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?

Chazs - Sadly, conferences are much less incisive a test than you might think! I think she understands the paper, she just couldn't have written it herself. A bit like I understand Foucault's famous interpretation of Las Meininas, but I couldn't have written it because I do not have the skill or the awesomeness of being a dead French dude in an expensive polo neck.

In some ways, it's not the complexity of the ideas, it's the craft and skill with which they are put together, the interpretation that is given, the richness of the ideas that makes a great paper in this kind of field.

Is your friend dyslexic?

If she is then this would explain the rambling notes and not being able to "string proper sentences together". If this is the case then it's likely that her DH has helped her put her thoughts into words. Really she needs something like Dragon Speaking software and ReadWrite software to help her through this.

I'm dyslexic and I know what I want to write but find it extremely difficult to hold that idea while I figure out the academic sentence structure. This means I write in note form initially and I never, ever have a completed draft essay, it always gets to final draft by the time I've sorted it all out. Could this be the case with your friend?

dissapointed
Thanks for the explanation. I can see how she might be able to present well without necessarily being able to write it that well.

What I'm trying to say is that could this paper be all her own ideas just her DH helping her write it up?

I have helped her more than I should have as an editor in the past.

She is the kind of person who comes over as very, very vulnerable. She's very open with people, very open in asking directly for help.

She lets me stay at her super amazing house at times and she sometimes pays for dinner as a thank you.

She has never once acknowledged my editing work on her papers, except once when it was actually in the journal I publish (and because I take the unusual policy of editing everything, everyone would have known anyway).

I have always known she was taking advantage and that I should be down as a second author because what I was contributing was substantive.

I will:
- raise my suspicions in a way that hopefully isn't too devastasting, i.e. say that it sounds very much like her DH, pretend that I think that this is because his style has probably just rubbed off by virtue of the time they are now spending together, and that I think she should probably rewrite it before sending it to the journal she has in mind

- suggest that I don't work on the paper and am not acknowledged on it at all.

Speaking as someone who has dealt with plagiarism/cheating issues in a professional context, including cases where people have got sacked for it, I think you should reconsider your involvement in your friend's 'work' very carefully indeed. You've already compromised yourself really. I suggest just giving her her paper back and telling her it isn't something you feel you can help her with. I'd be willing to bet she won't ask why. And don't budge.

The tears and fears then heading off to lunch indicate she emotionally blackmails you to do things she isn't pepared to struggle with herself. And what's in it for you? The friendship issue is very much about what you're prepared to put up with, but to me it's clear you are being used (and patronised with the odd invitation).

Put it this way: would you be happy for all your peers to know the role you've played to date? If not, it must be time to stop doing it.

The need for people to'help' your friend is only going to get worse if she is promoted even further beyond her abilities and confidence. She will never gain confidence if she gets other people to do work for her and the stakes will be higher, plus people's expectations, will be higher every time. I'd also duck any more editing jobs. Now her partner has raised the bar by doing this paper for her, he will have to carry on doing it, won't he?

Ataraxy - No, she's not dyslexic! She avoids writing because she knows she's not very good at it. Then when she starts, she just bashes out any old thing as fast as she can. Doesn't revise it, doesn't read it back. So it reads as a kind of stream-of-consciousness mind dump for 8,000 words. Then she sends it to me (and anyone else she can get to read it) to knock into shape.

The thing about academic writing - the thing that actually makes it hard to do is that you have to go back through what you've written with a very self-critical eye and work out how to improve it. It tends to make you feel very crappy and inadequate and rubbish. And you have to do it over and over again, firstly to produce a final draft, and then again once you have referee comment back. It's a very uncomfortable psychological place to go to and not that many people actually manage it very well (a lot of people do very superficial revisions to a paper rather than really looking at it and working out how to make it the best it could be).

Thing is, I understand how she feels because I feel very anxious when I am writing and revising too. It's just that doesn't make it OK to pass off work that isn't yours.

It's very simple.

1. kill her

2. run off with clever husband

Sorry that's just what I would do. I'm not an editor though.

Monstrous - thank you. I think I have been reacting emotionally to this, and not rationally. The advice from people like you who work in this type of area on this thread is very clear, and suggests that I should be taking this more seriously at a rational level.

I wouldn't be helping her any more and it will soon become apparent she isn't up to scratch when the new promotion doesn't work out.

This thread had been a good read! Must be all the writers on it
She is taking advantage of you to the point I feel quite frustrated! I would definitely go with putting it on email just in case of any repercussion and decline involvement due to ethical issues!

No problem. I know it is hard when it is a friend, but do bear in mind that what you have done for your friend out of kindness is enabling her to stay in a rather infantilised role (or, to remain pathologically lazy, depending on one's view of her!) where she never challenges herself. That can't be in her long-term interest.

I have a friend who will occasionally ask for me to look at her work, and is happy to do the same for me. The difference with your friend is that mine knows what she thinks and wants to say. She isn't looking for ideas, only asking me to read her work for sense, as an outsider to it, to ask if she has communicated what it is she wants to communicate, and done so clearly. If I think she hasn't, she fixes it herself.

That kind of support is fine, I think. These things should either be mutually beneficial or recognised as a specific mentor/mentee kind of relationship.

Can I say how helpful this thread has been? As an undergraduate I always wrote essays at the last minute close to deadline. I'm found a course right now, where my tutor had expected draft submissions and has been very critical. I've found the redrafting process soul destroying because I assumed that if it needed to be rewritten so much, I must be rubbish. Now I realise that it's just what you do to get good work.

I hope you get a resolution, disappointed. Try not to see it as something you may either do, or not do, to your 'friend'. She (and her husband) had done it already, hasn't she? You just have the choice whether to collude in her activity or whether you'll make a stand for academic integrity.

" if it needed to be rewritten so much, I must be rubbish. Now I realise that it's just what you do to get good work."

Of course! The only people who seem to "write well" are those who are prepared to rewrite!

Lougle: when we all worked in hardcopy, everything I wrote came back looking like my colleagues had spelled a bottle of red ink on it. Better to get criticism from your colleagues than to sweat blood getting a submission ready only for reviewers to kick it back with 3 unhelpful cryptic lines.

I've never heard of an academic editor ... is it a humanities thing? Do you at least get a mention in the Acknmt's?

The official line in my current dept is that if you so much as add a comma to an article then your name goes on as author unless you decline. I would rather stick to the BMJ guidelines myself, but reality is something different.

Certainly, historically, when I was in other depts, if someone rewrote a lot of text (that I accepted into the writeup), I would consider if they merited coauthorship.

Here someone calls themselves an academic editor when what they describe is reviewing & decision making (along with a bit of proofreading) about whether to publish a peer-review item. Whereas I think OP does something very different. Maybe what I used to think of as sub-editing or copy proofing.

Oh dear. This is what I think will happen .

OP will very sympathetically and caringly explain that it reads too strongly as her husband's work. That she should think twice before submitting it , etc.

Friend will submit it anyway and never speak to OP again, in case OP "outs" her...

Do you have a PhD OP? Just wondering because you've been quite rude and cavalier about what it takes to get one and your 'friend's' capability and the value of her field. Secondly, they are not easy things to get and unless her supervisor or DH was on her panel not allowed then she must have some competence.

Secondly, and I get that you're worried about your job and that's why you're asking, but it does sound like you're a bit in love, possibly professionally in awe of her DH, knowing his voice, phraseology, he's brilliant, she's shite, they have the big house and fairy tale life and she doesn't deserve it, got where she is due to Knight in shining armour, witty DH.

Sorry to be harsh but that's how it reads to me.

In response to your issue I would email her and say:

Dear X, I've had a look through and this draft is much better than before. I do think however, it might be best to let your own voice shine through, rather than DH's.

Well if that happens, OP is well rid. And 'infantilised friend' (IF) has dug a have for herself and her dh, probably. Why do people want to be academics if they can't write or have original ideas? It must be soul destroying.

"Why do people want to be academics if they can't write or have original ideas? It must be soul destroying."

This doeshappen to journalists, and these are the most easily bought.

The moral of that is, as others, have observed, not to get out of one's own depth! OP, the volunteer-management sector would seriously benefit from those skills, so she won't sink if she loses this.

Psipssina

Do you have a PhD OP? Just wondering because you've been quite rude and cavalier about what it takes to get one and your 'friend's' capability and the value of her field. Secondly, they are not easy things to get and unless her supervisor or DH was on her panel not allowed then she must have some competence.

That's not true, unfortunately. Weak PhD students can get through if they have sympatehtic supervisors who are willing to give a LOT of input and who can then get their mates to examine the PhD. Some students, and it sounds like the OP's 'friend' was one, are expert at latching on to multiple sources of support and sucking them dry. This can take extreme forms sometimes - I can think of one friend (not an academic but a professional writer) who wrote his girlfriend's PhD (PhD in non-traditional academic subject, so possibly easier to do) and at least one chapter in an edited volume for her. Once she had her PhD, they split up.

In another case, a former colleague of mine who was not exactly the smartest academic I've ever met, was supervised by the very senior colleague who then went on to marry her and get her a job in the small dept they worked in. I very much doubt that he lined up tough examiners for her viva.

Research leeching can work the other way round too, of course - one of the old fuckers professors where I did my postgrad work was famous for not having single authored anything for the last 25 years of his career: everything was 'co-authored' with a younger female colleague who everyone in their own and related fields knew he was shagging (the only person who didn't seem to know was his poor wife). The female colleague apparently wrote everything but he got to take credit as the big name.

I've never come across that, thank goodness, Father though my experiences have been in Law, which may explain it.

[another sidetrack]

Atomic, was that you who wrote 'part-time confidence'?

Because that's an entire chick-lit novel, right there. Are you a chick lit light modern romance writer?

You need to rethink your professional relationship with her because this paper seems to be the tip of an iceberg.

I’m in a scientific research field so editing is a different process but for me there are two big issues in your situation: first if joint authorship with her husband (or anyone else) is a problem for her career, then why is that your problem? You might tell her that the paper looks very much as if someone else wrote a lot of it and suggest that she uses him as second author, and then back out altogether and let her do as she sees fit.

Second, the relationship you’ve had with her up to now sounds a bit unprofessional. She may be a user but as a professional editor you are responsible for not letting yourself be used. It’s not clear why you feel obliged to work on her papers, it could almost sound as if you’ve let her bribe you with dinners and stays in her fancy house to do uncredited writing for her. So I would refuse any more invitations and not give her any more help except on a strictly formal professional basis. And I would not gossip about her or speculate about who wrote this paper to anyone at other journals.

Good luck and I hope it all works out.

Oh god I was appalled by the crapness of the phd of a boyfriend I once had. It was in a kind of niche/newish field and all he did was basically ask a load of people a load of random questions (about how well this or that policy worked in their workplace) and write down the results. I read it and said "but where's the analysis and conclusions that you draw from the research?" Wasn't necessary apparently – in fact it was clear he didn't really know what I was on about

Confidence is right. I could have done that phd in a week and a half. It only took him three years because he was an ineffecient ditherer. But I would never have written it because I would have simply assumed it would have to be brilliant to be a phd. Not the case.