student in a well-planned spot but sometimes students accidentally get their own vision before graduation...

One of the main purposes of a research degree such as a PhD is getting a stamp of approval that one is able to conduct academic research independently. The thesis is presented and publicly defended against criticism from other scholars showing the candidates abilities to conduct independent research in ways that the papers themselves might not always show. Maybe especially in the cases where the papers could be having multiple authors, the thesis only has one and only one is to defend it.

The proximal purpose of the thesis is to convince your panel/committee (in the US) or your examiners (in the other systems), that you are worthy of a PhD. In this sense, it might be best to think of your thesis like an application or promotion packet - it is a portfolio of work you wish to bring to the attention of those judging you, presented in a convenient and consistent form to make their lives easier.
In addition it allows you the opportunity also to draw out the common themes, talk about the "Big Picture" and not just fit your work into your field, but talk about how the field fits into the wider discipline. This is useful to your judge because they have to say that you are a good scientist, not just a good technician/engineer.

The purpose of your research is to produce something that people outside your field find interesting or useful. Obviously you cannot always achieve that, but that is why those people are funding your research.
In this grand scheme of things, research articles are rather pointless, as they are written for other people in your field. They are only the first steps in the publication process. They are the individual trees in a forest. Sooner or later, someone has to see the forest from the trees and describe it to a wider audience. That description may take the form of a thesis, a survey article, or a textbook.
This gives you one possible purpose for a "stapler thesis", in addition to the purposes other answers have already told about. While the individual papers describe specific results to a specialist audience, the thesis itself may tell about the big picture to a wider audience.

Fundamentally thesis and research papers have different roles. In a PhD thesis, you present a thesis - a single thesis. This means you have to ensure that all your chapters are cohesive. If you look at your thesis as a collection of papers, it is useless because one can read your papers independently. Many universities are allowing this which IMHO is a mistake.
In a thesis, you develop your ideas chapter by chapter and in the final chapter, you conclude your findings and contributions. Therefore, a PhD thesis gives a completely different understanding compared to what reading your papers independently would. If you are not able to do that, then you have not done a proper job in defining your research goals.
Even Masters students can do research and write papers in top conferences. PhD is not just about writing papers - it is beyond that.

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Is it immoral to expect uncompensated contribution to the university from doctorate students?
In every university that I know, doctorate (and very commonly master's) students are expected to do a number of things which I would categorize as work, related to the operation of the faculty, such as:

correcting exams
supervising exams
supervising undergraduates in lab exercises, answering questions, usually organizing groups and  lab exams
teaching lectures on the methodology for exercises of a course
various errands for the professor (I won't get into detail in this, as it's clearly immoral in my opinion)

From what I have heard, those practices are common in Greece.  Every PhD student that I know has no official salary from the university, and may get paid from certain research funds for particular projects that he has to complete/contribute to from outside sources. According to the regulations in Greek universities, Master's and above students are obliged to provide "auxiliary work" without this being specified further.
Given the fact that correcting exams is actual work, isn't it immoral to do it without monetary compensation?

Sadly, immoral or moral, it happens (quite common, actually).

Do the PhD students pay their own tuition? Or is it immoral for doctorate students to expect an uncompensated PhD from the university? As you state, 'regulations' are in place, so it would apparently be legal to require 'auxiliary work'. Framing it as a moral question (when the legality seems solid) frankly adds baggage to the question.

It is most certainly legal, as it's clearly stated in the regulations, the fact is, that if it's immoral, its legality should be reconsidered. Also no, all education in Greece is free (actually paid from taxes) (there are also some private-paid schools and colleges, but most are state run and free).

@K.Gkinis - the problem is, morality is a value judgement, and is often trotted out as a principle, rather than just owning up to somebody just not liking the situation. There are many situations in every day life where something is expected of you, and is good for the community, without being paid. As Jake points out in his answers, all those (except perhaps #5 depending) are explicit job-related duties of a graduate student at a US university (and good training for a future in academia). Is it immoral to expect students to take exams if they are not paid?

"Mind that every PhD student that I know, has no official salary from the university". As a fellow Greek, I know that this is simply not true. There are departments that actually pay TAs (PhD students) for this work. It is not very nice to to say things about (y)our country that are not true.

@Alexandros: unless you know whether or not the departments of the questioner's PhD-student friends pay them a salary, I don't see how you can know whether that statement is true or false.

@SteveJessop Then the OP should clearly say (at least an estimate) of the number of cases or departments he knows. If he only knows 1-10 such cases, then he should not describe his very incomplete and partial knowledge of reality as the norm.

@Alexandros Are you sure that they're paid from the university for being PhD students? Or for participating in side research projects?

Also the cases that I know of, are those in 4 departments in 2 universities (NTUA and Patras). AFAIK the law does not specify a salary for PhD students.

There is no salary for PhD student in Greece, because it is not considered a job. You are paid for the job you do during your PHD (TA, participating in research projects) and not for doing a PhD. It is obvious you have a misunderstanding of how research funding works.

@Alexandros Maybe you're right! Being a PhD student is certainly not a job. I thought that research projects fund you in order to reply with a result, and are not guaranteed (you may not recieve one as it is from an outside source), yet your duties are fixed. Thus, you are not paid for your TA duties, you are paid only for providing that result to whoever it interests. (that was my thought process)

Even the research itself is in many ways work (junior or not, that's beside the point). There are countries where this is recognized as such and courts have even forced university to make no exceptions.

I find this to be a somewhat curious question: it seems to be limited to Greece, and so far the two Greek academics who have weighed in seem to be differing on the facts.  I'll say this: unless Greek universities are rounding up unwilling people to be their graduate students and/or the conditions of being a Greek graduate student are kept secret, I'm not sure it makes much sense to call the putative practice moral or immoral.  Rather one should ask why the students sign up for such a raw deal...

...In that regard, it is perhaps not entirely irrelevant to point out that my  department recently acquired two new Greek graduate students and one new Greek faculty member (who got his graduate degree in England).  If many Greek students not only can go elsewhere but do, this may have some effect on what is offered to those who choose to stay.

@PeteL.Clark Perhaps they sign up because they need the intellectual stimulation or have certain aspirations. Also if the students (and their parents) have low economic position regardless of the value they provide they can be better taken advantage of economically.

In universities in the USA, the type of work that you describe is typically paid for, with the student being employed as a Teaching Assistant (TA).  In some cases, this is an hourly job; in other cases it comes with a stipend and tuition support. The time a student spends per week varies, but in my experience is most typically averages to 10-20 hours/week (typically lower for hourly wage, higher for stipend).
Many departments do require students to spend time as a teaching assistant, under the theory that the work of instruction is an important part of one's education.  It sounds like the universities that you describe are using this theory, but then not compensating the students.
To my mind, whether this is moral or not depends on the nature of the work and the amount of time that is required.

At one end of the spectrum, if a student is asked to give a couple of guest lectures over the course of a semester, then the experience of preparation and explanation seems like a reasonable inclusion in their educational experience, especially if coached by the professor.
At the other end of the spectrum, if a student is asked to do 20 hours of grading and other "scut work" that has little educational value, then it is clearly a job for which they should be paid.

Somewhere in between there is some grey area, but in general my feeling is that the more routine and less educational aspects of teaching are work for which whoever conducts it should be definitely be compensated.

It is not really unpaid when the student gets 'free' tuition.  It may be that tuition divided by hours is a low hourly rate...

This is a good answer, but it leaves one point from the question uncommented: "and may get paid from certain research funds for particular projects that he has to complete/contribute to from outside sources" This could be crucial at least for people who do get paid from such research funds, as there might be certain inofficial assumptions about what recipients of such grants typically do for their money in order to keep the system running.

@O.R.Mapper: right, for a clear-cut example if the grant money says, "this grant includes payment for up to 20 hours a week of scut work for your university, that we're paying on their behalf for you to do" then you can question whether the funding bodies should be paying for scut work, but you can't really question that the scut work has been paid for. I suspect you're right though, and the system runs on expectations rather than explicit conditions.

@SteveJessop: Indeed, I wrote "inofficial" to express that no such statements will be found anywhere in writing.

@O.R.Mapper: yes, I'm adding that conceivably there might be official assumptions too :-) And they might be indirect. The questioner says that these universities state as a condition of being a master's student you must provide auxiliary work (is this a form of "student/apprentice as servant" or a quid pro quo to keep down fees, who knows?). So if the grant says you have to be an enrolled master's student then it might be intentionally endorsing that requirement even without explicitly mentioning it.

IMHO, the morality of it depends on what you get in return. I would certainly not hesitate to tell my student to grade a quiz while I'm having a severe headache trying to figure out whether some mind-boggling argument in the last version of his thesis is correct or not. On the other hand, using your supervisor power to pass some of your routine duties to the student just because you can is certainly immoral. If you think that your supervisor does a lot for you, I wouldn't make much fuss if he asks you to do some reasonable amount of extra work for him. Otherwise check the written policies.

Tuition waivers are arguably the least valuable form of company scrip ever produced, given the fact of tuition inflation.

For a related legal perspective, it was recently found (August 2016) by the National Labor Relations Board in the U.S. that graduate students qualify as "statutory employees", have an "an economic relationship to the University", and therefore qualify as being eligible for union membership and collective bargaining with the university over matters such as pay and job responsibilities. So this at least suggests a growing consensus that graduate students are real employees and deserve some consideration as such.
The Nation -- It’s Official: Graduate Students Can Unionize


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How can I finish my PhD?
I have M.Sc. in mathematics, and I was/am working on a PhD for almost 10 years now (on and off), but I haven't published a thing. I have many results (most in a single field) and potential paper drafts, but I never finish up and publish, because I always find something new to learn or a new problem to research. I left the university eventually and got a part-time job as a data scientist, but I was never satisfied about leaving things open. I was working completely alone and didn't get along well with my adviser.
Today, while I have the time, I lack the discipline and environment to finish. None of my close friends are mathematicians, so I can't really talk about math with anybody (besides Internet forums). I love math very much, and I'm learning new things all the time, and I want to have my results finally out there and have my resume match my skills.
I will be glad to hear any advice, if anybody was in a similar situation. Any help will be appreciated.

You say you quit your phd long ago. So how could you finish it? Or do you mean simply publishing the results?

Do you really need your PhD at this point, or will it just be a piece of paper to put on your wall?

@Dilworth In Germany, this is not really unusual. I know different people who left university and still (claim to) work on their PhD thesis. In many departments, you have no legal time limits, so you can leave university and come back 10 years later with a thesis, defend it and get your title. Nowadays, a little coursework is also often required, but as long as you finished that before you left university, you are fine. Needless to say that many of those never finish their thesis...

@J.FabianMeier, thank. This is precisely what I was asking. What does the OP want to do? Publish the papers or return to complete the dissertation?

Good question. I don't know if it's even an option to go back now to my institution.
At this point, having a published paper will be enough for me and there is no deadline for that, though is it harder than writing a thesis academically.

Do not get distracted and focus on completing a thesis rather than publishing. After 10 years, you should have enough material to write a decent thesis, even though what you have done may not be publishable. Get support from your supervisor and anyone supportive from the your department to achieve this. Otherwise, self-fund or reach out for coaches or mentors are able to achieve this aim. Ideally people that know your area and can help support you to focus on your thesis rather than the publications.
I understand and respect that publication is important especially in mathematics. Publications is the focus for an academic career but you have already invested 10 years of your life and it does not sound like you are going to be hitting a string of publications soon. Also, if you are already working part-time, it seems to me, getting the PhD and then working full-time is a very reasonable and respectable career goal.
Recognise that you get a high every time there is a new challenge. Every one does. It is far more exciting to mov from one exciting topic to the next. Every new challenge has a buzz to it. You have to decide whether this buzz and excitement is more important than completing your PhD. Going over old material and old "stuff" would be drudgery and probably your previous traumatic experience (as you remember why you were not able to achieve publication), but it is important to swallow your pride and decide whether completing a thesis and your PhD is more important than achieving the goal of publication.

Depending on the country and institution, defending a thesis without any published results may be difficult or even impossible.

True @Peteris. It is best to look and investigate the options now though after 10 years? There may need to be a change in focus to pedagogy or a field not requiring publication.

You may or may not have already ruined your chances of completing the degree by missing time limits established by the department.  You may or may not have ruined your relationship with your advisor.  However, the department and your advisor would probably prefer to have a Ph.D. graduate rather than have someone who dropped out of the program, so there is still some chance that you can finish this.
You should start by talking to the director of the graduate program or the chair of the department if there is no director of the graduate program.  What formal requirements for the degree have you completed?  What have you not completed?  Is there a time limit for completion of the degree?  Are you still in the program or will you have to apply for readmission?
Next, talk to your advisor.  Explain that you really want to complete the degree.  Are they still willing to work with you?  Is your research that hasn't been written up yet sufficient for a Ph.D. or do you need to produce more results?  What should your next step be?

Ok. I'm going to be blunt, because I see only one root cause for your situation, and since you wrote yourself that "...I never finish up and publish, because I always find something new to learn or a new problem to research." and "Today, while I have the time, I lack the discipline and environment to finish.", I think you too know what the problem is.
Your lack of self-discipline.
There's no magical cure for that,  none of us here can do no more than to say (as the other answers have more politely done) that you just have to commit fully to finishing what you have started, and get it over with. That's it. Should that be, or actually seem impossible, I bet there are support groups for people in similar situations within your reach.
Not knowing the specifics of your situation it's hard to evaluate how far up or down the S creek you are, but just start paddling.
I do apologise if the previous offends you, but I think you deserve to hear this version too. Believe me, you'll make it. You are the only person who can stop you if you decide to finish your PhD.

You get a PhD for completing a thesis, not for publishing papers (apart from specific courses that require it). It is possible to graduate with a PhD before you publish papers. A supervisor will often encourage you to publish as well but bear in mind that this is often not a requirement of a PhD course (this should be clear in your university guidelines). However, a successful thesis and a publication face many of the same challenges.
They are both subject to scrutiny by examiners or reviewers. Examiners will generally determine whether the thesis presents original research of publication quality (whether it has been peer-reviewed yet or not). This is one of the reasons that experienced examiners, including external and international examiners are used to ensure that it meets international standards for a PhD to be awarded. Generally a novel technique or application is sufficient, it doesn't have to be Nobel Prize worthy.
A thesis must also be coherent and present a logical argument on your topic. If you have several related projects, you must write your thesis is a logical manner that shows how they are linked to address a specific research topic (that you've developed expertise in). Your supervisor should be able to guide you here but it is your responsibility to complete projects and send them draft versions of thesis chapters in a timely manner to get their feedback.
The order will not necessarily be the order that you did the work. Most PhD candidates try many different research directions and need to focus their thesis on a particular topic. You can show some of the directions that you tried that gave unexpected results and motivated the direction that you ended up taking. What's most important is that you can demonstrate that you had an original idea and performed the research yourself and developed the skills necessary to be an independent researcher.
You need to consider carefully whether your work meets this criteria and whether it is worth writing a thesis in your situation. No one can decide that except you. The requirements for a thesis are different to a peer-reviewed publication but they are related. You may need to consult an expert in your field to discuss whether your results would meet this criteria. You could also present the results you have so far as a seminar or at a conference as your audience will bring up concerns that examiners or reviewers will expect you to have addressed.

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text:
Role/importance of letters of recommendation for PhD-applications in Europe?
In the US PhD prospects apply to several universities and those select an amount of applicants from that pool according to how many open spots the universities have for that term. Criteria for admission are GPA, GRE/SAT and research experience documented by 2-3 letters of recommendation.
In Europe the application process is often times quite different in the way, that not a selected number of applicants get admitted each year, but each available research/teaching assistants position is treated individually. Because the requirements differ vastly, a lot of the times the only formal requirement for application is a 'good' or 'very good' masters degree and/or experience in field x or with technology y.
I wonder, are letters of recommendation expected, if so how many, and how important are they actually?

We can distinguish two different kinds of doctoral graduate studies in Europe:

Programs through "graduate colleges" and "graduate schools" with centralized admissions policies
Individual PhD positions in the research group (or institute, chair, etc.) of an individual professor

In the first case, everything is essentially along the lines of an application to a US-based graduate program, and letters of recommendation still carry the same weight.
For an individual position, letters of reference may be important, but as you suggested, it depends on the individual professor doing the hiring. For some research groups, the posting of an application is a formality, as they're only interested in hiring "internal" candidates (that is, people who have already worked in the group as bachelor's or master's students, and who thus can be "directly" evaluated). For people doing real searches, however, letters of recommendation are also important, because they can provide information about a candidate's research abilities in a way that is not possible just looking at a transcript or set of certificates.

I don't fully agree.  For example, I'm enrolled in the Swedish National Graduate School in Space Technology.  However, it was still the individual professor who decided to hire me as a member of the research group (in fact, I was a master student at the time).  So I'd say that in at least some cases, the two kinds that you describe are mixed together.

@gerrit: I've added an additional clarification of "centralized admissions policies" which I hope makes my intention clear.

Right, clearer now (:


text:
Where can I find statistics on the average number of papers published while working on a PhD?
I'm interested in this, because I want to know if there is something like an average number that we might find.
I am looking for statistics on the number of papers published while working on a PhD, preferably by general field of study (e.g. Physics, History, etc., not "Quantum Electrodynamics") and the country where the PhD was completed. If possible, the duration of PhD and amount of course work should also be parameters.

To clarify do you want publications that are directly arise from the PhD or publications that are published while an author is a PhD student.

Any such numbers are meaningless because of huge cultural differences even within a single subject. A PhD in the UK takes 3-4 years, whereas twice that length is common in the US. Also, it seems likely that there are significant variations in publication rates by subfield: maybe quantum electrodynamicists publish more papers than astrophysicists, but you want to lump them all together.

Byrnes (2007) found that for tenured faculty in top departments of psychology in the US there was a correlation between the publication rate during the first 7 years following a PhD and the number of publications during the PhD.

individuals in the bottom quartile published an average of 1.03 predoctoral articles, those in the middle 50% and top 25% published 2.00 and 3.03 predoctoral articles, respectively

Note that the quartiles refer tot he number of articles published during the 7 years following the awarding of the PhD and not the number of predoctoral articles.
This study obviously includes only a small subset of all Psychologists (those who have gotten tenure at top Psychology departments), but may provide a hook into relevant literature.

Also see this recently accepted paper in BioScience (Not yet accessible) for a similar approach, looking at scientific "success" as predicted by early papers, original language and university rank: Predicting publication success for biologists. Summary here: Early to press is best for success.


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Are spelling and/or grammar mistakes a cause for submitting Errata?
During my studies I've read a number of published articles where spelling mistakes have somehow squeaked through the review process. For example, I have found a paper with a section entitled Turbulance Model when the title should be Turbulence Model. I would love to be able to submit an errata if I knew it was going to be a one or two line email, but I don't know of anyone else who does this. Will editors be annoyed with little corrections like this? Surely there isn't a need to bother the corresponding Author with such a matter, is there?
To be clear, I am only thinking of cases like the example I've given; a clear spelling mistake or a missing word. I wouldn't start arguing with an author/editor over wording issues or other gray areas.

I think that's a misuse of the term "errata", which to me is reserved for an addendum for already published works made available by the publisher or author.  In your case, I think a publisher should be overjoyed to get a 2-line email showing the error if you can get it to them before publishing.

@MarkJ Maybe I misunderstand your comment, but I am talking about a publication that has been public for a few years, so it does seem to fall under your definition of errata.

Let’s be utilitaristic and do a rough, optimistic calculation:
First, how much time does correcting a spelling mistake cost?

First of all, it costs you some time to find a way to contact somebody from the journal. I ran an experiment with a random journal and it took me three minutes to find a way to contact the chief editor and to ensure that there is no easy way to contact somebody closer to actual typesetting.
It costs you about one minute to write the mail.
It costs the chief editor (in our example) at least one minute to read the mail and redirect it to typesetting.
It costs the head of typesetting at least one minute to delegate the work.
Whoever is actually doing the work, has to find the source of the paper, correct the mistake, check whether the whole paper is still neatly arranged (even if the correction did not alter the number of lines in the paragraph, the linebreaking algorithm or the font might have slightly changed) and every sentence is still on the same page (in fields, where references to pages happen). Again, I ran an experiment on one of my own papers and it took me two minutes (as the correction had no major effects) – and I operate my computer mainly via keyboard and consider myself a fast typer and well organized, not to forget that I do not have so many papers. Additionally, let’s consider one minute for uploading or similar.

So, all in all, mankind has spent nine minutes on correcting the mistake.
Now, At the end of the day, the reason why we bother with spelling is that it speeds up reading texts, i.e., saves the reader some time. Let’s say a small spelling mistake (like turbulance) costs every reader a second. Thus to break even with our nine minutes, the respective word has to be read about 500 times. I do not have any direct numbers on this, but as papers are mainly read by the same people who write papers, this would mean that I have to read (every word of) 500 papers for every paper I write – which is very far from reality.
Thus even under the above optimistic conditions you are likely wasting more time than you are saving.

Also, from another point of view and my own experience: The involved people do not care. I can tell a story of how much trouble it was to make a typesetter change the way one of my tables was formatted such that it was any readable even if that would make it deviate from the journal guidelines – and that was a severe issue.
Finally, it’s likely that you only need to read a few papers to spot a terminus technicus with confusingly wrong hyphenation. My favorite example is »generalized onset seizure«, which denotes seizures with a generalised onset and not onset seizures, which are generalised.

+1 Cool, I didn't know all the steps that needed to be taken to make a change like that.

It would be cool if you could flag articles for spelling and grammatical errors, so that a typesetter could be notified directly. If that feature existed, I'm guessing it would be about 1 min to flag the post, and 2 mins for a typesetter to verify, correct, and upload. All-in-all about 3 mins of humanity's time, no?  Hmm... still seems to need 180 reads to break even. Maybe not then :)

I have the solution! Just let people edit the articles themselves! That way even conceptual and methodology mistakes could be corrected. Readers could also add their own ideas and fill in details! I'm pretty sure nobody's ever thought of this before. :)

@NauticalMile and Wrzlprmft I'm not sure why you think it would take only two minutes to make even a relatively simple correction to a published article. It's perfectly possible (as partially acknowledged in the answer) for a minor change in wording to completely change the pagination of the article. That could require substantial typesetting work and would also screw up any reference to the article that mentions a page number. If the article becomes a page longer, what are you going to do about its page numbers? The following article's?

[continued] This is why journals are very touchy about what changes you can make even to the galley proofs: a small change at that stage can have major repercussions for the rest of the articles in the same issue. That's time-consuming before publication but a nightmare after.

@DavidRicherby: If the article is already published, i.e., the journal is already printed, changes would only affect the online version anyway and you would at least not need to worry about it affecting other articles. Changes to the pagination however could matter in fields, where referencing pages is not unseen (amended). Also, in most cases, fixing a spelling mistake does not affect the whole article, so I still consider two minutes an optimistic estimate for the average time required.

@Wrzlprmft I agree that fixing a spelling mistake is unlikely to adjust pagination but missing words are the same class of error and are more likely to affect pagination.

All answers are good, but this one showed a rough quantitative reasoning why correction of spelling mistakes and/or missing words is not practical which is why I accepted it.

turbulance can cost more than 1 second if reader is not 100% familiar with English and needs to use dictionaries.

@Vi.: True, but as we are talking about scientific articles, readers will know most of the technical vocabulary to correct such an error for themselves. Sure, sometimes a reader will really need to look up that very misspelt word and fail, but I expect this to be a rare exception. On the other hand there are readers whom this typo will cost less than a second. Keep in mind that this is only a rough calculation anyway and that 1 s is a very roughly estimated average.

It is not necessary to make an errata for simple mistakes. That said, however, you need to consider whether the simple mistake may change the meaning of what is written so the key issue here is "meaning". Anything that can create confusion of introduce an error in vital information necessary to understand the material should be corrected. Since it is generally not possible to change published (e.g. journal) material, an errata note should suffice. Otherwise, the misconception introduced by the mistake might propagate and your original work may be misunderstood. So check whether your found errors introduce any major consequences for correctly understanding the text.

On the arxiv there exist versions of manuscripts, which are a great way to get rid of this kind of mistakes. I hope that with the onset of online-only journals and the prevalence of internet for article reading this will become more mainstream. In the meantime, I would certainly not bother the author or the journal about such obvious mistakes: almost everyone will understand turbulance is misspelled, and although annoying to read, it certainly does not add confusion to the message. It is great to read nicely-written misspell-free papers, but my opinion is that we should not overlook the scientific quality of an article because a few words were wrong or the author was not a great writer.

The definitions of Errata are also very specific to each publisher. E.g. Springer's policies state that publishing an Erratum is appropriate in

cases of serious mistakes or a factual error or omission in the methods, results, or conclusions. To warrant an erratum the scientific error must be serious enough to affect the replication and interpretation of results.

While Elsevier make a distinction between Errata and Corrigenda:

An erratum refers to a correction of errors introduced to the article by the publisher.
A corrigendum refers to a change to their article that the author wishes to publish at any time after acceptance. ... Authors should contact the editor of the journal, who will determine the impact of the change and decide on the appropriate course of action

Both seem to correct already published articles only by publishing another note about the changes, whatever that note might be called. Unless the meaning and understanding of a word or sentence is severely impacted or the scientific message changes, correcting spelling mistakes does not provide any benefit to the already published article.


text:
Who should I address in the cover letter?
I am applying for a postdoc position. A professor advertises the position, and applications are made directly to the professor. His name, email address, etc., is on the "where to send" part. Additionally, the professor is very broad with the application, so a cover letter is more about convincing him of your research idea.
There are questions and answers on this, but should I start the letter with Dear Professor X? Again, no committee and HR email were mentioned.
But the real question is, whenever I refer to the professor's research in the cover letter, do I refer to it in the third person (Prof. X's research has shown...) or directly address the professor (your research aligns with...)?
Two questions are related somehow because addressing the letter to him and then referring to him in the third person sounds just weird to me.

Since whom to address is mentioned in the job call, I would directly address to that person—here, the professor/faculty.
In other cases, I try to find if hiring committee chair’s and member’s information is available on the job call. I address them if I find such information. Else, I would write “Dear Committee Chair and Members”

Sorry, but in my case, it is directly sent to the professor's email, with his name, etc. Faculty are not involved per se. Are you suggesting going with Dear Prof X, then?

Faculty means professor.

Ah, alright, I guess I misunderstood. Cheers.

Yes, address the letter to the professor. I would also not address the prof in the third person, but use other formulations as the one you proposed.

You might consider saying more. Why do you suggest this? Without that explanation it is just an opinion. (BTW, I agree but more needs to be said.

So, I start with Dear Prof Whatever, not referring to him as a "you" in the letter but workaround it without actually mentioning his name in the third person as well.


text:
How should I handle a collaborator who doesn't work?
I am a second year graduate student  collaborating with a postdoc who is not doing his part of the work.
He is always busy making posters for our supervisor or other documentation work that has nothing to do with our project. I have tried to talk to him to move a little quickly since my part is almost over. I feel he is waiting for me to step in and do all the work. This work is important to me. How do I handle this situation without complaining or worrying too much?
P.S.: He cannot be removed from the authorship as he got an M K Bhan fellowship on the same topic.

If your post-doc the MK Bhan fellow, supervisor and others in your lab read StackEx, and if your handle here is your real name, there's a good chance that you are "outed" so maybe they'll come and talk to you now.... But you need also to check the terms of reference - the rules of engagement so to speak- of the collaboration with the supervisor, to better understand the roles and responsibilities in the project: perhaps the post-doc doesn't know he is a collaborator?- maybe you're assuming more than is fact?

Related to understand what the situation may look like through the postdoc's eyes ;) https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/102956/postdoc-overwhelmed-by-incomplete-work

Why do you assert that he is your collaborator and you're collaborating if it seems you're not?   In general, in academia collaboration is voluntary, and if it's not working out in a way that makes you happy, then don't collaborate with them.

How is yours vs. "his part of the work" defined? When you discussed this with your supervisor, what did they say?

While unprofessional from them to not simply communicate their unavailability to you, it's also completely possible that your colleague as a postdoc is either overwhelmed with other responsibilities or is in a position in their career where this project is not as important to them professionally or personally. In my opinion, you need to do two things:

You need to understand that you probably need this project more than your colleague does. So as unfair as it might be, you need to resign to the fact that you probably do need to step in and do all the work.

Having accepted point 1 could happen, you should definitely approach your colleague and explain diplomatically what you've written in your question - that you appreciate their input, that this project is important to you and that you see them as an important collaborator and would really appreciate help in the project. If they say they are willing to do their share of the work, great. Set up a simple timeline and some project milestones and pre-plan meetings to discuss findings to motivate your colleague to keep their end of the bargain. And hope that they meet them. If they don't, you can fall back to point 1.

To echo some of the other comments, it is important to understand that as one goes up in their career level (and their level of responsibilities), they get stretched a bit thinner. So that thing that is incredibly important to you, is just one item on that postdoc's plate. Just as the things that are most important to that postdoc are just one of many items on the PIs plate. Then the things that are most important to the PI are likely just a small item (if anything) to the Department head, and one can keep going.
So you should communicate clearly, and advocate for your specific needs, and see how you can best work together to meet the end goals. If the other person is very busy, then being able to break things up into smaller tangible tasks that they can do may lead to greater success than just a blanket request for them to do everything.
Edit: I also suggest you edit your title. The implication is that the postdoc is not working, but rather the problem is the postdoc has been unable (or unwilling, we don't know) to prioritize your specific collaboration at this time. These are different things as it sounds like they are kept quite busy by your advisor.

I've found that being specific about what you need, can help move the project forward. Also, offer to help if needed, not do, their part of the project.  For example, send a calendar invite to discuss a very specific part of the project you are waiting on. CC your supervisor to have evidence if tasks aren't completed. Send multiple emails and requests for meetings. In lab meetings, you can point out delays if necessary, but ensure you're also on top of your work. The results vary with this technique, sometimes the colleagues appreciate the specificity and the prompt and time-block to get it done, other times they offer a response that just leads to more work for me to chase up.  Though it might sometimes result in more work for you to follow up.
Good luck with "managing up"!