How do you remove your advisor from publication?

[LoveCoffee]

I recently posted about my awful advisor and luckily I eventually managed to defend and graduate (with a really good dissertation too - which I wrote *in spite of* - not even without - my advisor). Now I have submitted one of the papers coming from my dissertation to several conferences and I'm working on preparing it for a journal submission, but I feel extremely resentful towards my advisor - who is to this day not helping whatsoever and still doesn't really understand the concepts I am studying.... (in fact they didn't even show up to my defense, not to mention, my graduation). I don't think it is fair towards me to carry sb 20 years my senior and gift them with a publication - but, the thing is, I am still relying on them with letters of recommendation, as I am still trying to get a better job. Should I just suck it up as I have done so far or stand up to them? If I decide to remove them from papers, how do I go about doing it? Would doing so equate to burning that bridge politically?

[Jagged]

As long as you're the first author, I would do all the work and leave their name on it. You'll hopefully have many more and better publications in the future.

If you insist on removing them, have they submitted the paper anywhere or contributed anything to the paper? You're probably out of luck if they've done either.

If they haven't submitted it anywhere and haven't contributed, tell them you're going to keep working on it and plan on submitting it somewhere. Don't tell them directly you're going to take them off, but don't include them on your revisions either and submit it without them.

[Meraki]

Do you work in academia or did you go into industry? 

Keep in mind that if they see you published without them, and feel that they should have been on the paper, this could permanently burn that bridge. So if you need recommendations or anything else from them later down the road, you won't likely get it. Also, if they have contributed anything - or feel like they contributed something - and they see they're not on the paper, they could choose to notify the journal of an unethical authorship practice. In short, this could get sticky. If you take their name off, be absolutely certain they made no significant (i.e., authorship-worthy) contribution to the paper. I doubt it'd go that far, but if the person is really that awful, you never know.

[t_ruth]

One thing to consider is that although reviewers are generally blind to who the authors are, editors are not. It might benefit you to have your advisor/senior author on the paper when you send it out to review. It's a sad fact, but true.