In an academic context, which is a "higher" title: "Professor" or "Dr."?

[angus]

In an academic context, which is a "higher" title: "Professor" or "Dr."?

Professor, certainly.

I became Doctor angus the day I got my PhD, but it would be many years before I would become a Professor.  This is the case for most of my colleagues, who all did post-doctoral fellowships either with the government or universities, and sometimes in the private sector, for anywhere from two to four years. 

All the members of my department have PhD degrees, including all the adjunct professors.  This is true for all the departments in my university except in those cases in which the terminal degree in that field is not a PhD.  (There are also MD, EdD, ThD, DSC, etc., and some only have MS or MA degrees, but that's rare and limited to a few fields.)

I remember when I first started graduate school I asked my mentor whether I should call him Professor or Doctor, and he said, "Call me Dennis.  But if you must be awkward and formal, then call me Professor because I have earned it."  He, too, did several years of post-doctoral research after he got his PhD before becoming a member of the faculty.

That said, students don't always observe such rituals.  We are not very formal in the US.  I worked in Amsterdam for a while, and went to school in Germany as well, and I noticed that they are much more formal over there.  Also, I've been at conferences where there are Japanese and they are much, much more formal.  I've seen post-docs bowing and scraping before their professors.  We generally are on first-names bases with our faculty mentors when we are grad students and post-docs.  Also, students just call everybody Doctor Something without checking to see whether they are actually more appropriately called Professor.  I don't know any US professor who gets hung up on that sort of thing, though. 

But if someone actually has the title of Professor and you insist on being formal, then use that because it is "higher" than Doctor, and they would have had to jump through additional hoops after obtaining the doctoral degree to be appointed to a position that carries the title Professor.

[angus]

seems odd.  Ours would be hard to mark out.  They're little engraved plaques.  You'd have to start from scratch and make a new one if you wanted to change it.  All the plaques in my building say Dr. Name, even though it would be appropriate to use the greater title Prof. on the doors of about 80% of us.  All the faculty in the sciences at my university have PhD degrees--though not all are professors of any rank--and most did at least 2 years of post-doctoral research (similar to the habität of the German/Dutch system, and exactly like the postdoc of the English and French systems).  I think this is probably the case with the humanities as well.  In the social sciences some have EdD or DSW degrees, and a few of them in the fine arts have just MFA degrees (that is the terminal degree in their fields, so presumably their candidates are qualified to seek professorships).  On those offices they have Prof. Name on the door.  Not, I think, because Prof. is somehow a lesser title (in fact it is higher in the sense you asked about), but rather because if they didn't put that they'd have to put Mr. Name or Ms. Name and it might look like cheese.  

They don't do this in the library.  Librarians are hired as tenure-track faculty members, and subject to the responsibilities and privileges thereunto appertaining, but they are not hired with the title Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor.  Also, their terminal degree is the MLS degree, so they don't have the title "Dr." either.  On their doors the plaques actually read Mr. Name or Ms. Name.  But those offices are all in the library, so it's not like there's a mix of Dr. somebody and Mr. somebody in the same corridor.

When I was working as a visiting post-doc in Amsterdam, I noticed that they use Herr Doktor Professor so-and-so, like the Germans, for the PI in the group.  All the other faculty are just called Herr Doktor so-and-so, just like the post-docs are.  (Well, except that we were all on a first-name basis anyway in that particular group, but formally the PI has the title Dr. Prof.)  In seminars and in manuscripts, however, they use the same convention we use.  "...Einstein et al. showed that..."  No one writes "Herr Doktor Professor Einstein" in a paper, although the English do have the annoying habit of affixing the title "sir" to Isaac Newton's name when they talk about him.  I don't think that's an academic title, though.  The only titles I ever see in papers are "Mr." or "Ms." in acknowledgements.  I assume that this is to point out that the person acknowledged does not have a PhD.  (Stockroom managers or instrument technicians who are particularly helpful are often acknowledged in this way in the physical sciences.)  I tend to just write their names just as I'd write a professor's name in such acknowledgements, that is, with no title, although I think I am in a minority in that regard.  

The only reason I can think of that someone would deface a door plaque is to correct a mistake.  If someone had put Professor Angus on my door but I didn't actually have that title, I'd want them to correct it.  (Of course, I'd call buildings and grounds, or the dean's office, and ask them to make a new one, rather than defacing it with chalk or a Sharpie.)