Addressing the Impact of Unknown Authorship on PhD. Students’ Academic Reputation and Remedies

Question

As a current PhD. student, I have observed some troubling practices. It is not uncommon for advisors to add students’ names as co-authors on papers resulting from collaborations with other research groups, often without the students’ prior knowledge. Students typically discover their authorship only through notification emails, frequently after publication, and have often never seen the paper before. This situation is both frustrating and disempowering, especially since these papers are usually unrelated to the students' PhD. dissertations. I am concerned about how such involuntary authorship might affect students’ academic reputations. Could this impact their PhD. degree? What measures can prevent such issues, and what steps can students take to address and mitigate the repercussions of these ‘forced authorship’ after publication

Additional info

Some advisors take pride in these practices because having their students' names appear in numerous publications can, to some extent, enhance the students' academic visibility. Advisors may assign authorship based on their preferences, often listing names of students they favor—those they deem promising—in many collaborative papers with other research groups, while other students may not receive such recognition.

Typically, students whose names appear on these papers might have contributed by sending samples or have specific experience related to certain experiments or simulations detailed in the paper. It is indeed perplexing that authorship can be assigned for minimal or indirect contributions, or even for work that is only tangentially related.

Students are aware that these practices are unethical. They have privately confided their concerns to me, and I fully empathize with their distress. They often have no knowledge of how these decisions are made, and by the time they discover their names appear in a publication, the journal has already received the submission.

Directly questioning their advisor is not feasible because the issue has already occurred. After publication, raising concerns becomes even more difficult. Publicizing the issue could result in the retraction of the paper, which would be a severe setback for both the advisor and the students, potentially jeopardizing the students' research careers. Sometimes, after publication, if the advisor remembers, they might provide a brief explanation to the students; if the advisor forgets, no clarification is given. Consequently, many students remain silent, with no evidence beyond the journal's email to demonstrate their lack of involvement.

Thank you for all the feedback.

I would like to provide some further clarification. While the practice of advisors adding students' names to publications without their involvement is not widespread, it remains a “tradition” in certain research groups.

Our field is centered on the design of electronic devices, with a particular focus on sensor design. In this context, advisors often engage in extensive collaborations with other research groups, leading to the publication of joint papers. However, the students under these advisors frequently have no direct involvement in these collaborative projects, even if their research areas are somewhat related. For example, consider a collaboration on the design of a temperature sensor. A student with substantial expertise in thermal simulations—similar to those required in the project—may have their name added to the publication, despite the fact that their simulations involve entirely different parameters. The student may only become aware of this when they receive a notification from the journal after the paper has been submitted. This is just one possible scenario. Typically, the student’s name appears far down the list of authors, usually beyond the fifth author. The justification for including the student’s name merely due to a general research area overlap is, at best, questionable.

I am seeking guidance on whether there are any institutional mechanisms that could prevent such situations. Additionally, what steps can students take to protect themselves from potential accusations of academic misconduct? Naturally, contacting the editor to request a retraction seems too extreme. Furthermore, considering that these papers are usually unrelated to the student's dissertation work, could these practices have any impact on the dissertation?

Answer 1

If this is a common practice in some places and with some publishers, then there probably isn't a solution as it would require a change in attitude among a large number of people and organizations. Any solution would probably need to be gradual and long term. Publishers, however, could insist on adherence to rules.

However, in much of the world, this would be unethical, and publishers (reputable ones) require permission of all authors to publish. I would question the ethics of any publisher that didn't adhere to this rule.

I'll assume, however, that where it does occur, the professors adding students to publications are motivated by trying to advance those students rather than to hinder them. If such practices are common then the people remaining in those places probably suffer no harm. It does, however, dilute the impact of the people who actually do the work for those publications. Many people (including myself) would consider that unethical. "Authorship", then, is essentially meaningless.

People who have been improperly added to publications might suffer if the work itself is shoddy. And, cutting corners in one area might be correlated with cutting corners in others. They might also suffer if they try to move to a place with higher standards of authorship and it is discovered that they are actually incompetent in fields in which they have "published".