Timeline for What can I do if my advisor threatens to take away authorship of my undergraduate research work?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
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| Apr 3, 2016 at 13:09 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | Your answer is phrased in absolute terms, so I have no idea what you are claiming I am missing. The word substantial is unnecessary given my addition that the work would have merited coauthorship from a non-student. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 12:42 | comment | added | Jeff | @tobias I completely agree with your statement. But I'll point out you've added the caveat "if (the student)... does some original work" (although I'll add in that you're missing the word substantial which is usually in relevant policies). If you'll notice in the comments, I do only mean this in the case where the research is a derivative of the academics. If it's the students own novel research, then it's a completely different story. But given we are discussing undergrad research, I've assumed that is not the case (but obviously, we don't know unless the Op hops in and tells us) | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 12:24 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | -1 for suggesting that this is in any way something the advisor can do. If a student of yours does some original work and you publish a paper based on tvis without including them as an author (assuming the work would have merited authorship had they not been a student), then you have committed academic misconduct of a serious nature, whether or not you use none of the writing of the student. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 11:26 | comment | added | Chris Rackauckas | @ff524 I thought data ownership came in when talking about authorship because in order to have to claim authorship you have to demonstrate that you made a contribution, but since you don't own the data you cannot point to some result and say "I made that figure" since that is not yours. Instead you have to demonstrate that you had some further intellectual contribution (i.e. came up with the idea to make this figure and argue from this direction). Honestly I still don't know the policy/law behind this too well and should probably ask this as its own question. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 11:23 | comment | added | Jeff | I publish with my undergrad students all the time as well. Am I required to though? No. But I will agree that I feel morally obliged to include the student in the pub process and even give them a crack at first authorship. That still doesn't mean I have to which was the op's original question. And it is very rare for an undergrad to run a supervised project that was their own original idea. It is almost always a derivative of the supervisors own work, and often part of an already ongoing project due to time constraints (though that may differ between fields). | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 11:11 | comment | added | ff524 | @Chris ownership of data is orthogonal to academic authorship. (Technically the institution receiving the grant, not the PI, owns the data in most cases.) | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 11:08 | comment | added | Jeff | I didn't think you were disagreeing, we were just typing at the same time so I hadn't seen your post yet. And good point about if it was a grant project. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 11:06 | comment | added | ff524 | Undergrads can certainly make intellectual contributions, and I don't know how you can assume that the OP didn't. I just co-authored a paper with a high school summer research student. The first paragraph of this answer, which suggests that students somehow have less of a right to be credited with authorship based on their student status, is irresponsible advice. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 11:05 | comment | added | Chris Rackauckas | I agree with you. I was noting that even if the student conducts an experiment and generates data which is in the paper, the student still does not have some legal right to claim authorship. The only way that it is plagiarism is if they contributed unique intellectual ideas (came up with new methods, experiments, etc.). Since the OP talks about syllabus' and "tacking on things to do", it sounds like he/she was given protocol/steps to do, which he/she did, and gave the results. If this is the case, even if the results are physical, those are not the student's results, they are the PI's. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 10:50 | comment | added | Jeff | We're discussing undergraduate research work here. As my own stipulation is that they are not using anything of the students writing, then what intellectual contribution are we discussing here? Undergraduate projects are almost always a project of the advisors (and their own ideas), and most universities have a policy specifically outlining authorship for students on faculty research. Sure, many things would be different if it was, for example, a PhD students project and their own unique research questions and methods, but I certainly see no evidence of that. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 10:49 | comment | added | Chris Rackauckas | I don't even think it's just university policy. In a scientific ethics course administrators explained that the rules stem from the granting agencies (NIH/NSF). By law, any data that is generated via grant money is owned by the principal investigators on the grant. Thus the "student's data" is actually the PI's. They technically don't have to credit you for it because it's not yours. Of course the whole class had many questions and were furious, but what I got out of the fury is that it really is up to your adviser. In mathematics it may be different because there's no data ownership issue. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 10:43 | comment | added | ff524 | Using someone's intellectual contributions without crediting them is certainly against university policy in many universities, and against ethics standards in virtually all fields. So I'd have to strongly disagree with "not against university policy or any ethics standards". | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 10:38 | comment | added | Jeff | "Legally" was being used as shorthand for "not against university policy or any ethics standards". Just a shortcut. And yes, being an RA is irrelevant to authorship which is why I was using it as an Analogy. Sorry if that wasn't clear. But to also clarify, this is speaking about 'general' university policies, some universities may differ in their own policies. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 10:34 | comment | added | ff524 | "As a student project, your work is generally considered like that of an RA (again, this is legally, not morally), so you have no requirement to be listed as an author of the paper." - this makes no sense. Legality is irrelevant. Authorship is based on academic ethics, not legal standards - there are no laws in jurisdictions I know about regarding who gets authorship credit on academic papers. And having been an RA on the project is also irrelevant to the authorship question. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 10:27 | history | answered | Jeff | CC BY-SA 3.0 |