I’m a 2nd PhD student seeking advice on a situation that’s left me feeling disheartened and unsure how to move forward. I could use some advice on how to handle this professionally.
A part of my original research idea—which I had clearly outlined in my PhD proposal 2 years ago —was recently handed over to a collaborating group at another institution, due to logistic reasons, mainly some facilities we don’t really have in my group. What we did, was ask for their help in validating some of my own findings. The decision was made by one of my supervisors, who felt it would be more logistically efficient to have that work done externally, to a university of a different country, for the sake of collaboration within the same funding project.
Now, the collaborating group is continuing with the idea and expanding it, but I have not been actively involved in the planning or execution of those experiments, even though they build directly on my proposal. I recently asked whether I’d be able to use some of their results in my own publication (since the initial direction and materials came directly from my work), but they responded vaguely and said they’d “think about it,” implying it’s considered their research now, since they ”have spent a lot of time on it”
When I voiced my concerns to my supervisor about losing ownership and not knowing whether I can publish these results and citing the other group as co-authors, they dismissed it with “this is how collaborations work”. I’m worried that I’m being sidelined in what was originally my project direction, and that I’ll have nothing to show for it in my own publications unless I push hard for separate, more complex experiments now.
Has anyone dealt with a similar situation? How do you assert authorship or ownership over work that gets absorbed into a collaboration? Is it unreasonable to ask for at least one part of that research to remain under my direction, or to run a related version of it independently?
This whole situation has got me feeling very unmotivated lately and i don’t know if i am over-reacting over this. Any advice would be appreciated.
Comments
Unfortunately, you’re right that you don’t have agency— #1: because you’re a PhD student; #2: because of the collaboration.
There’s nothing you can do without your adviser’s buy-in and blessing, so there’s no way for you to assert anything, unfortunately.
I think your only option is to meet with your adviser and focus on what papers you can get out and planning your upcoming studies and publications. Focus less on complaining about this collaboration problem and more on the discussion of needing to plan what pubs you can expect and what needs to happen for them to materialize. Focus on discussing what you need to be successful and hopefully that will be a more productive dialogue than opening it with discussion of the other players. To your point, it is reasonable to talk about running an aspect of the research independently or doing something related on your own— you just need to discuss this without bringing up complaints about the collaborators, focusing only on you and your PhD program.
I empathize with you, by the way, and I understand how you feel. I’m focusing on the practical realities, but it doesn’t mean this is how it should be.