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Is there a convention regarding frames around plots in engineering?
I am writing my PhD thesis in engineering at a research university in the US.
My question is about using frames (or boxes) around a plot, specifically simulation results plotted as a function of time.  These figures are intended to span the entire width of the type-area (i.e. paragraph width) and are to be displayed prominently.
Here is a simple example for comparison between the two options (framed and open):

Is there any convention regarding such frames, e.g., as documented by prominent style guides? I am all up for minimalism (use greyscale, avoid clutter etc), but I wonder if removing the surrounding frame itself is too much (and may surprise exam committee in unexpected ways) due to going against existing conventions.
My university doesn’t have a style guide. And when I checked with the research support office, they said that as long as it adheres to acceptable scientific style, it is fine.
PS:
When this question was originally asked on the graphic design SE site, a user recommended that the x-label should not be near the bottom edge of the frame, but rather a horizontal axis should be drawn at y = 0, and the labelling of the x-axis should be done near this. I am skeptical of this advice, since most engineering software (eg. MATLAB) does not do this.

Sidenote: While I consider it valid to ask whether there is a convention in engineering (which I wouldn’t know, not being an engineer), the most decisive factor for your actual problem is probably your supervisor’s opinion, whether it aligns with existing conventions or not.

@Wrzlprmft My supervisor does not have an opinion on this. According to them, my PhD thesis is my story and does not want to limit my choices to his preferences. "Whatever maximises the clarity to the wider readership, especially to other Phd students like you, who may be looking to reproduce your results during their own PhD" was their answer.

Well, then lucky you.

While we are at sidenotes: If you strive for perfection, you should use proper minus signs instead of puny hyphens and the same number of digits for tick labels on linear axes.

In industry, you’ll often encounter branding guidelines around data visualization: fonts, colors, padding, margins, legends, etc. In academia, enforced adherence to branding guidelines is less common, particularly as an undergraduate. The exception is if you are presenting on behalf of the university or as part of your official role within the university. Even then, your institution may be happy with simply applying their logo to each slide. In terms of publishing research, every journal will have its guidelines that you need to apply to your articles layout and often the figures.
Now, in terms of the larger principles of data visualization, there are several go to figures. Perhaps the best known is Edward Tufte, who’s published a number of books, such as Visual Explanations. One of the ideas he’s contributed to is the maximization of the data-ink ratio (i.e. use the least amount of ink necessary to enable the data to ‘speak’).
In the context of your question, removing the frame is not a bad idea, in most cases they yield no utility. Removing axes entirely may be a bit aggressive. Removing unnecessary ticks and markers may be a nice middle ground. But those are just ideas; try exploring how the idea of a data-ink ratio can be put to use, it’s a fantastic tool.

thank you for your answer. Marked as accepted. This is for a PhD thesis in engineering. Principles of tufte sound fascinating. I shall have a look.

Of course, and yea, Tufte’s great - a modern luminary on how to use visualize data.

There is no convention or guide on this, at least none with appreciable universality. Having said that, one doesn't need a style guide for things like this.
The intention is to be clear to the reader. Minimalism or any other aesthetic ideal is secondary. In engineering, the values on graphs are potentially of interest, not just the trend. So a reader could potentially want to know the value of y(x), and your graph of y vs x should make it as easy as possible for him/her to do so. The top and right  axes make it easier to read out values, because (a) you now have two sets of axes to check your value against, (b) a point on the top-right is as easy to read as a point on the bottom-left.
Given that, I wouldn't recommend removing the frame or the ticks on the frame.

Thank you for the answer. That is indeed a valid point you are raising. Someone on graphicdesign.SX pointed out that, if I am using the frame, the labels on the x-axis should coincide with the y=0 line. I am not sure if this is good advice.

Hmm, perhaps that is when the y-axis starts from 0. The reason being that you don't have to separately mention the starting point for both axes. But if your graph has y<0, then naturally the x-axis labels should not coincide with y=0.

That makes a lot of sense.

I would also note that frames are particularly helpful when there are multiple plots (possibly with different scales) close to each other, as one might have in a paper.


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What type of content (depth/breadth) is expected for a short presentation for Asst Professor interview in the UK?
I have been recently offered an interview call for my dream job - Asst. Professor (above lecturer grade, but below Assoc Prof/Reader grade in the UK) in a newly founded research group at a mid-tier UK university.
I have just finished my PhD last month (Mar 2019) from a top-tier (Oxbridge) university in the UK and had applied for this position without really expecting an interview call. At the start of the interview, I am asked to deliver a 10 minute presentation titled "Your 3-year plan to become an independent academic"
My current problem is that this interview is scheduled immediately (within 2 days), and this doesn't give me sufficient time to contact my former PhD supervisor(s) for their valuable advice.
I have zero post-doc experience as an independent researcher. My questions are:

How deeply technical should I go in the presentation slides for such an opportunity? (i.e. are details at the equation-level required and journal citations expected?)
Should I have identified specific research methodologies, potentially leading to the PhD title for the students I shall be supervising?
Is it appropriate to be more modest and aim to only co-supervise (rather than be primary supervisor for) my first PhD student?
Is an individual year-wise breakdown/Gantt chart expected at such faculty interviews?
Should I identify the grants that I shall be applying to (in particular, the specific EPSRC schemes that exist for early career researchers)?
Are there any other aspects that I may have completely missed here?

I am really sorry to be naive in asking a lot of questions here. This faculty position is in the exact same area as my PhD (in energy engineering/alternative fuels) and I'd like to give it my best.

In the UK, "assistant professor" is typically exactly the same position as "lecturer". Some universities use the lecturer/senior lecturer/reader/professor terminology and others use assistant professor/associate professor/professor.

@DavidRicherby that is generally true. But this university seems to be an exception in that both lecturer and asst prof positions co-exist here.

While really short, 10 minute job talks in the UK are the standard and I actually think they work pretty well in that they do a good job of weeding people out. Sure, there were applicants that we turned down because they screwed up the job talk, but generally if the job talk went well, we were happy with the candidate. The best job talks accomplish 4 things.
First, they demonstrate ownership of your research. Many recent graduates were handed a PhD project and really never made it, or a portion of it, there own. Schools want to hire people that own their research. Talk about what your supervisor envisioned the project as being and how you transformed it into something even better.
Second, they frame the research in a way that makes it broadly accessible and highlights links to other members of the faculty. You don't need to hit the faculty member over the head, but you can talk about how your work on underwater basket weaving is important to consider when studying transportation of goods. During the Q/A portion of the talk, there is almost always a question about how your work relates to someone else's in the department. Alice may ask you how your work links with Bob's.
Third, they highlight which aspects of the technical details you have mastered and what things you still need to master. They will want to see that your current technical skills will allow you to pull off an interesting and funding worthy project. The best talks bring the audience to the weeds, acknowledge you are at the weeds and that you are happy to talk about them all day/night, all without actually going into the weeds. At the end of the talk you will inevitably get a probing technical question about some detail of your method from someone who has read your papers and understands what is going on (at least in a narrow scope). For these questions you apologize to the audience that you are about to jump into the weeds and give the technical answer.
The final thing is that they present a set of aims of the next research question. Ideally, the whole talk builds towards these so the faculty can see how your previous work leads to the aims and that your skill set will let you answer them. Even better is when a couple of other faculty can see ways to collaborate with you on the project. You do not need titles of sub projects or a timeline. Having identified a funding mechanism is always nice. You don't want to sound too independent at this stage, rather you want to come off as receptive to input and willing to modify the project to capture the strengths of the school. If there is a dinner/lunch afterwards, this will be the foundation of many of those discussions.

this is amazing. Thanks for giving me a 4 point agenda. I shall try to structure my presentation around this.

This is a fantastic answer. Applicable to so many different types of "job talks"!

This is a lovely answer and applies widely to academic job talks. What completely blows my mind is how could anyone expect all of this in a 10 minute presentation.

@SashoNikolov that is what makes the 10 minute job talk so useful in that so many people cannot do it. I would  venture to say half the 10 minute job talks in any search are disasters.

This answer is a bit speculative so use caution in accepting the advice. You have only a few minutes and they will slip by quickly.
I would focus on work in progress and on funding opportunities. If the audience is well familiar with your field, you could spend a bit of time on how you can appeal to grad students (whether as advisor or co-advisor). The time frame they are expecting you to cover is short, so work in progress is most important, but a mention of long term goals might get a short mention. If you use novel techniques or approaches that could be where you put any (short) bits of detail.
Also, it is probably worth saying a word or two about your ability to work cooperatively/collegially and your experience with it if you have any.
However, the word independent in the call is probably what they really want to hear about. Work in progress, again. You don't have much time for depth, though.
Try to give your talk at least once to a friend before the big day. You probably have too much information for 10 minutes. You want to know that beforehand.
And if this is a "cattle call" with four such talks in an hour, then you will need to find a way to stand out a bit from the crowd. Something positive that people might remember. But if the rest of the hour is for the faculty to ask questions, then you can be brief about a lot of things you mention.

thanks a lot for your support and the excellent points in your answer. Can you please elaborate on work in progress ? I have finished my PhD last month, and currently not involved in any research. But I do have some new (untested/unproven) research ideas that I wanted to do at the end of my PhD (but ran out of time).

Those untested ideas are the key to it. Especially if you have a bunch of them and some extend what you have already done.

Congratulations on your interview! Let me answer from the perspective of a current academic staff member at an institution like the one you describe. I'll give a few general points, rather than focusing on your questions individually. Of course, these are based on my personal experience and point of view, so don't take them as gospel.

First, be aware that 10 minutes is really short! Have you given a talk of this length before? If not, you may be surprised how little you can say in this space of time without rushing through things. Before worrying too much about fine details of what to say, try putting together a few slides and giving them a run-through at a comfortable pace. This will give you a better idea of how much you can fit in, and help you to prioritise your material. (Ideally, you should do this with someone listening.)
Second, know your audience. Your invitation email may or may not specify who you are going to be talking to, but if not, it's really worth writing back and asking for this information. If the audience is going to be made up of members of the research group that is hiring, then more technical detail may be appropriate; if the talk is open to (say) the whole Faculty of Engineering, you may want to give a more high-level talk.
Third, stick to your brief. If you are supposed to talk about "Your 3 year plan to become an independent academic", then focus on that. In particular, talking about grants that you plan to apply for is very much on-topic. Of course, you should make sure that the items you mention are realistic for someone at your career stage: a "plan" to win a £10 million Network grant from EPSRC (or whatever) is probably not going to impress anyone.
Good luck!

thanks a lot for your warm wishes and your excellent answer. I also propose a partnership with flagship institutions at my home country India. I have already had discussions with the department head about this. Is this worth mentioning? What other funding opportunities exist for early career researchers in UK?

Dear Krishna, I don't know much about funding opportunities, but you should certainly look at the websites of EPSRC, RCUK and the Royal Society for starters. About "partnership": if this means something like visits to/from researchers in other countries, by all means mention it. More formal partnerships (e.g. involving students getting joint degrees) can involve a lot of administrative work for the university, so probably won't come across as realistic. Try to be sure your 3-year plan is really achievable (at least most of it!)

First, congratulations on your interview. Preparing well and asking questions here is a good step. You may be surprised how little the other candidates have done. Hopefully the other answers all give some insight. I hope to add some more.
My (limited) experience of job interviews of this type normally focus on what you will bring and how you will link to others in the group/department. What you will bring can include expertise, connections (you have mentioned your links to the university in India) but also money. In the UK this means:

REF: you really need to know what this is and what you can submit as part of the next REF submission,
grants/external funding opportunitues: RCUK may be the main source but look at European grants, charitable organisations and industry collaborations,
students: there is increasing pressure to increase student numbers at all UK universities, in particular from overseas. Students in the UK pay high fees (especially if they're not from the EU).

You need to be aware of all these things for both the presentation but also any interviews and other discussions.
To answer your questions:

How deeply technical should I go in the slides for such an opportunity? (Any equations/journal citations are expected?)

I would answer this with another question: how does technical detail help you demonstrate how you will build your independence? I think technical details are better left to other discussions. You should mention which journal/conferences your publications are published in (and any other submitted to). This gives the audience a clue about your REF-ability.

Should I have identified specific research methodologies, potentially leading to the PhD title for the PhD students I am supposed to supervise
Is it more appropriate to be modest and put in the slides to aim to just co-supervise (rather than be primary supervisor for) PhD student

I think these questions are best lumped together. I would answer them more generally about how would you build a "group". Straight from a PhD you may not have much supervision experience (PhD or Post-Doc level). How would you build that? Is that important for your next three years?

Is an individual year-wise breakdown/Gantt chart expected at such faculty interviews?

A clear plan is a good option. What you do in the first year should be quite clear in your mind (see for example: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/careers-advice/working-in-higher-education/2579/planning-for-a-fantastic-first-year-as-a-lecturer). Further years can be less detailed but you should know where you are going.

Should I identify the grants that I shall be applying to? (In particular, what specific EPSRC programmes exist for early career researchers?)

Yes - it is important that you have a handle on what funding opportunities are available but you do not need to commit to these applications.

Any other aspect that I may have completely missed?

The final point which is less tangible is "fit". The department you are applying to are making a large commitment in you - getting rid of you after the interview isn't straight forward - so all the people who are at the talk will be judging if they think they can work with you (either in research or more likely in teaching, recruitment or other administration). You describe the university you are applying to as mid-tier - be careful that you are not insulting anyone.
Good luck!

thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a high quality answer

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Can a professor use their student's work as their own work?
I'm studying in a college in India. I have a course with a professor who is insisting that we submit our presentations in ppt format so that he can use them as his own ppts for his later batches.
Is the professor allowed to do this?

what kind of presentation? Something your original work or he is asking to present someone else work ?

If you are doing this as homework and he finds good presentations which are better than his own slides, I would consider that a big win. Have you asked to be exempted from the possibility of having your slides repurposed?

I ran a project for 200+ students and told them "a benefit for me is that I have 200+ researchers covering this topic, much better than just me doing google..." But I woulld not take their material...

@MBK not original, but work of survey type... We need to read from several sources and making a good presentation from all of them...

@triplee but forcing to make ppt slides instead of other formats is not acceptable as per me...

I totally agree that PPT sucks, but unfortunately this type of requirement is impossible to avoid, and seems tangential to your question anyway.

Yeah, forcing is one of the main concern, but if he has right to edit and use it as his own slides, then only  I need to give in other formats (not in pdf). I'm using pdf so that no one can edit my work.

How have you concluded that he intends to use them "as his own powerpoints"? Do you just assume that he is trying to appropriate your work, rather than use work of former students as examples of good and bad work to help guide future students?

@Buffy Not assumption, he is using either slides provided by textbook's website or the slides made by our seniors/ super seniors to teach in class. The topics which are unexplored till yet by him, he gives as assignments to students and collects their presentations.

All learning activities you do as a student of University should, ideally, serve one purpose — to benefit your learning. Your assessment is only a way of measuring this learning. All requirements/restrictions for assessment should, ideally, serve one purspose — fairness of assessment.
I see no problem in lecturer taking samples of student's work to teach next cohort, as long as these samples are properly attributed and/or anonymised as appropriate. The lecturer should not, of course, pass students' work as his/her own — this is plagiarism. Samples should be clearly marked as such.
However, working with samples is lecturer's job and it does not justify the restrictions imposed on the format of your assessment.
I can understand a requirement to submit work in a format that lecturer can read — e.g. typeset not handwritten. I can understand why files need to be submitted using a universally accessible/open format, such as pdf. Forcing student into a proprietary format with no clear benefit to their learning is a bad practice. Forcing them into this format only because the lecturer does not know how to take a page out of a pdf document is very bad practice — it only demonstrates that the lecturer is incompetent with IT. The lecturer is not using their position of power and trust to the best.
Unfortunately, the world is not ideal, and in quite a few places educational system leaves to be desired. If you decide to file a formal complaint, assess your strategy and make sure it does not backfire you. It is a good idea to consult someone local — don't act simply based on advice from the Internet.

Tell me how you copy-paste selected content from a pdf - it is not IT incompetence in such cases but bad experience with the nature of the pdf format. But of course e.g. open office would do the same job.

@DanielHatton Repel

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Do all authors have the right to access LaTeX source code of the PDF manuscript uploaded to a journal's portal by the corresponding author?
I am a PhD student about to graduate (finished defense/Viva, pending final thesis corrections and final upload before conferral of degree).
I am a co-author on a manuscript for a journal article. There are 5 other authors on this manuscript. I wrote some chunks of text and created a few figures of the manuscript.
Our initial manuscript submission to a journal (Elsevier is the publisher) came back after peer review requiring us to do major corrections. The first named author on the manuscript and my two supervisors undertook the majority of this task. For the manuscript writing aspect, I also contributed a revised figure and couple of paragraphs of text for the pending resubmission (I also did other tasks to address peer-review comments such as doing long-running simulations with different parameters etc).
Right from the beginning, the manuscript was written in LaTeX. I had also written some of the LaTeX code (for a couple of sections of the initial manuscript submission which came back after peer-review requiring major corrections). In fact, the first named author and myself were using git and a shared github private repo for pulling/pushing our TeX source code as we were working on the draft of the manuscript. However, post peer-review, the first named author took upon the manuscript re-writing task for resubmission entirely to themselves, and stopped pulling/pushing TeX code on our shared github repo.
Today, the corresponding author sent me the PDF of the revised manuscript for my comments and approval before resubmission. I requested the LaTeX source code of the revised PDF for my personal archival purposes. However the other authors who worked hard for the re-submission are reluctant to do this. They reasoned to me that a PDF version is sufficient for me to review and offer my comments. My personal thoughts on their behaviour is that they might have strong ownership feelings about the  revised manuscript since the rewriting was quite demanding in effort with large changes/rewrites necessary to address peer-reviewers comments.
My question therefore is: "are all authors on a journal manuscript automatically entitled to see all artefacts submitted by the corresponding author to the journal's portal (such as the LaTeX source code, covering letter and other relevant submission materials)?"

From what do you expect such "entitlement" to arise? Is there a conflict here? Who is denying you the source? If you have a conflict with your co-authors that is for you to resolve.

@Buffy is your comment fully relevant to my question? To answer your question, no there is no conflict. Just as an additional info, there are a couple of more authors on the manuscript who haven't seen the LaTeX source. I believe my original question has standalone merit. Do all authors on a submitted manuscript have right to access the LaTeX source code?

@krishna What exactly do you mean by Do all authors on a submitted manuscript have right to access the LaTeX source code? If you mean access to the LaTeX source code of the camera-ready version prepared by the publisher, then no, not in general, some publishers may make it available, others not. If you mean access to the LaTeX source code written by your co-authors, then this is typically the case, but this probably isn't formally required.

@user2768 No, I don't mean the camera-ready version (thought that was a conference-specific terminology; this is a journal) or any other version incorporating the publisher's in-house typesetting efforts.  I am simply referring to the latex source codes that produces the resubmitted PDF. Elsevier's EVISE portal requires the PDF of the manuscript as well as the editable latex source codes to be uploaded by the corresponding author.

Your collaborator seems unnecessarily protective (or maybe insecure) about the TeX source, and I don't really see what they think they'll gain from it. Hiding some super awesome macros, or ashamed of shoddy TeXing? Take your pick.
That said, if you haven't worked on the source yourself or established things clearly beforehand, well, you probably don't have any automatic legal rights to it. You'll have rights to the end product, the words and the figure - at least until those rights are signed over to the publisher - but not necessarily the source. If a collaboration is to be, you know collaborative, they absolutely should share the code. Yet if they don't, it's not really worth pressing the issue. Just label this colleague as difficult to work with and remember that before considering working on new projects with them.

Thank you for your answer. I missed out explicitly stating one detail in my question which I have updated now. That is,  I had also written some of the LaTeX code (for a couple of sections of the initial manuscript submission which came back after peer-review requiring major corrections). In fact, the first named author and myself were using git/github for pulling and pushing our edits of the TeX source code as we were working on the manuscript. However, post peer-review, they took upon manuscript re-writing task for resubmission, and stopped pulling/pushing TeX code on our shared github repo.

@krishna I see. In my opinion that makes their behavior harder to motivate, but the logic in my answer could apply to the contents of a revision too. However, somewhat unrelated to the question about rights, this makes me wonder if their answer could be a passive aggressive attempt to signal that they became unhappy with you or the collaboration at some point. That'd make it an interpersonal issue, and maybe a different question.


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Navigating collaborations as a postdoc
I am a new postdoc (finished my PhD a few months ago) who started with a new group during COVID-19.
In my field collaboration is the norm and solo-author papers are rare. I need to start approaching people (both within the group and external) to collaborate on projects, but I am very nervous, and even after reading several existing questions on approaching collaborators I am not sure what to do.
There are two professors I might collaborate with. For each scenario I have also included some specific questions in bold to address the things I'm struggling to figure out.

Working with a professor in our group who has a very impressive track record in creating new methods/tools. I have an idea for a method that could build on some of his work to address a different problem (about 30% his existing code/method and 70% new things). He liked the idea when I met him a year ago during my postdoc interview, but I'm not sure if he knew that none of my prior experience involved developing new methods. I would probably need a lot of help/guidance on this.

He is friendly and approachable with PhD students, but I'm nervous because as a postdoc I'm not sure how much help/guidance I'm still allowed to need. How should I go about approaching him, and what should I say to define potential roles/how the collaboration would work?

A professor at another university I have previously exchanged a few emails with to ask question that fell within his area of expertise (my postdoc mentor introduced us). I am thinking of doing a paper that builds on my dissertation using a different type of data. He wouldn't be familiar with the method I'm using, but he is very familiar with the question and the literature, and I could use his advice on different ways to define/measure the outcome in the new data. The reason I want to invite him as a co-author (if there is a paper) is because his expertise would be helpful for the discussion section, and once there's a paper draft the whole thing could benefit from his input.

It may or may not be possible to do this paper - I can't check statistical power until I ask him more questions about defining/measuring the outcome. When and how would it be appropriate to transition from asking questions to inviting him as a co-author? And what should I say (and when) to discuss defining what his role as co-author would be?

Welcome to Academia! It is preferred if you can post separate questions instead of combining your questions into one. That way, it helps the people answering your question and also others hunting for at least one of your questions. Thanks!

Thanks! I took out the question about the PhD student and will post it separately. The other two are related enough that I think they might be better to ask in the same post so people can answer both together. I've also tried to reduce the overall length.

"I would probably need a lot of help/guidance on this." Don't expect that.
The best you can luckily expect: he will be very friendly, he will be very open to discussion, he will give you the freedom to fail alone, he will have no time to guide you.
When you discuss employment (i.e. at an interview): make clear he must give you the freedom to attend courses, workshops, seminars ... and freedom means money AND time.
Don't forget that inside every professors, under the layers of bureaucracy and formalities, encrusted layers of selfish arrogant ego, there is a curious postdoc.

How did this turn out?

Note: answered before recent edits. I'll clean it up after it settles down a bit. (minor edits made for temporary readability)
In all of these questions, don't try to settle all issues at the outset. Just start a dialog. In the first case, admit that you will need his help on "methods", but that you hope he is interested in moving forward with you on the topic.
In the (now removed) case of a student suggest that you are aware that there are issues about his ability to commit, but let him decide whether to spend the time and effort.
And in the second case of a remote professor, ask for his willingness to give you feedback and perhaps collaborate on a paper.
But the key is to open the conversation, not to write a contract. While the boundaries need to be made clear fairly early in any collaborative effort, it needn't be the initial concern. And, most important, don't make assumptions about what is possible before you ask.

Thank you!! Sorry for the edits, the original was very long and needed to be split into multiple questions.


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One tenured job to another tenured one?
I have recently been promoted to associate professor with tenure. But I want to relocate to another institution of similar rating. Is it possible to get an offer with tenure from another institution in the US? How common/uncommon is it in the US? Advices on the procedure with respect to the US academia will be highly appreciated.
The central part of my question is about the possibility for retaining the 'tenured' status at the mid-career move (e.g., how common it is and how to negotiate).

https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/824/13240

Thank you @AnonymousPhysicist for pointing to the earlier posts. Those are insightful, but do not address my question. The central part of my question is about the possibility for retaining 'tenured' status.

Usually one does not move unless one retains the same rank or gets a higher rank.  So yes, tenured status is usually retained.

As discussed in the other question, there is not a standard procedure.

Thank you @AnonymousPhysicist !

It is possible.  It is done all the time.  But you should not expect getting any tenured or tenure-track job to be easy.  Advice:  Don't resign your current job until you get the new one.
added
My experience:
Perhaps the usual would be hiring an associate professor with a one-year probationary period, after which tenure would be determined.  Our university was reluctant to grant tenure immediately, so if we wanted it our chairman would have to make a special plea to the dean or even the provost.  On the other hand, I never saw the tenure denied after the one-year period.

Thank you @GEdgar for responding to the central part of my question (which is about the possibility for retaining 'tenured' status). I surely won't quit job before securing another offer :). Any advice on the key factors in the negotiation for retaining tenured status?

@relocator They should really want to hire you, and you should make it clear that you won't come without tenure. (Of course, if you are desperate to leave for whatever reason, this might be difficult.)

I would think that a two year probationary period is also pretty common, especially for someone at the beginning of their career. I think that tenure-at-hire is pretty uncommon except for senior level superstars.

@Buffy - although I’ve known a few senior level superstars who didn’t care about tenure at all.

Let me add that I've seen people taking a sabbatical in one university and use that for that "one-year probation period", and then they can decide if they move or not.


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What should one do with his/her manuscript after some sort of academic misconduct
This happened in my group. One of the master students in our group had a manuscript derived from her thesis, and the manuscript was planned to publish with she and her advisor (who is the PI of our group) to be the authors. However, she put the manuscript on the internet some time ago without the advisor's consent (I learned that she put it on research-gate publicly). The PI got furious about this and said that what the student did was disrespectful to him as a co-author, and he would no longer co-author this work (this happened in our group meeting from which I heard of the event).
Here are some facts about this event that comments request me to tell to make things clear.

The manuscript is almost finished but still under some revision by the time she put it on the internet.
The student exposed the PI as the co-author in the unfinished the manuscript on the internet, and she did it without the PI's consent.
Consensus on co-authorship was reached before this event happened, so I assume the PI deserves the authorship.
The PI said to the student that he would from then on have no relation with the work, but he hoped she could revise the work as best as she can.
The paper fortunately was read by no one on research-gate.

Although I know making a manuscript accessible to the public without consent from all co-authors is illegal , but the action my PI choose to deal with it, i.e., no longer co-author the work is still surprising to me. What's his point of doing so? Is this so serious an issue that he has to do so? Why he don't even give the student a chance to right her wrongs? I newly learned that the paper was withdrawn, but attitude of the PI remains unchanged. Is the student still unforgivable even after she withdrew the manuscript?
I also have further questions:
What should the student do with the almost finished work? Simply bury it in history or try to publish herself? At least in my point of view, neither is a good solution. Since our PI was soooo angry, I don't even dare ask the PI why he took such an extreme action. So I am asking here.

Sounds like the PI refuses to work with the person in question ever again - understandable from my perspective. You cannot write a publication together on that basis. The PI obviously does not need the paper. We can only speculate about the details.

@Snijderfrey Yeah, still surprising to me that the problem is serious enough to make the PI 'refuse to work with the person in question again'. Would you please explain a little bit to help me understand the underlying way of thinking?

Putting an unfinished manuscript on arXiv can cause serious reputational damage to a scientist if it contains errors, inaccuracies, exposes a line of ideas which is not complete and can be taken up by a third party to complete the work. Whoever did put the arXiv paper online basically exposed the PI. In the present case, maybe the document was simply not quite polished rather than erroneous, but clearly it is considered as a breach of trust by the PI. Better for the student to seek a new supervisor, the relation seems irrecovably damaged.

I don't know where to place my comment so I do it here. Nothing change for OP... But why a supervisor should assume that a master student knows what is right and what is wrong on this subject? At least it seems to me there is not a community flow of info within the group. In the time the results were obtained, even a naive student should get an idea of how things work. It is a fault on the supervisor side. Still, OP, how came to your mind that a work done in collaboration can be disclosed to public without a previous discussion /notification of the involved persons?

@Nathaniel. But wait, why do you think the former scenario makes an unreasonable PI? Isn't it plagiarism not including the PI as an author assuming that he deserves the authorship? XD

@Danadey well, that's true, but I think being so angry that the group members don't want to ask for an explanation probably indicates a certain amount of unreasonableness no matter what the situation. The former situation would be easier to fix, by adding the PI as an author once it's in a state where they're happy with that, and a reasonable person would agree to a solution like that. The latter situation is harder to fix, but even so, I would expect the PI to seek a resolution rather than cutting ties with their own student.

@CaptainEmacs As an update, I now learned that she didn't put it on arXiv, but research-gate publicly.

@Danadey I am not sure whether that changes a lot, unless it is possible to remove a paper from researchgate (I have no idea whether this is an option).

@CaptainEmacs As far as I know, papers on research-gate can be withdrawn easily, unlike arXiv.

Has the withdrawal option been suggested/carried out to the PI? If this returns the situation to the original one, was that suitable to soften the PI's position? To be honest, I would have expected an MSc student to know better, so I can kinda see PI's point, but if they come from a culture/country that does not have an equally developed education on authorship rules, maybe this can be presented as a difficult lesson now learnt by the student?

@CaptainEmacs  Yes, I newly learned that the option is already carried out, but resulting in the PI's attitude remains unchanged.

That sounds like the options are exhausted. Perhaps your friend could put PI as acknowledgement (if PI agrees).

For the record: "making a manuscript accessible to the public without consent from all co-authors is illegal" might not be true, depending on the country and any agreements that may exist among the co-authors. But ultimately it doesn't matter; this is possible academic misconduct, and from an academic perspective, the severity of the action and the options for dealing with it are matters of academic convention, totally unrelated to whether or not it's legal.

@DavidZ Sorry for the fact that "illegal" is not a good word to say that. I just use "illegal" to express this is a misconduct, not expressing "forbidden by law".

OK, well "illegal" does mean "against the law" (more or less), so I'd suggest using a different word. Judging by the context, perhaps "unethical", "immoral", or "inappropriate", or something along those lines, would be a good choice.

I think that the action was a serious breach of trust, but I think there are better ways for the PI to deal with it. If the student didn’t mean malice but published because of inexperience, there should be a way to correct the action and move on.
Concerning a student, I think the best choice is for the student to contact another member of the faculty committee and obtain guidance in how to deal with the PI. I’m suggesting this because the question, while superficially only addressing a paper, cuts much deeper: If your PI advisor is so angry with you as to not coauthor a paper, the relationship may be fractured to the point that efficient mentor ship and guidance has become impossible and the student might be best advised to consider changing advisors.
The answer to the question about the continued membership in the lab will then determine the best path forward for the manuscript as well.

The student indeed didn't mean malice but did the wrong thing because of inexperience in this event (assuming no other unpleasant history, since I don't know)

Then what should be done to the manuscript it the student ends up switching an advisor in your opinion?

It will require further discussion with the PI. If a colleague or the faculty committee can not reach a satisfactory solution, then the student should reach out to the ombudsperson at the university and request aid in resolving the issue.

The PI said he just leave the manuscript to the student and no longer care about it anymore (Sad answer).

As pointed out by @Buffy this is not a clear permission to move ahead. The student needs to seek mediation to clarify how the manuscript could be published, seek clear consent, and possibly rewrite the manuscript so it does not rely on substantial contributions from the formerly intended coauthor.

It might be a serious breach of trust, but nothing in the question indicates that.

student ... put her work on the internet ... without the advisor's ... consent. The PI got furious.

I will assume this information is exactly correct and nothing else has happened.
Sure, the student should have asked permission first, but posting your own work on the internet is not major misconduct.  The PI's response should be to ask the student to get permission next time.

Is it unforgivable?

This is not only forgivable, it is a trivial matter.
I think the PI is actually angry about something else you did not mention.

Oh, I would hesitate about whether "her work" in my previous post is a proper description.  It's her thesis work to be exact, which means the student did almost all of the work while the advisor serves to do something like giving advice, pointing out some mistakes and telling the student how to polish the writing, etc. I don't know what's your standard of "your own work". Sole author work only? or this case also meet your standard? Apology in advance if my wording in my previous post was unclear. I have made it clearer now.

@Danadey What does "thesis work" mean? The actual thesis? Article manuscript for a journal? Something the student wrote up for themself, or specifically to publish on ArxiV? Had the PI seen it, or proofread it, or did they at least know it was being written?

@Karl  Sorry, my wording sucks. It's manuscript derived from her thesis, and they planned to publish it together. Judging from what I heard from the group meeting, they reached consensus that they would co-author the paper in their original plan.

@Karl I've edited my post to make it clear.

"giving advice, pointing out some mistakes and telling the student how to polish the writing,"  This does not necessarily meet the standards of authorship, depending on the nature of the advice.  The supervisor really aught to participate in the design of the project.

@AnonymousPhysicist I am not part of their research so I don't know the details. But judging from what I heard from the group meeting it was indeed their consensus that the manuscript would be co-authored in their original plan, so I am simply taking this as an assumption of my post XD. Which means, all I know is in terms of this question is : it concerns a manuscript derived from her thesis, and the manuscript was planned to be co-authored.

I still suspect the PI is actually angry about something else.  But if you are not personally involved, there really is no need to speculate.

@Karl Now I further learned that she didn't put it on arXiv, but research gate instead. The PI said the version she posted was almost finished but still under revision.

Well, sensible people don't use ResearchGate, so they won't read it. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16870/researchgate-an-asset-or-a-waste-of-time https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24127/should-i-send-a-cease-and-desist-letter-to-researchgate?noredirect=1&lq=1

@AnonymousPhysicist Indeed, she told me that nobody ever read the paper as indicated by research-gate data.

Let me clear up one point not addressed in the answer of Mario Niepel, which is otherwise great advice. If the PI is validly an author of the paper in question, then it cannot be published without their permission.
It wasn't clear from the comments whether that permission has been given, nor in what form. So the other author(s) need to obtain that permission, and most likely even the permission to acknowledge that PI.
This can get a little weird, since you also have to avoid writing in such a way that plagiarism occurs, using their ideas without acknowledgement.
I hope the author(s) can work this out, perhaps with the help of "higher authorities". But "no longer caring about it" isn't actually permission. Some papers have to just be buried for such things, even though it is both unfair and a disservice to scholarship itself.

I would agree and will revise my comment. This does not constitute a clear permission. I would still strongly suggest to get a formal mediator involved (committee member, colleague, or ombudsperson).

Yes, @MarioNiepel, but updating/editing your answer is probably better than commenting it. Comments on this site can disappear.

Agreed. I think I did not suggest to go ahead to publish based on the current information in the actual answer. It was only in a comment that I suggested to take the fact the PI no longer cares as an implicit go-ahead. I agree that is not right. I will reread the answer though to make sure.

@MarioNiepel, I didn't intend any criticism of the comment, only that you incorporate it into the answer for posterity purposes.

... and I didn’t take it as such. Just a good reminder to consider that people will often read answers but not look to comments for further clarification. Best to edit and include all pertinent info into the answers.

The question literally says that the work is the students', in which case this answer is not relevant.  But it's good general advice.

@Buffy  The student in question today told me that the PI later said to her, he would from then on have no relation with the work, but he hoped she could revise the work as best as she can. Is this a permission? (I will also update this in my post)

Informally, yes, I think. But if his name appears anywhere it should be made more explicit that he permits the use of the name. And the student still needs to avoid plagiarism if the name cannot be used.

It is not illegal to unilaterally publish an article without the consent of co-authors; you and your PI clearly know nothing about copyright law. See generally the law of "tenants in common" with regard to copyright law. Also, there is a legal definition for authorship, and I seriously doubt the PI met that legal definition. It sounds like the legal rights of the student may have been violated; they should talk to a copyright attorney.


text:
Suitable avenues (repositories) for self-publishing own figures (illustrations) under CC-BY-NC-ND prior to journal's final acceptance
My colleague and I are planning to submit a manuscript to an academic journal.
As per the journal's policy, the publisher retains the copyright for all content. However, the journal is happy to accept an author's prior self-published content if it was published non-commercially under one of the CC licenses.
Prior to acceptance/final publication by the journal, with the goal of retain the author's individual copyright over them (i.e. not squander copyright to the journal's publisher), my colleague would like to self-publish some figures (used in the manuscript) as standalone images under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
What are the suitable avenues/repositories for self-publishing of these figures?

I have yet to use either myself, but here are two sites to look into. Both allow publishing images/figures, and can assign them DOIs.

Zenodo seems like a good option, associated with CERN and the OpenAIRE project, and open to all fields. It also supports a wide range of licenses. Indeed, when uploading a figure under Open Access, there is a search field to pick a license. One choice is "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives", but it's not clear if this is the 4.0 version or not, as other licenses have 4.0 as part of their name (e.g. "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0)".
Figshare is the more well known option, but it has only limited options when it comes to licensing. When I try uploading a figure on a personal account, the only Creative Commons license available is CC BY 4.0. An institutional user can also use the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, however.


text:
Question on whether I have committed plagiarism (modifying paragraphs from an unpublished document sent as email attachment for PhD thesis)
Background
My colleague and I are both PhD students (My colleague started about 8 months after me) from the same research group (and share the same PhD supervisor) in a UK university. We were collaborating on a research project with a Prof. 'X' from another university in the EU.
Early on in the project (March 2017), over a phone call, Prof 'X' requested my colleague to provide them with a 1-page project summary to support a small grant application. My colleague and I worked on this at my colleagues work desk for a single afternoon (about 2 hours) to produce this document. Both of us thought out aloud, iterated the words & phrases a few times to write and polish this document. Since we were working on the colleague's computer, after writing we just opened the email client on that machine and sent the 1-page doc as an email attachment to Prof 'X'.
The document itself contains only 5 paragraphs of pure text. It does not contain any title/authorship or any other information whatsoever (such as header/footer). My colleague signed the email as "Best Regards, A & B". where "A" is me and "B" is my colleague. Later on, the colleague forwarded the same email (with the attachment) to our common PhD supervisor (as an FYI).
As we proceeded further into the project, the involvement of my colleague and mine became intricately interwoven. It soon very became hard for our common PhD supervisor to separate out individual contributions. There was a huge authorship dispute of the resulting paper (manuscript) which lasted 8 months but eventually got resolved, nevertheless leaving my colleague and me in not good terms.
Since this project was important to our respective PhD theses, it became crucial to clearly identify who contributed what. As part of this forensic examination, both of us gave our evidences to our common PhD supervisor, who apportioned the contributions suitably on a high-level basis. It was decided that both our theses shall have a suitably detailed "attribution of content" section for this relevant chapter, and the contents of the scientific reporting shall be minutely scrutinised by our common supervisor to prevent any allegations in the future.
Present Situation
I recently passed my PhD viva. Examiners were happy and the outcome was to submit minor corrections in 90 days time which were to be checked and approved by them. However, just before leaving for Christmas holidays, my PhD supervisor ran my submitted version of thesis in turnitin (against all relevant docs for this project) and found that I had large chunks of text (2 lightly modified paragraphs) copied verbatim from the email attachment.  Our PhD advisor then inquired with my colleague about this, who insisted that the document was entirely written by him albeit with intellectual inputs from me . Therefore, our PhD supervisor asked me to re-write these 2 paragraphs and said they had no choice but to inform the internal examiner about this.
I am really worried. I copied and modified the 2 paragraphs because I thought I was entitled to reuse these words from that email attachment. Did I do something egregious? Am I in deep trouble? I am happy to re-write these 2 paragraphs from scratch, but I cannot afford to lose a degree I worked for 4 years for something little like this.  What are my options if I am accused of plagiarism?

A very strange situation from beginning. I think your supervisor want to prevent another 8 months discussion on who did/wrote what..... cannot be plagiarism nor self plagiarism. In the worst case your colleague could argue but I don't see why unless your thesis is as short as that attachment was :)

The email included both of your names, so the document (which itself mentioned no authors) was prima facie authored by you both. At least there's no reason why it should have been authored by your colleague alone. The fact that your colleague sent the email from his mail account but felt the need to sign with both your names even makes it plausible that he then thought of you both as authors. Why else would he have included your name as well?

What you told us (that the document in question was written by both of you and you don't remember who wrote what) is a strong argument in your defense, and you should explicitly tell it to your supervisor and everyone else involved. If you silently agree to make changes to your thesis, you'll be admitting that you did something wrong, which you did not.

Not knowing the policies of your university, nor of your advisor, it is hard to be definitive in an answer here. However, I'll suggest that you do two things. One is to re-write the paragraphs as you seem willing to do, but also contest the characterization that the original wasn't joint work with you as an equal contributor. If necessary (and possible) make your claim formally, in writing. You don't need to accuse the other student of misconduct, but you need to be clear that you worked jointly. The other student may just misremember the interaction, of course. Best if you have preserved some evidence of course.
I would also try to get the professor to stand up for you with the internal examiner.
If you are reporting accurately, then nothing you did was wrong unless the attachment was somehow published and you failed to cite it. That would be self plagiarism and is in a different category than ordinary plagiarism.
My personal opinion about self plagiarism is that you can copy and include your own unpublished work without citation, but need to cite earlier work of your own rather than just copying. That is to permit readers to trace back and find the complete context of a work.
However, there is one aspect I'm unclear about. If the attachment wasn't ever published, how did turnitin even find it for analysis? If it was published, perhaps without your knowledge, that raises other issues.

I shall further explain here. Of course, I shall re-write the 2 paragraphs, but the internal examiner has already been alerted to this and I may have to defend any accusations of plagiarism. I have told my supervisor that we worked jointly, but there is of course no proof of this. Can the last line of email ("Best Regards, A & B" where "A" is my name can be considered as proof of this joint work?  Turnitin can run against custom sources. As part of apportionment of work for our respective theses, our supervisor had submitted docs such as this email attachment & the journal article to turnitin

+1 good response - also, "Best Regards, A & B" where "A" is you - if the email was sent from B's account, definitely acts as a proof of joint authorship. Contest emphatically on grounds that you assumed to the best of your knowledge that piece of mail not having been published.


text:
Do US Graduate Admission Committee review and assess International Applicants country-wise?
To be specific, my application field is physics. And I am from a country where students are aggressive on standardized tests like gre's since we put much emphasis on training for these tests. I was talking with peers about whether to send my Physics GRE score to my target physics schools which is 800/990(67%) as a computer science undergrad student, and they told me don't do it because, given my nationality, admission committees will set a higher bar for me and a percentile below 85% is a minus. That arose the question in my mind that I know it's normal that in US graduate admission process, admission standards for international students are set higher than those for domestic students, but do graduate admission committee View International Applicants country-wise? I asked my peers about this, and they say that's a widely accepted speculation among them, so I am asking here to verify.

I doubt that there is any widespread effect of this. In fact, most grad schools would want, and many would require, a "level playing field" for admissions. But the GRE is not the main determinant of anyone's admission. It is at most an indicator, among many others, that might indicate success in a program, or not. Letters of Recommendation are relatively important in US.
Your application needs to give strong indicators of your likely success. But you don't need to be "perfect in every way" to gain admission.

do graduate admission committee View International Applicants country-wise?

Mostly no.  US physicists do not care about your nationality.  They just want PhD students who produce good publications.
The people who issue student visas care about your nationality.  If you can't be a good PhD student because you cannot get a visa because of your nationality, you may get fewer PhD offers from the US.  This is why Canada has so many more Iranian physics PhD students than the US.
Some places don't mind if nearly all their students are Chinese.


text:
Peer review: Is this "citation tower" a bad practice?
I am peer-reviewing an article "A" and I found something interesting. The authors use a mathematical lemma (which is just an inequality) for which they cite article "B". I have used this inequality before for many years, but noticed that "B" is an article from 2019, so evidently this inequality wasn't discovered/derived for the first time in "B".  I was curious so I managed to obtain this article "B" and noticed that they use the same inequality by citing article "C". A similar thing happens in "C" by citing "D", and so on until we get to "F". Notice that in this whole "citation tower" no new information is added: the mathematical lemma remained essentially the same.
Moreover, some of the same authors appear in some of the works A,B,...,F but not in all and not consecutively. However, an author of "A" is also an author of "F". Finally, in "F" (which is an article from 2011) the authors provide the mathematical lemma, and provide a proof for it. However, I have seen other works in the literature which uses this result even before 2011, and actually I can track it all the way until I reach a famous (but OLD) book "Z" which provides the same inequality but not necessarily using the same notation.
Do you think this "citation tower" (is there another name for this practice?) is a bad enough practice to point it out in my review? Up to now I am considering the following things to do with my review (regarding this issue only):

Do nothing. The authors are using a result from the literature by appropriately citing it.

Just suggest them to cite "F" instead of "B".

Suggest them to cite "Z" instead of "B".

However, since an author of "A" is also an author of "F", under the assumption that this citation tower is indeed a bad practice, and that the result was given in "F" as if it was discovered there even when this result was known many years before, there is a fourth option:

Point them out this issue describing it as a bad practice in order to help preventing it in the future. Moreover, I was thinking in asking the reviewers to cite "F" and adding a note in the final manuscript saying that the result was shown in "F" using modern notation, but it was known to be true since "Z".

EDIT AFTER SUBMITTING MY REVIEW: It is very hard to chose a correct answer, since I don't believe there is a single one. There are very nice answers here, but I will mark as correct the one that mostly resembles what I did at the end.

Does Z provide a proof of the lemma?

It could be that the authors cite B instead of F because it presents the lemma in a better way in some kind (notation, context, ability to read it out-of-context, ...).  But there is no harm in pointing it out.

I agree. However, B and F are both works in the same context. Moreover, both present the lemma in exactly the same way (almost same text, maybe one or two words different, and same notation). I've been thinking about this, and I dont see any advantage of citing B instead of F.

Are there other references to B?

Some times, reviewers of my papers insist on citing recent articles, much to my chagrin.

I think the question of user3067860 was if B would be in the reference list of the reviewable paper even if it wasn't used for this particular lemma?

Ah... interesting point, that would be a reason to cite B instead of Z or F indeed. But no, B is not mentioned elsewhere

Some journals like you to cite recent articles, especially their articles to boost citation numbers. Similarly, if you suspect a reviewer might be the author of an article, a cynical person might like to cite that article rather than the source, to get them in the right mood when reading the paper.

Does Z claim this lemma as a novel result, or does it treat it as something already known that is being republished as part of the book?

@NateS. I think is more like the last case. Z can be seen as a "canonical" (somewhat old) text book which is mostly a compendium of results.

You're assuming the reasons for the citations. Maybe they want more citations to their own work. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they don't know any better.
Your job as a reviewer is to comment on the scientific article. Ask the authors to explain their citations. One way to write a comment along the lines of:

The authors cite A that provides proof for X. However, it's not clear why A is chosen in preference to F or Z. I suggest that the authors add something like: "The proof appeared first in Z, but was rewritten in modern notation in F, and an instructive example of its application to similar problems in given in A."—if that's indeed the case, as I suspect.

This way you are informing the authors that there are citations missing, in your opinion, telling them which ones are missing, not blaming anyone for doing anything, and giving them a concrete example on  how to justify their choices.

Thanks! I am currently more inclined to write something like what you suggested in my recommendation. My assumption for the reason of the citation was due to the fact that an author of A is also an author of F. But it is perfectly reasonable that they simply forgot. No reason to blame anyone, but point out my observations on this issue.

Gimelist, 'there's no particular reason we chose B. we don't wanna change it to F because we're lazy. is this going to be a problem?' your response is? cc @FeedbackLooper

@BCLC you are the reviewer, not the editor. Tell the editor what you think, and let them make the call.

I think this requires some nuance. You seem to suggest that citing the earliest usage is preferable, and it might be. But it might also be the case that each subsequent usage adds something to the context. That is to say that the citation appears in the chain for some particular use and the reader of the current paper might find it useful to explore that history. Each of those citations is surrounded by context that can be useful.
If you always cite only the earliest usage, then the reader has no hints about the overall usage context of that thing cited. And the current author might be inviting the exploration.
Of course, it might also be that the author(s) considers the lemma to be a minor point and has used the citation they found without chasing the chain back themself, not seeing any need for it in the current context.
Overdone, in mathematics, we just always cite Euclid.
So, I don't think citing a later, rather than an earlier paper is a bad practice necessarily, but could be in a particular instance.
You can always note the other citations in your review and point to the earliest one without making any specific recommendation.

Good points. Sure I know that citing the earliest work is far from the best strategy in all cases. This context part makes a lot of sense. I was suspicious that the authors just wanted to increase citations for other works. But maybe I was misjudging this whole situation, that why I posted the question, looking for a different opinion. So your answer is very valuable to me and I will reconsider what I will do with my review.

Perhaps they should cite both B and Z (B for its context, Z because its older)?

-1 No point in writing a review without recommendations.

-1.  If you state a lemma that has appeared earlier, you should always mention the earliest source you are aware of.  Giving the credit to the original creator of an idea is a fundamental part of scientific culture.  So there is nuance to whether you should cite the other sources, but you must cite Z.

@DavidKetcheson, I agree completely for important results, but for minor lemmas, that seems impractical -- not to mention that crediting the earliest printed source you can find today isn't necessarily giving credit to the creator of the idea.  I'm sure I can find plenty of things presented without attribution in old textbooks (which is what OP's Z is) that were nevertheless known since ancient Greek times, so I don't think there's much value in hunting down the oldest book surviving that shows it, unless that one claims it's an original result.

@NateS. Why are you suddenly assuming this is a "minor lemma" or "known since ancient Greek times"?  Neither of those things is stated in the question or your answer (except as "might be", but you don't condition the validity of your answer on this).

@DavidKetcheson Do you have a source for that statement? "If you state a lemma that has appeared earlier, you should always mention the earliest source you are aware of." It might be good practice in some cultures, but who dictates one should?

@DavidKetcheson, I wasn't assuming either (I don't know in this case), but rather giving some examples of situations where your "should always" may not apply.

In your case, the author of A that was also an author of F should have cited F instead of B.  It's unlikely that that author forgot the reference F; it's more likely that they wanted more citations for B.
I recommend that you go with your option 4.  Tell them to cite Z and F.

I'd add that there is no reason to tell the authors not to cite B-E if they are relevant.

Maybe the paper is mainly building on B and so they cite B by default and instead avoid citing F to avoid reference padding.

I don't write papers like this, but with stuff I do write I like to add a "not referenced but related information that might be useful" section. It might also help to give a short paragraph explaining why it's useful.

I've had more than one occasion where someone discussed one of my papers with my that I had completely forgotten writing. While citing F might be better, B is more likely to be freshly in mind, and also might well be getting cited for other reasons (it seems possible this paper is building on B). While the citation should be fixed, I wouldn't assume this was intentional citation gathering.

Vaguely calling something “bad practice” is, well, bad practice. You should be able to articulate precisely what’s bad about it. And it sounds to me like what’s bad about it is that it is misleading: it misleads the reader into thinking this lemma is new when it obviously has a long history, and that the credit for it is due to a different set of authors than the people it’s really due to.
With that in mind, I think everyone can agree that misleading readers is indeed “bad practice” and should be avoided, especially when it’s easy to do so. So it seems to me completely appropriate to ask in your review that the authors of “A” should cite the book “Z” either in place of, or in addition to, citing any subset of the papers “B” through “F”. And you can also suggest that they optionally add a brief comment outlining the history of the lemma and pointing out any relevant issues of notation as appropriate, depending on which of these sources they end up citing exactly.

It seems no answer so far makes the following point: if you're reading a paper and decide to follow up a reference for a mathematical statement, it's probably because you want to know the proof. Therefore, from the reader's perspective (the perspective that matters), "F" is the most appropriate citation, since it gives the proof in modern notation.
Therefore, if I was the reviewer, I would recommend that the authors cite paper "F" in addition to "B" (or instead of it, but there's no reason to tell them not to cite "B" unless it's really not relevant). I would also mention "Z" and suggest they mention it, but I'd put less stress on that, since it's likely to be less useful for the reader than "F". Essentially, I think your option 4 is the best one.

I suspect many don't really see the citations as serving that purpose, but rather just to avoid the appearance that they made up a fact without justification.

" it's probably because you want to know the proof. " <- Not necessarily; you may be more interested in the context in which it was used before.

There are several purposes of citations. The primary one is providing support for a claim; if you don't include a proof of a claim, but cite a paper that does, then that proof is incorporated by reference into your paper. If B doesn't actually include the proof, but rather cites C, then citing B doesn't serve the purpose of incorporating a proof into A. Not citing the original paper makes tracking down the proof more difficult, if not impossible. It can also make it look like there are several papers supporting a claim, when in fact there is only one original source. For instance, someone publishes Paper A claiming that they did a study and found that foobars often commit mopery. Paper B then claims  foobars often commit mopery and cites Paper A. Paper C and D then claim that foobars often commit mopery and cites Paper B. Then Paper E claims that foobars often commit mopery and cites Paper C and Paper F claims that foobars often commit mopery and cites Paper D. Now someone comes along and writes a newspaper article and says "There's overwhelming evidence that foobars often commit mopery! Here are six different papers that show this." And if someone tries to factcheck the article, it's going to take them awhile to track down all the citations and realize that there's only one paper that is actually original research. It's also possible for the chain of citations to actually be circular. See citogenesis.
It's a common phenomenon on Snopes when trying to track down a claim to find this sort of citation chain, and often the claim is distorted in each link of the chain, with the final result being quite different from the original, and often what looks like several different sources are actually from one ultimate source. It also has proliferated on the internet; an article or post will talk about something and post a link, but rather than going to the original source, this link goes to another article or post, and so on.
The second purpose is to give credit. The primary credit gives to the earliest paper, and so that should be the primary citation. If another paper expanded on that, and/or brought it to your attention, then it may merit a citation as well, but it should be in addition, not instead of, the other citation.
The third purpose is to give further reading to those who are interested in learning more. This is where a citation to B is most justified, but a citation to F and/or Z may also be useful.

You did already follow all the chain so you could judge if the references are adequate or not. Did they point to the context specific usage of the lemma, or are there to gives a theoretical ground?
In one case it could be fine to cite late literature, in the other they should have traced things to the root.
If I would be the referee, I would consider just the above without thinking of bad or good practice. Eventually, asking to add the first, proof giving paper.

I agree. The context and usage is basically the same in all references B,...,F, they use the inequality for almost the same purpose, and for a similar application.


text:
Why is a professorship sometimes called a chair?
Why is a professorship sometimes called a chair? Are chairs only the correct term when the professorship has been endowed? (I don't think so, because endowed professorships are rare in the UK, but people still speak about chairs).
What's the origin and correct usage of the term?
Edit: Thanks for the responses, I would like to slightly expand on the 'usage' part of the question by asking whether every professor at every university could correctly be said to hold a chair? If it varies, what determines who has a chair and who is just a professor? Perhaps the term is more common in the US because the term professor is used more widely than in the UK, for relatively junior faculty (who would be called lecturers in the UK).

Related.

also note the relationship with the word chairman.

etymonline.com:

chair (n.)
"a seat with a back, intended for one person," early 13c., chaere, from Old French chaiere "chair, seat, throne" ... from Latin cathedra "seat" (see cathedral).
Figurative sense of "seat of office or authority" c. 1300 originally was of bishops and professors. Meaning "office of a professor" (1816) is extended from the seat from which a professor lectures (mid-15c.). ...

The etymology is much more obvious in Romance languages: see e.g. the Spanish word catedrático.
Note that there's a specific type of chair which is also used figuratively to refer to the authority of the person who is entitled to sit in it: throne. Usage is probably parallel, although digging out examples to demonstrate this would be a non-trivial research project.

I see from comments that there are two opinions about what the question meant by asking about usage. To address the other opinion, in as much as it's not already answered by user2768: professor in British English is reserved to those who hold a chair, which may be an endowed or a personal chair. In American English it  is used far more widely. Cognate words in other languages may be used even more widely still: in Spanish, profesor is used for teachers from primary to tertiary education, although as mentioned above there's also a word catedrático which corresponds to the British professor. I would expect that most of the Commonwealth follows the British usage, with the possible exception of Canada, but I would not be surprised to be corrected on this in comments.

There's another specific type of chair used the same way, which you also mention: cathedra. And of course we talk of MPs being elected to a seat in Parliament. And we have a bench of bishops or magistrates.

While this covers the etymology of the term, it doesn't address what I took to be the question, namely whether the word 'chair' in this context has a special meaning distinct from 'professorship'. (i.e. can you be a professor without holding a chair, or vice versa.)

There are two questions, each asked in two different ways. Basically: (a) Why is it called a chair? and (b) when is it correct to call it a chair?

@Nathaniel you are right, I would also like to know about usage. Does every professor have a chair? Do some universities use the term and others don't? Is it a formal term within universities, or just a commonly used term for professorship

Professors hold a “chair” in a subject which can be either established or personal. Established chairs exist independently of the person who holds it, and if they leave the chair can be filled by someone else. A personal chair is awarded to a specific individual in recognition of high levels of achievement. If they leave, there is no guarantee the chair will be available for someone else.

Source: https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/uk-academic-job-titles-explained

While interesting, I don't think that actually answers the question?

The quote explains that professors hold a "chair", which captures the why, and explains the subtle differences between different usages of the term, which captures correct usage. So, it seems to me that it does answer the question. (It doesn't deal with endowment, because I didn't follow that aspect of the question. Perhaps the following helps: [a professorship is] roughly equivalent to an American endowed chair. It doesn't deal with origin either.)

My mother (in the USA) is a full professor, but was only titled 'chair' once she became the 'chair' of the English department. In that context, it connoted her as the senior-most professor in her department, with official administrative duties, including hiring decisions for the department, being a part of tenure award decisions, etc.
Also, other professors I've known have held chairs with someone's name attached, and this was an honorific rather than an administrative position. I don't think it's accurate to say any given professor, even any full professor, is considered 'chaired' by default.

This answer is conflating the administrative term chair meaning "chairperson" (equivalent to "head of department" in other places) with the professorial term chair, which is associated with research rather than management.

@MichaelMacAskill Yep. The question doesn't distinguish at that level either, however.

@MichaelMacAskill That conflation is also present in academia: heads of departments are often referred to as "the chair of the department" at least here in the US; this doesn't mean they have an endowed chair necessarily. The original question indeed mentions that it seems like "chair" is used in an academic context without an association to endowed chairs or other honorary positions, which is what this answer addresses.

Being the chair of a university department and holding a named chair at a university are completely different.  The first is an administrative position and, most holders would hope, a temporary one.  A named chair is a permanent title, designating a level of achievement beyond the professor.  Further, a named chair can be endowed or not endowed but, most holders would hope, it is the former.

It's a figure of speech called metonymy. It's like referring to the UK government as "Whitehall", or to the monarch as "the Crown".
It makes a useful distinction between the job/office, and the current individual job holder.
I think that any professorship can be referred to as a chair.

Technically, the Crown isn't just metonymy for the monarch: the Crown is the institution of the monarchy, distinct from any individual monarch. There have been many monarchs since the union, but since 1707 there's been only one Crown. (I think.)

And there have been many Lucasian Professors but only one Lucasian Chair.

@TRiG, if you chose 1707 because of the Act of Union then you should probably take into account the Act of Union 1800 and the Government of Ireland Act 1920.

Actually, in Germany there is a distinction between (translated and adapted) associate and full professorships. The latter have chairs, the earlier do not really.

@Oleg Lobachev so they form a "standing group"? ;)