Academics - question about publishing own work.

[admylin]

Sorry of this is long...

Dh came home really mad last night.

He is in a reaserach job as a postdoc, employed by a neuro surgeon to do research on his method of treating Parkinson's diesease.

Anyway, his boss, the surgeon told him to write a review on the subject so he did, then he handed it in to be checked through by the boss and another professor.

The other professor has been 'helping' her med. student write a paper for her dissertation and to be published and has copied and pasted some of dh's review including some of his own interpretation (so not just quotes about other papers) before it has even been sent to the publishers.

What would you say if that happened to you? Surely the professor shouldn't be writing even a little part of her students paper for her? And if you get a paper given to review before it is submitted you can't take any part of it for someone else? Now this paper (the med student) is ready to be submitted but dh's isn't being sent in yet because his boss wants another friend to check it first.

What can dh do about it - if at all, he feels he can't do anything because as usual he is on a contract for 3 years and thinks if he doesn't agree they won't renew the contract.

It is absolutely unacceptable. I certainly appreciate your dh's reluctance to rock the boat, given the short-term contract, ect. but this is so extremely unaaceptable that I would have thought that a quiet word to his professor would seem extremely restrained and cooperative. After all, he your dh has the evidence to pursue a formal complaint about naked plagiarism.

Exactly, plagiarism. I must email him that to translate (we're in Germany) and I think he should insist that they remove the parts that were his interpretation and let them keep the few lines which were quotations with references of other works.

Yes. I'm an academic book editor and I recently worked on a book that was days from going to press when plagiarism my one of the contributors was uncovered. The whole book was withdrawn, at big cost to publishers, and is now about to be re-edited with this man entirely vanished from it. His career is in tatters.

I wonder if he could suggest that they keep it but quote his name and write unpublished data or something? Have you ever seen it done like that?

Yes, certainly his name and some phrase like 'unpublished data' can be cited as a source -- and absolutely should be if he is being quoted.

Though it sounds like it is the interpretation and not the raw data that is his original contribution. So the portion that constitutes his interpretation should be in quotation marks and a reference should be included to his unpublished paper.

Also, if he is the one who has done the work of drawing together the sources whose work he interpretes, some acknowledgement should be made of that. So, for example, when those sources are quoted, thre should be a reference like "A. Author Such and such Paper, cited in Admylin's DH DH Paper"

(That is all very approximate, bcs precise styles vary, but you get the principle: both his interpretation and his work of gathering sources need to be acknowledged by mentions of his unpublished paper.)

Thanks alot - it's what I was thinking too and it really won't hurt them to just add that little bit to the paper. I told him he'll be the one getting in trouble if she publishes now and his paper comes out a few months later and someone accuses him of plagiarism!

Absolutely! he is saving them a LOT of trouble and unprofessionalism by quietly ensuring now that they act properly.

That's what made him so mad, he read over 200 papers to gather all his sources for this review, took him months to prepare.

I wonder if it's common for professors to write papers for students though? Dh said, it looks good when a professor has more students graduating so she is helping because of that. The student did the experimental work and data gathering but often the discussion part of a paper is the hardest to write so her professor jsut does it for her

Think I'll do a Phd under dh then he can 'help' me too.

I'm guessing it is rather unusual, and not really proper at all, for the prof to be writing for the student. You more often hear of cases the other way around, where the student's work gets credited to the prof. The inequality of power in these cases it very sharp, and your DH's profs seem not at all sensitive to the obligations that places on them to be scrupulous.

Update: Dh has had the paper with his copied work to check so he has changed a few words in every sentence that was his - hopefully now it won't come up in any of those search for copies software programmes that the editors might use.

Hopefully it'll all be OK and next time he will be alot more careful who he gives his work to.