Supervisor used graphic without crediting me

Question

The following situation occurred:

• I was asked to modify a figure (originally published in a paper) to be used in a non-further-determined publication by my professor.
• I did substantially modify the figure: I redrew the figure from scratch in a vector program, added colours and decoration and made it generally more attractive.
• Now, half a year later this same figure or graphic appears in a book and just holds the small remark © Name of professor. Neither my name nor a reference to the original figure is given.
• I checked the general acknowledgements of the book and there is no mention of my name.

My question is: How to proceed from here? Naturally I don't want to deteriorate the relationship with my employer but I need to raise this issue, especially so that it does not happen again in the future (my professor asks me on a regular basis to draw graphics for him). Should I insist that my name should somehow be included (second edition of the book, online errata etc.)? What would the copyright implications be for a) not mentioning the creator of the graphic (me) and b) not referencing the original work?

Some context: I work as a research assistant and I am not employed primarily to do these drawings though - when requested - I usually do them in my work time. The book in which the figure appeared is the output of a research institution (though clearly directed at the general public) and I am not sure if the book is to be sold, i.e. if it could be considered commercial use.

Edit: I may not have explained myself well. In my opinion the resulting image is not a mere modification of a figure but a piece of work that requires creativity and year-long practices with a graphics program.

Answer 1

How to proceed from here?

You don't do anything. You did something small your supervisor asked for, and he used the figure that you made for him.

It's very unusual for figures to be labeled with the name of the actual person that made it, and it would be a lot to expect this without asking / demanding this beforehand. Take the closest textbook and you'll find that indeed, a lot of figures will be copied from publications and references are included. However, there will also be custom-made figures that don't have any note. And you can be quite sure these figures are not drawn by the authors themselves, but by their students or employees.

There would probably also be no copyright implication, as this sounds like you just re-created some schematic figure and you just copied the idea, not the work itself.

Answer 2

Just my two cents: (which, I have a lot of, as I open a lot of answers this way it seems)

Take this as gained experience, and next time you are asked to rework graphics to a large extent, ask about how the rework will be credited beforehand. Now to be fair, I have not seen many instances where graphs, etc have actually had reference to who made the graph. This may be due to the idea that the graph/image is not as important as the data it conveys.

I would like to ask one thing. Is there any line in the acknowledgements along the lines of "thanks to all who have helped me make this book possible?" If so, you would be counted among that number. If not, just chock this up to one of two things: The author is too full of him/herself to recognize the work of others in a publication he/she put out, or two the author simply forgot to include everyone who helped out due to a simple slip of the mind.

I would HOPE it would be the latter, but I know enough published professors who would fall into the former category. And the sad part of it all, is they are from the community college level.

Answer 3

To my mind, the most important element of what you have written is this:

not referencing the original work

Since the figure was originally published in another work, it is absolutely required that the original work be cited; to do otherwise is (self)plagiarism. That part of the issue is clear, if it is a scientific publication. If it is a "pop science" publication that doesn't have any references at all, though, it falls into a general grey area of "crappy non-professional publication" for which no better can be expected and which you probably don't want to be associated with in any case.

In either case, an acknowledgement of your work would be appropriate. Failing to acknowledge you is probably not formally actionable, but is a clear indicator of a potential problem. It's also possible that it's not intentional but simply an editing failure---screwing up one citation in a book would not be at all unusual.

So, how should you proceed? I would recommend approaching your professor from the point of view that this is a mistake, and seeing how they respond. Something like:

"I was looking through the book, and it looks like the reference for this image was accidentally omitted. What do you think we should do about it?"

If your professor is well-intentioned and this is a mistake, they should have suggestions for how to fix it (e.g., errata). If your professor just blows it off, however, then you know you're dealing with somebody with poor scientific publishing ethics, and should plan to start extracting yourself from that environment. If it bugs you, you can contact the publisher later, but wait until you are secure in a place where your professor no longer has power over you.