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My secondary advisor approached me; he is on the program committee of a conference and asked if I were willing to review a research paper that is in my avenue of research. The review is part of the peer-review process, to determine acceptance.

I accepted, but it turns out it he is planning to submit the review himself, just asking me to write it for him.

Should I protest? If they are my words, my name should be on the review. But I don't want to raise a ruckus if it materially doesn't matter anyway.

Do I gain any benefit if it is me who submits the review instead of him?

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No, you gain no benefit if it is you who submits the review instead of him. If you conduct a review on his behalf, you gain the advantage of his mentorship and advice. It will be good experience for you, as you will get to work through a work in progress and understand more deeply how submitted papers are evaluated. If you are concerned about credit, ask him to mention to the editor that he asked you to do the review and these are your comments. Ideally, he should ask the editor for permission before sharing the submitted manuscript with you, as it was sent to him under a condition of confidentiality.

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  • Exactly this. I did this before, with a former boss asking me to help with a review that was more in my scope of experience than his. He asked the editor for permission and we handed in the review together, which for him reduced the load and for me made my name known to the editor as well as taught me how this works. Win-win.
    – skymningen
    Apr 19, 2016 at 9:34
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    In my discipline (CS), the review forms typically contain an explicit "Secondary reviewer (if you want to give credit)" field to mention the student who actually did the work. In some cases they then also get listed in the proceedings.
    – Daniel
    Apr 19, 2016 at 11:57
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Student from Germany here (Information Science) - I can only speak for my university and my professors, and they are quite strikt about plagiarism. Submitting something written by someone else is just that. Therefore our profs would never allow, nor tolerate such a thing. Now, I am not sure about your relationship with your adviser, but it seems like any other scientific one to me - so your name should be on the work somewhere, just for the professionalism. Furthermore I am not speaking about any personal gain you might or might not gain - that's your personal thing.

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