- Joined
- Dec 20, 2008
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Last year, I proposed and initiated my own independent project. I did all of my own background research, formed my own hypothesis, proposed my own method, and carried out the project. It was under a grant that I received through my school's research center. The results were promising and I submitted them as an abstract to an international conference. I began work on a manuscript and left it sitting for a few months as I was leaving for the summer for an internship.
Obviously, there were areas of the data that had not been done analyzing, since I left abruptly for the summer. Without telling me, my professor then did analysis on MY data, plagarized large portions of my abstract (he took my figures, copied and pasted my wording, and switched around a few words without my permission), and submitted it to another journal for publication as a abstract and to a different international conference as a talk.
I'm quite flustered because I clearly deserve first authorship on my project since I did the intellectual thinking behind it, I initiated it, and executed most of it. However, not only did my professor basically steal my project while I was gone (he did not notify me that he was going to continue it during the summer), he also took first author on the talk and the abstract he submitted, and plagarized large portions of my data. I suppose he felt like he had the opportunity to do so because we worked on most of my project in private.
This professor works under my two big PI's, so he's not my PI, but he's technically a "professor." To let the lab know the work I did on the project (and suggest that I merit recognition), I sent the beginnings of my manuscript to the rest of the lab (including the two PI's we work under) and let them know about the work I did to initiate the project and create the method for it. How can I:
1) protect my intellectual property
2) reclaim the authorship of the project, when we send out the manuscript that I started?
3) play lab politics and maintain the relationship with my professor who took my data? (he's my teammember, and I want to keep these bridges open).
I'm willing to let the abstracts he submitted slide, as long as I get first authorship on my paper. I'm going to make the knowledge of what projects I'm involved in more public from now on, i.e. writing monthly reports to my PI's and send this out to the whole lab so everyone knows that everyone else knows what projects are "mine" and what contribution is mine, so that nobody would have the leeway to do things like this. I'm actually an undergrad, who's been lucky (let me emphasize lucky) to find the opportunity to publish and do first-author quality work as an undergrad. I want to do MD/PhD. I thought that med students would have more experience with this sort of issue than undergrads, so I posted this here. Perhaps it's also my standing on the pecking ladder that opened the door to such manipulation.
Obviously, there were areas of the data that had not been done analyzing, since I left abruptly for the summer. Without telling me, my professor then did analysis on MY data, plagarized large portions of my abstract (he took my figures, copied and pasted my wording, and switched around a few words without my permission), and submitted it to another journal for publication as a abstract and to a different international conference as a talk.
I'm quite flustered because I clearly deserve first authorship on my project since I did the intellectual thinking behind it, I initiated it, and executed most of it. However, not only did my professor basically steal my project while I was gone (he did not notify me that he was going to continue it during the summer), he also took first author on the talk and the abstract he submitted, and plagarized large portions of my data. I suppose he felt like he had the opportunity to do so because we worked on most of my project in private.
This professor works under my two big PI's, so he's not my PI, but he's technically a "professor." To let the lab know the work I did on the project (and suggest that I merit recognition), I sent the beginnings of my manuscript to the rest of the lab (including the two PI's we work under) and let them know about the work I did to initiate the project and create the method for it. How can I:
1) protect my intellectual property
2) reclaim the authorship of the project, when we send out the manuscript that I started?
3) play lab politics and maintain the relationship with my professor who took my data? (he's my teammember, and I want to keep these bridges open).
I'm willing to let the abstracts he submitted slide, as long as I get first authorship on my paper. I'm going to make the knowledge of what projects I'm involved in more public from now on, i.e. writing monthly reports to my PI's and send this out to the whole lab so everyone knows that everyone else knows what projects are "mine" and what contribution is mine, so that nobody would have the leeway to do things like this. I'm actually an undergrad, who's been lucky (let me emphasize lucky) to find the opportunity to publish and do first-author quality work as an undergrad. I want to do MD/PhD. I thought that med students would have more experience with this sort of issue than undergrads, so I posted this here. Perhaps it's also my standing on the pecking ladder that opened the door to such manipulation.
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