Is it enough to hold a contract as professor (be it a major university), to use this title in official communications?
What are the rules (also unwritten rules) in your country?
I am interested also in European and Asian countries, besides North Americans.
I'm at a North American R1.
The water is a bit muddy because depending on context "Professor" can refer to different things:
There are no formal rules about what you can call yourself (in North America) but the standard practice is:
In Britain, when I applied for a new passport and gave my title as Professor, I was asked to provide evidence of entitlement, in my case a letter of appointment from my university. Without that formal letter from a recognized academic body my claim would have been refused. To claim title without formal appointment or recognition seems like fraudulent misrepresentation.
In Germany, there are two possibilities to become a professor:
As a postdoc, you either
work as an assistant professor for some years and then apply for a professorship, or
write a professoral dissertation and apply for a professorship.
If you then are appointed, you are a professor.
So basically, yes, it is "enough" to hold a contract as a professor. But it is really difficult to get this contract. You need to master several steps - PhD thesis, postdoc, assistant professor or professoral dissertation. And even then, it is not sure you will ever get an appointment. There are many researchers who fulfil all qualifications, apply for one professorship after another and never get appointed.
In the Czech Republic, a professor is only a person that was confirmed for the professor (prof.) degree by the Scientific Comittee of their university and received the degree from the President of the country. Or people that hold similar full professor degrees from other countries.
The holders of degrees equivalent to an associated or assistant professor can not use the "professor" title. Associate professors, after their habilitation, use the "docent" (doc.) title. Assistant professors are simply "doctors".
The whole system continues the traditions from the past Austria-Hungary.
Unrelated usage exists at "gymnasiums" - a specific type of secondary schools similar to grammar schools. They are selective and prepare mainly for further studies at universities. Here all teachers are called "professors" informally, regerdless whether they are doctors or not.
This is again an old tradition going back to the times of the Austrian empire or Astria-Hungary.
BTW although the role of the President of the country is mostly ceremonial, the current president is known for refusing to appoint several professors for various reasons. Those who tried to sue him do not have their title yet.
Britain
In Britain the title "Professor" is used only for select senior academics. Usually they are either heads of department or very senior researchers. To be a Professor you must have been appointed to a specific professorship (chair) by a university.
If you are a college or university level teacher then you are usually referred to as a "lecturer".
Australia: The norm here is that you only use the title "Professor" if you are a full professor (i.e., you have a Level E academic position at a university). Applicable titles here are:
This classification is formalised in the federal government classification of academics in Australia (see e.g., Higher Education Academic Salaries Award 2002 (Cth). I am not aware of any specific rules on using these titles in correspondence. However, use of an inflated title (e.g., using "Prof" when you are not a full professor) would be misleading behaviour and could constitute a breach of academic honesty rules. In any case, if you were to use an inflated title here it would reflect badly on you.
(One thing that often happens in academia in Australia is that foreign academics/journals email you as "Professor" even though you are not a full professor and would not use the title yourself. This derives from the broader American use of the term. When this happens you have to decide whether to correct the person on the other end of the communication, but this can get monotonous, so many academics here just ignore the disparity and allow foreign academics/journals to incorrectly call them "Professor".)
The general rule is that the title of Professor is associated with a position of "University Professor", for which you are nominated by the President. So you have to have the required "technical" prerequisites (a special diploma, an agreement of a special national body, ...), and have a position ay a university (or equivalent).
Then of course it gets more complex, we French being the holders of the "how to make bureaucracy complicated" prize. This includes the "but there is always a way" sub-prize.
You then have medical doctors that award themselves the title of "Professor" if they are the head of a department in a hospital (no matter if they have any relationship with academia or not).
Finally you have teachers who are called "professors" like everywhere else in the world, except that we do have a "professor in a school" kid of affiliation, legally defined (you are part of a special corpus of administration)
I'm from a regional US school with an almost split personality of small liberal arts undergrad and huge health sciences postgrad, and I've observed something here that I've never seen elsewhere: students call anyone with a PhD or MD "Dr", and everyone else "Prof." This bugs me greatly, in part because I did my time as a postdoc where I would have been ROASTED for calling myself Prof, and now I actually merit the title, I want to use it. I really don't feel it's appropriate when the lecturers get called Prof, especially if they don't have doctorates. I actually had one of my research students (!!) shyly tell me one time he just learned that I had a doctorate, and he thought that was really impressive - because he assumed I didn't since I signed my emails Prof instead of Dr.
My theory is that it's the med school's fault, that the MDs prefer Dr to Prof, and it's rubbed off on the rest of us. Don't know if this applies to other, similar universities, though.
Swedish usage:
A "professor" in Swedish is a title used for a person employed at university level with responsiblities for an area. To be hired as professor you need to have completed a PhD (or similar) and generally have to have a comprehensive portfolio of published papers (or similar).
The title as such is not protected in any way, so anyone may be free to use it without any legal consequences.
Other titels used when employed at university are:
"Docent" - requires you to a have higher scientific level above a PhD, generally at least four years after PhD.
"Lektor" - has a PhD.
"Adjunkt" - lower academic degree, often master.
"Doktorand" - employed to do PhD studies.
You might find postdocs as well.
In the US I’d say that there’s no reason to care. Anybody who has had or has a university or other scholastic position position with “professor” in their official HR title is literally entitled to use that word in their formal address. But to what end? Ego inflation seems to be the only value. It might get you higher on a reservation list at a fancy restaurant, but those days seem mostly gone. Some grants are limited to academics within a few (1,2,3, etc) years of their PhD or postdoc, but I haven’t seen “professor” be a requirement, especially given the differences across the country in when that title starts being used (Assistant, Associate, etc?).
In the Netherlands, the title was reserved for those who had the academic rank of Hoogleraar. This is a top rank and equates to the UK ranks of Reader (Hoogleraar 2) or Professor (Hoogleraar 1). The lower ranks of docent (lecturer) universitair docent (university lecturer) and hoofddocent (senior lecturer) are translated as lecturer, assistant and associate professor. However, they are not entitled to call themselves "professor" or use the "Prof." title.
This appears to be changing. It was that only hoogleraars could promote Ph.D. students, which was the justification for restricting the title. Recent rules changes have meant that by special dispensation, some hoofddocenten ("associate professors"/senior lecturers) can have promotion rights. I have seen some of these using the Prof. title. I am unclear whether this is legal or not. The title Professor is protected under Dutch law, and it is fraud to use it if not entitled.
In Flanders, a similar rank system exists, but docenten (lecturers) of all grades can have promotion rights. If they do, then they can use the title Prof. However, they could not leave it unqualified when written in full without being fraudulent. Use of "Prof." is specific to whether the academic is allowed to by the (main) supervisor of Ph.D. students or not.
The UK
The traditional scheme of academic job titles in the UK was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor. Nowadays many universities use the alternative scheme of Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor. However, the title "Professor" is still only used for full professors (who would be a professor in the traditional scheme) or emeritus professors (retired or semi-retired academics who were previously full professors).
Someone whose job title is "Associate Professor" would normally be referred to as "Doctor X" (assuming they have a doctoral degree; this may be accompanied by an additional title e.g. "the Reverend Doctor Y").
These are not official rules in any sense I know of, but merely the way things are done. In any case the person might not bother to use their academic title outside of an academic context.
If you are referring to yourself in any formal setting, use only titles that have been officially conferred. And qualify them as needed: associate professor, for example. In the US it is common to use the term informally for yourself in casual conversations and such.
For referring to others you can use the term in a more generic sense most places and in most situations as a synonym for a university faculty member. Some places are more formal (Germany, Austria) than others (US). US students do this pretty regularly, for example, to refer to their instructors.
If you have a title from one country/culture that isn't common in another, then you can give your official title, as given and suggest it is similar to a title from the place you are communicating with. But don't assume your translation is official in any way.
Mainland China and Hong Kong (I didn't bother looking up Macau or Taiwan):
In mainland China:
Hou Yifan, the record holder for youngest female grandmaster, is said to be a 'professor' at Shenzhen university. But I doubt e has a PhD.
Therefore, in mainland China, you need not have a PhD to have the title of 'professor' unlike places like Hong Kong (ironic?) or some parts of the US where having a PhD is necessary but not sufficient to have the title of 'professor'.
According to several sources, Hou Yifan is indeed a 'full' professor, instead of assistant or associate professor. I'm unable to find a profile on shenzhen's website. Or even like a list of faculty members that includes h.
In Hong Kong:
I've checked all the maths departments in city university, chinese university, hong kong university of science and technology, hong kong university and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and not a single person is professor or even assistant or associate professor without a PhD. Meanwhile there are many PhD holders who are merely 'instructor' or 'lecturer'.
At least last I checked in early 2021.
In the Philippines:
Not entirely certain. Professor is often used colloquially to mean 'teaches at a university', but technically I've yet to see a faculty member's profile where the person is said to be 'professor' (without qualifier; see next) without a PhD.
In Cebu:
In the mathematics department of the university of san carlos in cebu (not to be confused with the university of south california, as the old joke goes), several faculty members (see for yourself) are considered 'assistant professor' without a PhD. None of the faculty members there appear to have a PhD, and no one is considered associate professor or (full) professor there.
In Manila (the capital):
I've yet to see an 'assistant professor' in, say, the mathematics departments of the university of the philippines or ateneo de manila university without a PhD though.
Edit to add:
In my experience, in the Philippines, any faculty with the position having the word "professor" (asst. prof., assoc. prof., prof.) may be called "Professor." In the past (in the Philippines), it was possible to be a professor even if you didn't have a doctoral degree. So it was more prestigious to be called "Doctor" (which requires having a doctoral degree) rather than "Professor." Usually the term "Professor" is used when the person does not have a doctoral degree. – Joel Reyes Noche
