- If you want to get paid and your contract says you cannot do any other paid work, then perhaps this is a bad thing for you,
- But here's the silver lining: the contract in my screenshot wouldn't allow me to do free work for someone else either, as I was "expected to devote the whole of my attention to the duties in my paid workplace". For me this came in as a handy excuse when I got asked to do things that I didn't want to do (but I understand it might not help you as much here).
As you may have noticed, different people have different opinions here. You may also be seeing more noisematerial here from the people saying it's unethical, since the people that think it's ethical are afraid to speak up. Or maybe they're not "afraid" to speak up, but they are reluctant to, because, for example, commentcomments like these that get 18 upvotes:
I really want you to walk out of this happy, so I hope that you consider taking my next piece of advice, which is to spend less energy thinking about whether or not its ethical, and to think about what you can do about the situation if in your mind it is unethical. That fact that you consider it to be unethical, is important enough for me. So he is "unethical", what shall we do? This is what I suggest (after you've checked your contract with the current employer and assuming you're not restricted):
- Carefully read the brilliant answer of Bryan Krause. Consider doing the "work" not for money but for the reasons Bryan gave.
- If you still don't want to, consider walking away from this without authorship (your PhD will surely be available online and citeable on Google Scholar, and you are a solo author on it).
- If you don't want to sacrifice authorship on the paper and you want money for doing the work---- it's not really "work" ---- If you want money for the effort your more senior and more experienced adviser feels is needed for this paper to get published, you can try to ask him, then:
- Read Ian Sudbury's answer to help manage your expectations.
- If you still want to get paid, after a genuine kind-hearted professor like Ian, who comes here to give advice for free all the time, has spelled out the "professor perspective", you can consider to very gently and un-aggressively ask to get paid for the work. You will not likely be paid much, and you are likely to burn a bridge, something that you have said you do not want to do.
- If you have reached all the way here, and find that you won't get paid, yet you want this paper to be published, we enter the legal and semi-legal realm:
- Are there any laws, or rules, to which he is bound, obligating one co-author to pay another co-author for the effort they put into getting a paper published? Should you have to pay him for the work he's doing to help you publish this after he's already finished his duty to supervise you until degree completionShould you have to pay him for the work he's doing to help you publish this after he's already finished his duty to supervise you until degree completion (I agree this might not apply here, but it's interesting to at least think about)?
- He is bound to the rules of the university, but universities will almost never side with you in situations like this, nor will they enforce their own rules if its not convenient for them to.
- For the paper to get published, he is bound to the rules of the journal, but journals also may not enforce their own rules if its not convenient for them to, and the last sentence of Azor Ahai's answer sums up what will probably happen here.
- So, since powerful organizations like universities and journals often have no concept of ethics, you may have to consider a legal perspective. I live in Ontario, Canada and we have small-claims courts, municipal courts, provincial courts, federal courts, and maybe 100 tribunals such as the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (covering the Employment Standards Act) and the Labour Arbitrations Tribunals, among others. I'm listing these in case the place where you live might have analogous courts/tribunals. Some of these will have jurisdiction over different legislation than others, and some will adhere to different instances of case law (previous decisions that count in some but not all courts/tribunals). I wish I could help you further with this, but by far a better place is here.