What to do about academics who fail to fulfill their collaborative responsibilities?

Question

So, a colleague at another university and I agreed to collaborate on a series of papers 5 years ago. To avoid clashes in style, etc. we agreed that I would write a couple and he would write a couple, with us both commenting and editing each other's. So far, so good. I produced my couple of papers in the first year or so and these were published with me and my colleague as first and second authors, respectively. I was expecting to see the same from my colleague but didn't. I have been waiting ever since for them to materialise but they haven't. We have repeatedly set deadlines, which come and go, with my colleague saying he has been very busy (teaching, marking, blah, blah) but that he'll get to them in a couple of weeks. 5 years later, I am still waiting to see something but I think it's now safe to say that I have been well and truly shafted.

Does anyone else have any experience of this behaviour and, if so, what, if anything, have you done about it? I am on the verge of writing a rather snotty email to this individual's manager to point out the retched state of affairs as, after all, it doesn't reflect at all well on his institution even though they have benefited from having their institution's name on effectively my work.

Answer 1

As zibadawa timmy mentions in his comment, something smells fishy here. I really see only two possibilities how the scenario you describe can transpire:

1. Your collaborator did in fact provide input to "your" papers to the extent expected for "second authors" in your discipline. In this case, you are really not supposed to expect anything more from him, and writing a snotty email will reflect only badly on you.
2. Your collaborator did in fact not provide input to "your" papers to the extent expected for "second authors" in your discipline. Rather, you expected that the "value" for you will come in the form of later papers for you, to which you would have contributed equally little. This is called a publication ring, and it is considered highly unethical. Writing a snotty email calling out the fact that your collaborator did not do his part in a more than shady deal sounds like a terrible idea.

Of course there is some amount of grey area between those two possibilities, but at the end of the day, you should never "pay forward" an authorship on a paper that the other person doesn't really deserve with any sort of expected or promised future benefits.

And if the other person has in fact contributed sufficiently, then what is there to complain about? Sure, one can be disappointed if the other person promised to lead a different research project and never gets to it, but that's a different story altogether.

Answer 2

Do you have a formal agreement with this person? A contract? Did you agree on work packages in a grant proposal maybe? That would be reasons to formally complain that someone is not delivering what they are paid for to do.

If not, then there is not much you can do. Academics sometimes think they will have the time to continue research on their free time and informally agree to collaborate and realize later that it's not possible. It might very well be that teaching and their new research is taking all their time. After all, they are hired by another institution to do something else. Writing to his "manager" (not sure who you mean by that, supervisor?) is not going to be helpful. Most likely this person never heard of your informal agreement and couldn't care less.

If anything they might (rightfully) think that they are responsible to get the funding to pay for your colleague's salary and are pleased to hear that he's not using his time to do hobby research. The name of their institution on "your" work (I hope you mean the work done in collaboration with him, otherwise he doesn't deserve authorship in the first place) will not constitute a viable leverage to force your colleague to work with you.

You got your first author papers out, be happy about that and go on with other scientific endeavors.