WWYD - friend passing off someone else's work as hers

[disappointedinfriend]

NC for this, but regular.

I am an academic editor. My friend is an academic. She is married to another academic. I have worked writing from both of them quite extensively.

She normally sends me her papers to look through. I have been reading one of them through several iterations and helping her with it.

The first iterations of this paper were worse than useless. However, she has sent me a new version of it and it is brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that I immediately recognise that her DH has taken her paper and rewritten it completely for her. I know his quirks of style and I can hear his voice all the way though it. I love her to bits, but I know that she is incapable of writing something as good as this essay.

She has presented it to me as her own work, and will do so to the public too. She is looking for promotion at the end of the year.

I feel a bit sick that she would stoop to this. I would never expose her publicly, but I don't know how to react to her. Should I appear like I am taken in by it? WWYD?

Fortunately, I have no responsibility in this because I'm not publishing it phew! I just get sent this because I am a friend and thus supposed to work for free on it! So not saying anything is very much an option.

What has happened goes way, way beyond help and guidance. He has taken something that was just a lot of rambling notes, and written her a coherent, clever, and persuasive paper which is likely to become heavily cited in the field. It's a critical theory piece, so it's all about how cleverly the issue is thought about, and not empirical/data-driven at all. The work is the sophistication of the thoughts on the page.

I have seen four drafts of this work, and it has suddenly gone from being almost incomprehensible (she honestly cannot string a sentence together in the right order) to highly finished and in his voice.

Did she get her job through him?

walnutpie - it is a very, very weak field and she is fairly early career. She has received a LOT of help in the past, both from me, from PhD supervisors, from her ex-BFs, and from cowriters.

walnutpie - He is in a much more heavyweight, but very closely related field - but different department. He did help her to get her current position, but only in an advisory capacity, e.g. writing her application, being able to give her the inside track on the internal politics.

I'm also a bit puzzled as to how, if her writing is 'worse than useless' and she 'cannot string a sentence together in the right order', she got to her position in the first place.

But that's slightly by the by.

I thought you were working on it in a paid capacity. If you're just reading it as a friend, then you're definitely not getting paid enough to worry about it this much! A casual email might suffice, along the lines of 'It sounds really reminiscent of your DH's voice.' She can do what she likes with that.

x-post about how she got her position.

Why does she get so much help? Because it's a 'weak field'... Does that mean a field in which she lacks competition?

I agree, as a friend, I'd just say to her straight 'this sounds more like Gerald than you!' And leave the ball in her court.

I must say, seems her husband is not very bright if he thinks his style isn't recognisable?!

As an academic, I would suggest that they publish it as co-authors. that way, he can get some of the credit, and so would she. if it's going to be such an influential piece of work, then that would be mean they both get invited to conferences and talks and they can share the glory.

I know some husband and wife teams where both are in very similar/related fields. one team has published significantly together and both had stints as head of dept/head of school. I think if it works well then fine.

Yeah co-authors is the way to go.

If she can't string a sentence together I doubt she can write her own papers for presentation.

It's not a field where there are a lot of really bright people. It's a weak discipline where the quality of written work is low. I can't say more because it's also a small field where a lot of people know one another.

Basically, there are PhDs and PhDs. They're by no means all the same standard. You don't have to be particularly clever to get one - in fact, I know some people who are right idiots who passed (and I don't mean idiots in a 'has no commonsense/mad professor' kind of way. I mean people who aren't very intellectually bright). Someone can scrape through in an area where nothing much is expected and get a job, whereas someone in a highly competitive one will have to work a lot harder for the same result and may find it very difficult to find a post. I have a friend who is extremely talented but in a field where it is cut-throat, and he is still working at the bottom of the ladder after 15 years.

You said critical theory, did you?

NK5BM3 - I don't think she'll go for that. I think she needs a single author study for her promotion case. And I suspect it wouldn't count for both of them for the REF.

I think you'll have to ask her if her DH collaborated wrote with her as it sounds so much like his writing. And the mn say if you recognize it as such others will also. Give her time to think about whether she wants to submit as is, or rewrite herself.

GeorgeYeats They aren't critical theorists, sorry, didn't mean to suggest that!! It's a conceptual piece that draws on critical theory, written for another field. What I meant is that it's not empirically focused or quantitative in any way.

OP, I'm an editor. This has happened to me. In a commercial field which is almost as complicated, funnily enough, because the plagiarism was also a financial liability.

First, you need to consider your own position. Editors are gatekeepers - if anyone finds out you connived in a passing off (the other name for this) you will not be in good odour. Consider the publication too - why the hell should they accept fake work? V unfair. They won't trust you any more, reasonably enough.

Give your 'friend' a chance to redeem herself with a fresh text. Tell her you can't accept it and make use of the phrase 'insufficiently concealed borrowing' to help. Otherwise, you'll have to grass her up, you know that.

On a personal level, she's no friend of yours to pull a stunt like that.

How is your 'helping her with revisions' different from him helping her with revisions?
Speaking as another academic, not sure who has right to claim authorship.

Why wouldn't they agree for her to be first author as person who did the research & him as 2nd author as someone who helped write? Where I work, being first or corresponding author gets you promotions.

Oooh! I can string sentences together! What's this weak field?! Please PM me, though, so I don't get lots of competition from other eloquent bitches MNers!

Ooh is the field to to with things on wheels and is English not her first language?

(Just thinking of a couple I know...)

Cat - no! She's very much first language English.

I imagine there are a lot of husband-wife teams in academia! Maybe this is not all that uncommon.

I'm just a bit, you know, shocked. Naively, probably.

It's art theory, right?

Bah! :o

Yes I know loads of academic couples actually. though not all with this dynamic.

Oh God, no, not art theory! (Art theory's not a weak field, is it? I've never seen it as such! If you think that's weak, anyway, you should see the one I'm talking about).

Anyway, STOP GUESSING because someone will get it otherwise!