What to do when a supervisor withdraws their name from a graduate student's paper?

Question

Context

• Under my mentor's guidance and support, I've been working on a paper that has really bloomed.
• It is exciting technically and scientifically - the technology invented and the new findings it uncovered are both novel and impactful.
• My mentor really pushed me to add additional analysis and the paper improved under their rigor.
• Over the course of a year, we met with a number of experts to discuss our findings and they have been nothing but supportive.
• Skeptical at first, my mentor came around to accept the results (after talking to said experts and validating the results using orthogonal datasets) and we began discussing which journal to send this to.

Problem

• Without much warning, my mentor withdrew their name from the paper. The reason cited is they feel the work belongs to me and they claim it is only fair I am the corresponding author.
  • As a graduate student, I know I cannot publish without my mentor's support.
  • More seriously, I know I cannot graduate without a paper including my supervisor.
  • If it were lack of confidence in the results, we spent nearly a year talking and confirming with experts + validating with orthogonal analysis to confirm our results.
  • This was clearly supported by my mentor since its inception and I am confused they would pull out as the project is nearing completion.
  • Lastly, when I tried to engage with my supervisor to hear their concerns (via a meeting), they deflected - saying no need, citing again this work belongs to me.
  • I considered at length if I offended my supervisor, as this felt like a punishment somehow; I apologized for what I thought were wrongdoings, but again was told this was not part of their concern.

I suspect the underlying reason is not what my supervisor told me. I am also confused they won't engage with me. They are extremely senior and there is no point talking to my PhD program director (who is not in a position to direct my supervisor). What is the right thing to do now!?

Answer 1

Some of your assumptions are wrong:

As a graduate student, I know I cannot publish without my mentor's support.

There is a difference between not having your mentor's support and not having them as a coauthor. From they way you describe the interactions with your mentor they are very much supportive of you publishing this paper. They just feels that they didn't contribute to this work significantly enough to merit inclusion as a coauthor. This is a very ethical stance. (If their main contribution to the work is pushing your for further rigor by their skepticism, this is not an unreasonable position.)

More seriously, I know I cannot graduate without a paper including my supervisor.

Does your institute/university have this as an explicit requirement for your PhD? I'm skeptical because I've never heard of a university imposing such a requirement. None of my papers during my PhD were coauthored by advisor. Not because he disagreed with them, but simply because he rarely published with his students.

Answer 2

You could consider to add a footnote to your name stating that you are the corresponding author, and still include the name of your supervisor on the paper (if they agree).

Detailed answer:

In the life sciences, the first author is usually the one who did most of the experimental research and analyses, and (usually) also most of the writing. The last author is usually the supervisor and (explicitly or implicitly) marked as corresponding author.

The "corresponding author" is (quite literally) the person who will answer any questions about the paper because they are expected to be in the best position to do so. The reason for this is that, importantly, the corresponding (last) author is the one who came up with the idea or hypothesis, decided on the research goal and possibly the methods to reach it, or otherwise made the largest intellectual contribution to the paper (*1).

Given the description in your question your supervisor is right and you indeed deserve to be the corresponding author. Besides being the one who would potentially be contacted, being listed as corresponding author can be a big advantage for your career: you get the credit not just for executing the work but it acknowledges your substantial intellectual contributions to the idea itself and the design/planning etc. (in other words: the things that would usually be done by your supervisor).

Therefore your best course of action is to accept this generous (and probably well deserved) offer.

Option 1: Leaving out the name of your supervisor will most likely not have any negative consequences. I seriously doubt that having your supervisor as co-author is a strict requirement for your graduation (you should check that and discuss it with your supervisor).

But there is an other solution.

Option 2 (recommended): Publish with their name on the paper and add footnote to your own name, stating that you are the corresponding author. If your supervisor accepts, this may be the best option.

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(*1) for people from other fields: in life sciences, setting a realistic research goal may be the hardest part of the research: it requires detailed knowledge of the extremely complex systems that are being studied, as well as thorough knowledge of the available methods that might lead to an answer