I had a situation in my university where one of the Assist. Prof. asked me to leave the device I made (during my Msc study) in the department by saying that he will ask the head of the department to buy it for the department. Then after a while, I found that he published a paper in a journal and did not put my name as co-author, not citing the paper I published about my device and not even acknowledge me for providing the device and the department didn't even buy the device. All experimental results were from my device. He claiming that I allow him to use the device with a Msc student. He publishes a paper with 2 other colleagues, not with a student. What should I do? I already explained everything to the journal and they said this matter should be resolved within your university.
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1What part of the world are you in? Were you paid for your work? Did you sign an intellectual property agreement with the university? What did the paper say about the apparatus? Was any of the authors on the new paper an author on the old paper? While I feel for you, I'm suspecting that this is not going to be actionable; will reserve judgment until seeing these answers.– cag51 ♦Commented Dec 20, 2018 at 4:58
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Should have kept it until bought and paid for...– Solar MikeCommented Dec 20, 2018 at 6:10
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1What is your actual question? You ask 'What should I do', but do not specify what you hope to achieve. Do you want to be paid for your apparatus? Do you want to be retroactively added to the paper as an author?– L_WCommented Dec 20, 2018 at 11:20
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1In addition to the questions posed by cag51, in what sense is the device mentioned in this (new) paper? Do they claim development of the device directly or indirectly?– AppliedAcademicCommented Dec 20, 2018 at 13:22
1 Answer
You didn't answer the questions I posed in the comments, so I'll have to make my best guesses as to what happened. Seems to me that you are asking about two types of damages: not getting authorship on the follow-up paper, and not getting paid for the device.
Authorship. This one really depends on exactly what the new paper says. I'm assuming that (1) at least one person [your advisor] is an author on both the old paper and the new paper, and (2) the new paper briefly described the apparatus but focused on the new results. In this case, I certainly think they should have cited the original paper when describing the apparatus, and possibly offered you authorship on the new paper -- but it's not clear to me that their failure to do so rises to the level of academic misconduct. Your university's ombudsman is likely the next step if you want to investigate this further; however, this will likely alienate the professor in question (and, as I said, it's not clear to me that you have a case).
Getting Paid. It's not clear to me why you would have any expectation of getting paid for building an apparatus as a student. In general, your intellectual property while a student belongs to the university (even more so if they are paying you). I don't know why your professor would have promised to look into getting the department to buy the apparatus...perhaps he looked into it and was informed that the university already owns it because you were a student when you made it. In any case, if you were owed money, your next step would likely be to sue the university, since your direct requests have largely gone unanswered (you would have to weigh whether this were a good idea; cutting your losses may be wise).
