I’m a PhD candidate who recently experienced something that left me feeling erased and deeply disappointed.
A group published a paper at a top-tier conference that clearly builds on a project I initiated and developed significantly during my PhD. I noticed details of more that one of my papers in this work. My papers have been awarded and published at top tier venues in our research area.
Despite that, I wasn’t invited to co-author, and my prior works weren’t cited. Two of the authors had worked closely with me before: one was my co-author on the original work, the other is my advisor.
When I brought it up, one minimized it, saying the citation must’ve been “lost in revisions.” The other told me to “relax” and that I shouldn’t let it upset me. My advisor didn’t even answer me.
I’ve cut off access of this co-author to my work and plan to leave the research group after I submit my dissertation (I’m closing to finish it). I learned a lot in this group and recognize that he helped me a lot in my work, but this idea was mine. I feel silenced and professionally betrayed. I don’t want to work with this colleague anymore.
To make matters worse, both are men and the topic of the paper is closely related to the kind of structural problem I just experienced.
I’m proud of my work, but this has really shaken my trust in academic collaboration. Has anyone else been through something similar? How did you move forward?
Comments
This is called scooping. You do nothing, learn from it and move on. At least now you know who to avoid and how to protect your future ideas.
The first step is to remember that any novel idea you have during your PhD is the intellectual property of the university [edit: as my learned colleague, the snoot booper, pointed out – sometimes, but ymmv]. So while you feel you have ownership, the only potential issue here is that your earlier work hasn’t been cited – and that’s only really an issue if they’ve actually plagiarised your work, rather than expanded on the foundations you’ve laid.
It’s not nice to get scooped, but it’s not uncommon, particularly when you’re an early career researcher without the resource to progress that research independently. Presumably your research area is very closely aligned to your adviser’s, so they may not even see it as having scooped you – they may just see it as a natural progression of the research that their lab undertakes.
I’ve had a few ideas now that I’ve shared with an adviser that have ultimately been given to PhD students or other postdocs to progress and I haven’t been involved moving forward. I try not to take it to heart, or am just very careful about who I share ideas with if it’s something I want my name on. Academia is often much more competitive than it is collaborative.
Was any of your work actually misappropriated, or is it just work on the same topic? They don’t have to invite you to their project just because you’ve done work on the same thing. They also don’t have to cite you just because you’ve done work on the same thing. Some people don’t even cite their own thesis advisor while working on the same topic. You can do whatever you like but it looks like they already don’t choose to work with you, so “blocking them” might be more of a loss to you than to them. I’d go with what’s pragmatic. Good luck.
At this stage of your career, I understand why you could be sensitive, but if you are already publishing in top-tier journals, then being cited here is of minimal importance. You’re a student. You have your whole career ahead of you. Your ego is leading you astray.
This is actually something you should get a handle on. Academia is non-stop rejection. We are often ignored and our work is unknown, much more than it is cited. We share ideas at conference that people put in their papers as their own, and lots of academics are socially inept, inconsiderate, and just mean.
With the caveat that you should protect yourself from being exploited or your work from being plagiarized, if you don’t learn to brush that off, you’re going to be really unhappy, and eventually really angry, and that’s no good for you or anyone you work with. Let this go and move on to bigger and better things.
If they lifted things from your dissertation and published them without proper citation, you have a valid plagiarism claim. Speaking as a former VP of Research, if you are in the US, talk to your VP of Research. They should take this seriously.
This kind of thing happens. People should cite all relevant work when using previous published results but it often does not happen. In this case there may have been animosity. One possible thing you can do in the future is continue on this work, cite their work and your previous one and explain in some way that does not come off as too personal, how you obtained the results first. Beyond that it’s almost impossible to get any kind of fair recognition.
Back in the good ol’ days, you weren’t listed as an author on an article unless you’d actually and literally written it. Every other form of contribution was listed in the acknowledgements. I know that academia doesn’t work that anymore and that you can be listed as an author on papers that you haven’t even seen, but I actually think that the previous system was better.
A leading austrian quantum scientist was recording my talk, sitting in the first row, published the theoretical part of my paper (without the experiments that I’ve also carried out), and then had the audacity to not even cite my paper. I know for a fact that this clown did not have anything to do with the whole topic, he just liked my results, and published them as his own. Again, even today he’s a top leader in that backwards country.
We’ve contacted him and the journal, and at the end they’ve forced him to add a footnote saying that “in the meantime we’ve realized another group is working on the topic blablabla”. But that’s it! No sanctions, no withdrawal, no apology, nothing.
Welcome to reality. The scientific world is as corrupt as every other politics-driven system.
In publications, authors, acknowledgements, and citations don’t have strict rules about what’s included and what’s not. Even if it’s for malicious reasons, there’s really nothing you can do about it. You might be able to force an acknowledgement in a revision by contacting the group or the publisher, but that’s about it. People mention plagiarism, but that’s a long shot.
Do watch for any patents coming out though. If they fail to include an author/inventor on a patent who really should be there, there are potential legal repurcussions. But work at a university is owned by the university (and authors who aren’t owners aren’t entitled to licensing money), so there would be minimal benefit in pursuing a lawsuit unless it turns into something huge. The real cost/benefit of getting authorship is a question for an expert, and beyond the scope of reddit posts.
Not being a co-author, that’s not surprising. If you didn’t directly contribute to the work. Some folks/fields are very generous with ideation earning authorship, others not so much.
Not being cited, that’s not cool. If it builds from your work, there’s no reason not to cite you. But honestly, there’s nothing you can do. Just move on.
I find that some like to specifically avoid citing previous work to make their own work appear more novel. It sucks, but there’s not much you can do. If they took your work or plagiarized that’s a different story. Finding people that you can work with is a key part of academia – I hope you find a better group once you graduate.
This happened to me too during my postdoc—being sidelined and excluded by my own research group publishing my own project, right down to the failure to cite my previous work. I had put so much time helping this grad student on her projects, included her on mine too so she could learn, only for her to claim ownership of my finished work (in addition to hers) and not include me. And the PI, who watched me present progress updates on that work every single week for a year, supported her. Said “your work overlapped with hers,” as if I was the one stealing work. Of course not. I do not need to do that. It was insane and devastating. It’s been a year and I’ve “moved on” as in I’ve stopped hoping for an apology or an explanation, but I remain broken over this.
In the aftermath, I still loved the work I did and the ideas I’d come up with—which unsurprisingly, were poorly executed and articulated by the PI and student who had appropriated them. I realized I wouldn’t have wanted a coauthorship on what they had done anyway. So, I ran an improved/extended version of the study in my own lab, wrote it up the way I wanted, and published it myself—in a better journal.
You’re still you, and you’re more than this one project. They need to steal work to publish, but you don’t. You earned a PhD because you have what it takes to be an independent researcher. Do the work you love, do it better than the people who need to pretend, and learn a lesson from this about the kind of mentor and collaborator you want to be.
One is almost never fired in academia, people just stop working with you.
If this one event hurts your confidence in the system you’re going to have to grow a thicker skin.
Most journals require a listing of each author’s contribution, and normally someone claims “conceptualization” or something similar. If the ms borrows heavily from a previous publication, even a working paper with OP’s name on it, it should be in the citation list. OP can contact the journal editor where it is submitted and state the concern expressed in the post, sharing the previous work. The editor will review and decide if the situation warrants contacting the authors about crediting or citing the OP. If OP has only discussed the ideas and has not published them either formally or informally, then there’s no case to be made.
I had an experience from the other end that might be instructive. As a faculty member, my PhD advisee (I chaired his committee) left before filing to take a postdoc. Within a month I received a paper to review for a journal that was from his dissertation, but he failed to list me as a co-author or even cite my previous work that was foundational to his dissertation. I contacted the journal editor who had sent me the manuscript and provided him with a copy of a previously released copyrighted working paper that was basically the manuscript. The editor desk rejected the paper and I let the student know why and that I’d be watching for any similar submissions without my name.
Building on your work without citing it should not be done. On the other hand it’s not clear why you should be coauthor of the new paper, since you already published your results.
I think there is a difference between them stealing a specific unpublished research idea vs not citing your published work. I’m not exactly sure what is going on here based on your post. If it’s the former then that’s bad, but if it’s the latter then that happens all the time, even within the same research group. In fact, it can look a bit tacky to cite too much of your own groups work vs other groups (they’ll be the ones reviewing it after all) so with a limited citation count I wouldn’t take this too personally.
I find that kind of thing is quite common unfortunately. There are a lot of stingy citers out there!
Are you a woman? Because both the behavior of taking credit for your work and then minimizing your feelings when you point it out seems like the sort of thing men often do to women.
Record any in person conversations about it
The better your research is, the more likely it happens to you. Without wanting to brag, it has happened to me over and over again both from co-authors and complete strangers. I’m a fairly senior person with a boatload of citations.
The first time it happened, I let the person know that it was unprofessional and I didn’t like it. When he did it again, I told his boss and basically everyone I knew about what had happened. People didn’t like his behaviour. But at the end of the day, they wouldn’t take sides because they still wanted to be on good terms with him. His boss just said if I thought he did something I didn’t like, I should tell him directly instead of telling his boss. I had already done that. This asshat has kept following my work and selling it as his own to the present day.
I do get an occasional citation now, but it’s usually quite sneaky because he cites some old stuff but then plagiarizes the latest idea I have in an unpublished preprint and argues this has never been done before. His work gets out first. He gets many citations. I still get my fair share of cites, but it feels like I have some parasite. I have stopped uploading or sharing my work in any way before publication to prevent this. It’s pure insanity.
Another person, a former boss of mine, always told me my ideas sucked. A few years later, I found that he had published a ton of papers using the approach I had developed, but he had relabeled and rebranded it in his field so he would get all future cites within that field by people using the approach. He had only cited my work as related in the very first publication, then proceeded with the new name for the approach and without references.
In any case, I have learned several things over the years:
Yes, we were very intentionally snubbed by another research group at the same university. It wasn’t surprising because they’ve always behaved inappropriately, but it is nevertheless frustrating and offensive. The only thing you can do is to rise above it and not let them bring you down.
I would treat those colleagues as if they were dead to me, but I don’t know if that’s mature or in the best interests of my professional goals. But I’d probably do it anyway.
This is SUPER common in academia and there is not a dang thing you can do about it. No one has the right to be included as a co author and as long as they didn’t plagiarize, they don’t have to cite you. I see it happen all the time. No one is going to admit it of course. My best advise is to find a job elsewhere. Do not do a postdoc or continue with a group like this. I guess they will try to gaslight you and make it seem like this is totally normal, but it’s not right. They literally just showed you who they are. Now run!
Academia is like any other field – you’ll meet some brilliant people who are also excellent humans and others who would not hesitate to step on/ over you to get to where they need to be. Speaking here has someone who has been in and out of academia.
I know someone who is a top player in the game and selfish at times but he always cites the papers we are co-authors on (along with other people at times) as it also boosts his reputation.
On the other side though, I don’t get incensed if I am not invited. Life is often not fair. And I always remember the mantra “be so good they can’t ignore you.”
Later, I learned it helps to have mentors outside of your institution. They can give you more objective advice as they aren’t as close usually to your advisors.
Also, for any projects now, I always make sure we talk about authorship and credit early on, not just for myself but for everyone on the project. Some tenured/ senior people have told me they don’t care about the order of names as long as the paper includes them. Other times, we’ve used alphabetical order or have 2 first authors, and so on.
Psychological flexibility?
That’s plagiarism and a 100% career killer.
I’d contact them again with this information and saying that you are prepared to go to the full length of your capabilities to solve this issue, including contacting the university, the journals where it will be published and lawyers, etc.