Where can I publish the draft paper of my masters thesis?

Question

I'm Iranian and now working on a paper related to my masters thesis. Unfortunately, in my country copyright violation is not unusual and some professors publish students' papers in their own name, excluding the student from the co-author list. I want to publish a draft of my paper including both my name and my adviser in the author list so that I can claim partial ownership of the paper if my adviser attempts to unethically exclude me from the author list at a later date.

Where and how can I publish my draft paper submitted in my name and my thesis adviser's name?

PS: I eventually want to post my article to JASSS-Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation.

Answer 1

The thing to do is to check your target journal's submission guidelines: what you're looking for, is their attitude to preprints - a preprint is a draft of an journal article, made and distributed before publication.

If they're happy that preprints do not constitute prior publication, you can submit a preprint to a suitable archive (making sure you get the permission of your co-authors first), and this will help establish your precedence.

In the case of your target journal, the "how to submit" page says:

Posting a manuscript on a pre-print server such as ArXiv or SSRN is not considered to be duplicate publication.

So in this case you're ok to submit your draft article to a preprint archive, to establish that this is your work and not your supervisor's, and it won't damage your chances of getting published in your target journal.

We have a number of other questions about preprints, and you might find lots of useful related information on the answers there.