I recently defended my master's thesis in artificial intelligence. Among other things, I invented a new algorithm that I would like to publish. The domain is natural language processing, with papers viewable for free on ACL Anthology.
For backstory: I developed my thesis almost entirely by myself. I only saw the professor who commissioned the proposal 4 times (which includes the final defence) as she resides in a different country, and although I had weekly meetings with my mentor (one of her PhD students), he was always behind on my research and hence he mainly helped with e.g. stylistic choices. I don't blame him for not having made deep contributions, since (1) it wasn't his thesis and (2) he wasn't as deep into the literature as I was throughout the year.
Now, although I included numerical experiments in my thesis, he correctly pointed out that my algorithm should be tested as part of a computationally heavy model using industry-standard metrics if I were to publish it in a paper. Being a PhD student, he has access to computational resources I don't as a mere alumnus. So, it made sense to let him collaborate on this paper.
We started a shared LaTeX document a while back, and unsurprisingly, the vast majority of all the text (intro, related work, theory, algorithm, discussion ...) will have been written by me, since I developed my thesis and hence I know both the algorithm and the literature thread that led up to it best. I also wrote all the code for my algorithm, because I needed it in my thesis. His contribution will be general remarks about the text, and providing me with the computational resources and interfaces to run large-scale experiments, so I expect that he will likely be writing that section.
I don't blame him at all for this distribution of the work; it is natural given the backstory. He's not freeloading, because his access to more, bigger experiments is a valuable addition.
My issue is that I want to ensure that I, a fresh graduate with zero publications, get maximal public recognition for the year-long independent work I did to reach this literary thread and this novel algorithm. If this paper is ever cited, it will be cited as Mew & Him (2023), and to be honest, it breaks my heart just seeing it that way. It is my brainchild. I rarely see a paper cited for its numerical experiments rather than the theoretical idea presented by it, and hence I lament that such a citation only seems to give me half the credit. That does feel like freeloading, even though it isn't his intention nor his fault that citations work that way. It feels like I'm selling half my credit for a single (useful and hopefully interesting) section.
He and I are are amicable, and I'd like to keep it that way. However, since my thesis was quite large (170+ pages), more than one paper can be distilled from it, and he has already made it clear that he would want co-authorship on all such papers since it is supposedly customary to give one's thesis advisor co-authorship, even though him and I both know that the content of the thesis was entirely my own doing. Whilst I respect this -- and furthermore, he did have to sit through weekly meetings with me mostly failing to articulate mathematical ideas orally -- I feel like I'm being partially robbed of making a name for myself for a unique contribution to the field. For him it seems like a closed case, and I'm not sure how to handle peddling it back. He finds my ideas valuable and has interest in them, but being interested and receiving recognition (as one of the 2 authors) are quite opposed. What should I do?
If he becomes co-author of these papers, then at the very least, I would like to somehow indicate to the reader that I was responsible for the idea and he was responsible for the experiments. Otherwise, since he already has publications, it might even seem to the reader like I am the novice freeloading off the master, and that the order of authors should secretly be reversed. How can I handle this as neutrally as possible to the reader, and communicate my desire about this to my mentor?
Perhaps I'm just insecure about lack of recognition from past experiences, or perhaps I'm insecure about possibly being a one-trick pony... but that pony still deserves proper credit for its one trick.
There is a similar thread on the site here, but quite a large emphasis is placed there in the answers on the fact that the paper has already been submitted, and also, the author is a PhD student publishing with higher-ups. In my case, the first paper has largely been written -- except for the experiments -- but has not been submitted for review, and I'm no longer a student (but might start a PhD in the near future), making my mentor moreso my colleague than my boss -- but obviously, he did have power over me when he was in charge of overseeing my thesis backed by the professor.
Edit: Apparently people are missing the part where I state that I already did my own numerical experiments to verify my work. Mea culpa, I shouldn't have made the post so long. What I contributed is the literary background, the idea, the mathematical formalisation, the formal algorithm, the practical algorithm, and the small-scale testing.
It might also be relevant to stress that the small-scale testing was intrinsic, i.e. it measured the effectiveness of the algorithm using metrics made to do exactly that. The large-scale testing would be extrinsic, i.e. measuring its effectiveness using metrics to evaluate the large-scale system, merely as a proxy for my one component. So yes, I already know my idea works, formally and empirically. The extra experiments would be just that: extra.
