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My research paper was stolen by the co-author and published as his own. What do I do? All the data the paper is based on is my own work. I got it accepted in another journal but now I cannot get it published according to the copyright terms and conditions.

F'x
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awesomeness
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    I'm confused by the word "coauthor" here. Was your paper accepted in another journal with or without the other person's involvement/knowledge/permission? Are they your coauthor on this paper, on a different paper, or something else? – JeffE Apr 02 '12 at 13:14
  • No permission no prior knowledge of him having submitted my paper to someother journal ...I cannot go against him he is my professor it might have dire consequence to my career – awesomeness Apr 02 '12 at 14:05
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    Are you convinced that it was deliberate? Maybe there was a misunderstanding or something. Have you spoken to your professor? –  Apr 02 '12 at 16:33
  • she is not picking my calls and deliberately yes i think she wants to take all the credit for my work . I slogged out day and night to make that. She could have at least mentioned my name – awesomeness Apr 02 '12 at 18:51
  • This has happened to me for the very first time and i am really tensed that she knows about me knowing. Its so hard to confront her now. She has lost all my respect – awesomeness Apr 02 '12 at 18:52
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    Definitely talk to your department chair. Find a new advisor, even if it means changing departments. Your advisor will continue to abuse you until you walk out. – JeffE Apr 02 '12 at 20:05
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    But you didn't answer my question. When you submitted this work to a journal, did you do it with or without your advisor's knowledge/approval? Is your advisor a co-author on the other paper? If so, then the paper without your name is straight-up double submission, which neither journal editor will like. – JeffE Apr 02 '12 at 20:07
  • @JeffE yes i did take the coauthor's approval and he told me not to submit it anywhere else which is not allowed but he did it on his own – awesomeness Apr 03 '12 at 03:48
  • @JeffE Walking out is not an option now he is the head of the department where i ll be giving the final viva for this project and its my last few days in college – awesomeness Apr 03 '12 at 03:50
  • and getting it published is very important for my grades – awesomeness Apr 03 '12 at 03:56
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    Is this high school, college, or phd work? It doesn't change what is wrong or right or how you feel, but has implications for the solution. – mankoff Apr 03 '12 at 13:15
  • its a college project – awesomeness Apr 03 '12 at 16:09
  • I mailed the journal where it got accepted that i am not economically stable to publish the paper right now and they agreed to consider it for the subsequent editions ..For the time being i am going to make changes in my paper and then send it back does it seem a good idea? – awesomeness Apr 05 '12 at 10:21
  • Out of scope: Why was it needed to steal? Is it her first time? She doesn't know the consequences? – जलजनक Mar 31 '13 at 08:50

3 Answers3

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Let me echo scaaahu's excellent advice: Calm down. Obviously you're scared, and with good reason, but you need to approach the situation calmly and professionally. Otherwise, even if you are in the right it will be difficult for other people to take your concerns seriously.

Your comments suggest (to me) that the situation is not as straightforward as your initial post describes. Without considerably more detail about what happened — which would be inappropriate for you to post here — it's difficult to make specific suggestions.

I think you need to discuss the situation with someone who understands both the politics in your department and the publication culture in your field. Find another senior faculty member in your department (or in a different department, or in the dean's office) who you can trust to keep confidence. (Yes, this can be difficult, but ask around.) Write up a timeline of events in advance, and make copies of documentation for each event in the timeline. Calmly and carefully describe the situation. Just present the facts; don't panic, and don't accuse. (One of the facts is "I'm scared"; that's okay.) Ask your confidant how to proceed. Listen to them.

In the best case, this is a simple misunderstanding, and talking to an informed but neutral third party is the best way to convince you to relax. In the worst case, your department chair is being egregiously unethical, and in particular threatening your chances at graduation, in which case you absolutely need a senior faculty advocate to help you navigate the resulting political mine field. (Your primary goal in this case should be to graduate and get out, not to optimize your grade or to punish your department chair.) Most likely, the actual situation is somewhere in between those two extremes.

Good luck.

JeffE
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  • Thanks @JeffE i am trying my best not to panic but other teachers dun know about it and are forcing me to get this paper published – awesomeness Apr 03 '12 at 09:46
  • Do i submit it in the new journal that it got accepted in? i know it is with a risk but all my marks are dependent on it what do i do – awesomeness Apr 04 '12 at 03:20
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The first thing would be to contact the editor of the journal that published your co-author's work, and to explain the problem to them. If the proofs that it is your own research are sufficient, they might consider the previously published paper as plagiarism, which should unblock your own publication. In this process, it might be worth contacting also the journal to which you submitted, so that they can confirm the date at which they received your submission.

Right now, I would say that the best move is to contact the two journals editors with the proofs, and see if they can sort things out. You can also consider in the mean time publishing your paper to an open repository (such as arXiv), if it does not interfere with the copyright policy of the journal you want to publish to.

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    Also, if you and your coauthor work at the same institution, take your evidence to your advisor / department chair / dean. Hopefully you have concrete evidence to back your claim: lab notebooks, dated paper drafts, submission time stamps, archived email conversations, etc. – JeffE Apr 02 '12 at 13:22
  • It was my work mostly plus he is my professor i cannot report the issue i am stuck in the middle of a big issue – awesomeness Apr 02 '12 at 14:01
  • Plus i somehow feel my co author knows i have gotten to know about this she is avoiding me .. I have got all the proof thats not an issue – awesomeness Apr 02 '12 at 14:12
  • I feel all disgusted i did work really hard for this :/ – awesomeness Apr 02 '12 at 14:48
  • the coauthor submitted his work to some journal who accepted it in 4 to 5 days where as mine took one month and i got excellent feedback – awesomeness Apr 02 '12 at 16:33
  • how do i submit it in arXiv? – awesomeness Apr 03 '12 at 17:11
  • @awesomeness I believe the FAQ http://arxiv.org/help/submit is quite self-explanatory. –  Apr 03 '12 at 17:27
  • http://www.jict.co.uk/aim-scope how do i find out if the journal link i have given allows me to submit in arxiv or not – awesomeness Apr 03 '12 at 18:30
  • I think you can find some answer there: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7/102 and http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/40/102. –  Apr 03 '12 at 19:07
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    @awesomeness: you can report the issue, even if the person involved is your professor. And I would say you cannot get out of this situation without reporting it, the only question is to who and how, but the answers up to know give good advice on this. – Benoît Kloeckner May 27 '12 at 17:45
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My first advice is to calm down.

Your question and your comments sound emotional to me. The more emotional you are, the worse situation you would be in. Since the other party is your prof, the burden of proof is on your shoulder. You need to deal with it carefully.

I am not even sure you have a problem. From what you have said in the question and comments, your prof submitted a paper with only his name on the paper to a journal without your prior knowledge. Then he gave you his approval to submit another paper of probably the same contents to another journal with both your name and his name on it(you said he is the co-author).

The above is what I understood from your question and your comments. If all are true, the issue is his problem, not yours. Because he is the one who did the double submission, not you. All you have to do to clear up this issue is to present evidence which shows that you got his approval before you submitted the paper to the journal.

Nobody
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