Very sorry to hear about your experience Nicoladb. I know it must feel extremely disappointing, but it appears you still have a chance to gain your Ph.D. Get some rest and re-group as you have come this far! Then, get started in addressing all the issues in your that are needed to satisfy the examiners, however unfair that may feel/seem/be. Make a list of all the tasks to be done (there are lots of online tools for that) and just go through it leaving nothing out that they requested. When it's all over, and you have your Ph.D. you probably won't look back much. Best of luck.

Thanks for your thoughts, abababa. Hope you're keeping well.

As long as you have covered everything they requested in their report, and pointed them to your changes in an itemised way (to make it easier for them), then what can they object to? Good luck.

Hi all,

I hope everyone is well. I need a bit of advice regarding the listing of authors on a paper I worked on significantly. The post-doc after me (I no longer work there) has made some revisions (not a huge amount of work) and has now listed my name last despite me doing most of the work on the paper (and actually turning it into a publishable paper).

I started a post-doc just as the pandemic hit at a "prestigious" Russell Group university, which I did for 2 years until the beginning of this year. I was working on two quite different research areas. In the area I was hired for (biotechnology), I spent a lot of time working on a detailed survey paper with my PI. When handed over to me to work on, it was originally of undergraduate quality but covered some important work. The key metric used was wrong. I fixed that, made many revisions and improved the technical quality of the paper. It took quite a while alongside my other work (software engineering computational pipelines). The preprint with my changes was archived.

It was eventually submitted and at peer-review received a request for amendments. This was expected because no matter how well written the paper was it was multidisciplinary and focusing on a nascent biotechnology so satisfying and catering to all readers was challenging.

At this post-doc, I wrote and published 4 papers without my post-doc supervisor. Three alone and one with my previous Ph.D. supervisor using some results we had left over. There were two papers with my PI. This one discussed here and a short application note which unfortunately hasn't been published. In my mind, this was disappointing as I wanted to author more with my PI.

I've left the post-doc now but I was both glad and slightly horrified to see the post-doc who started 7 months after I left has now put my name last in the author list - it is now PI, him and then me (last).

As mentioned, I put a significant amount of work in and there would not be a paper had that not been the case.

The said paper is now under peer review -- I want to see it published (as I worked so hard on it), but want to be fairly credited for my authorship. How should I deal with this? (PI is a bit of a slippery Eel). Pop an email to the journal editor? I have not had a great experience with editors in the past when it comes to issues of integrity. I usually find they don't give a sh*t (excuse my French).

I was very enthusiastic about academia until issues (lack of integrity) with the slippery PI. Despite having my own papers published during this time it feels like a let-down. I now work commercially in the other area.

I can imagine it is exhausting psychologically but think of all you have achieved. Break it down into chunks and give yourself a tick for each bit done and try to detach emotionally, i.e. not get upset every time you have to complete a bit more and you'll get them done and never look back.

DJC, what part of "you already have a master’s degree, or a qualification that’s equivalent or higher" as a criterion for exclusion do you not understand? Maybe if you yell BY WRITING ALL IN CAPITALS they might accept your sons' application. Also, was he not able to look this up himself?

Just a follow-up question I had... In cases where the journal says an investigation has been carried out, would a report be available? Otherwise, they can just say anything and go with any old fob-you-off line.

Hi Abababa,

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on this, it has been very depressing and was detracting from my time, so for a while I've put it at the back of my mind, for now.

Unfortunately, yes. Two journals, both "reputable" in my field, one of which is a Nature journal, have both handled it in the same way --- promising an investigation as "they take plagiarism very seriously", then a delay, then fobbing me off with "nothing to see here, case closed". The editor of the Nature journal didn't even have the decency to reply, I had to email the publisher, who then said they would investigate, she then replied with the fobbing off method.

[quoteIt would be something of a crusade from this point. The only thing I can see working is you asking top academics in the field, getting their general consensus, then creating a media storm (in the academic sense!) that makes the editor(s) rethink.[/quote]

That's a great idea, but I don't have much of a twitter following, and it'd perhaps be quite an effort to get people interested enough to help on this.



It has been quite a distraction -- particularly in putting it all down in two letters -- one for each occurrence.

I am trying to find the research integrity department of the university they belong to but finding it quite hard to get the actual contact details.

Update: When the journal mentioned that they emailed me to say they will assign an "independent reviewer", I wrote back to say that I appreciated that, and had there have been a citation and attribution of the methodology to us, such as:

"In this work, we have applied the approach outlined by [BugsBunny et al] to quantify ... in ... --- partitioning X by Y Our work, however, focuses on the in-silico portion of a typical..."

or something to that effect, that would be properly attributing the very specific methodology to our work and I would not have written to them about the extensive similarities.

They have now written back saying that whilst they found "conceptual overlap", there "principles" (actually not just conceptual or principles, but a very specific methodology we devised) were applied in a different way, that they will not be retracting and that the case is closed.

It seems like they just used my honest comment about citation/acknowledgement to fob me off with a bogus response.

I can't accept this trickery from what is supposed to be a reputable journal. It brings the said journal into disrepute wrt to their handling of this. Suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks rewt :-)

An update: The publisher and now editor in chief, have now requested an external to investigate independently. I'm glad of this and can now put this out of my mind. It has been quite stressful.

bunny out!

Hahaha. I thought salami slicing is when it's your own work? Maybe this is more of a "sausage rolling", taking someone else's meat (or indeed sausage) and wrapping it up in some puff pastry and saying you baked it.

bunny out!

I initially wrote to the editor in chief. The associate editor responded to say they would investigate. Then a while later the chief wrote back with some bull excuse that the papers are in the same area so there will likely be similarities. I replied quoting the COPE guidelines and mentioned there was no attribution. Now, the publisher has said they were forwarded my complaint and will now investigate. Waiting to see if it will be properly conducted - hopefully it won't be a whitewash, because then I will have to consider further steps.

I suspect the editors are reluctant to investigate because i) any retraction or correction to the paper (to acknowledge our work) would involve a notice that could be seen to reflect badly on the journal/editor (i.e. how they let it through/did not spot), and ii) it requires a bit of work following the investigation guidelines/process.

I want the journal to investigate rather than going straight to the academic institution of the offending authors as I believe that is the proper process. If the journal editor isn't forthcoming, shall I contact the publisher (forwarding the findings)?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

bunny out!

Can you somehow convince him that publishing this work will be of some benefit to him?