Publishing without your PI???

[cherrifaery]

I'm a first (soon to be 2nd) year grad student, and I just finished my first paper as a grad student. When I handed my adviser a draft of my manuscript, the first thing they said was "Take my name off of it, I didn't have anything to do with this." While it is true that I came up with the project myself and did everything without their help, isn't it the norm to put your adviser's name as an author on your papers just because they are your adviser? That was the case where I went to undergrad, and seems to be the case with all the other profs in the department at my grad school... so I'm a little confused. To provide some background, my PI and I don't really have any relationship--I do what I want and periodically update her, and she doesn't really seem interested in getting any more involved. I'm mostly wondering if this is a snub because she doesnt like/disagrees with the paper or her backwards way of saying job well done. Isn't it usually harder to publish without a PI as an authour (in the sciences)???

[rising_star]

I don't think it's the norm to put their name on there if they didn't do anything to help with the paper but I could be wrong.

[belevitt]

Ouch, your feeling that you were snubbed is exactly right. Nearly every paper, particularly those published by graduate students, have a senior author. The only reason I can imagine that your PI would have acted this way was that she disagrees with the results, questions the data or it contradicts her other views. Your shot at getting this published is not going to be improved by this situation. If it were me, I would ask her to help in the revision and discussion portion, justifying her inclusion as an author. I would probably also make some effort to start my thesis in a different lab where I could have a working relationship with my PI.

[seunghwane]

A famous professor I know only publishes in Nature, Science and Cell- the three premier journals in biology.

I always wondered how he ONLY publishes in these three journals, never even bothering with very good, but not top 3 journals, such as Genes and Dev, Nature Neuroscience, Neurons, etc.

It turns out that he left his name out of his students' papers.

It does kind of suck.

[hartshorneBoy]

This is fairly typical, I thought. I mean, are you not publishing something that your PI basically did not have any influence over? If you're so bent up about it, you should have a conversation with him/her in order to talk over journal selection, and also to express concern of why he/she does not want to be on the article's header. [Needless to say the PI should be in an acknowledgements footnote of some kind.] I do know one of my PI's has suggested that he would not publish in some journals, so that could be the reason. Just have a conversation and stop fretting.

[dysmetria]

Another perspective is that it would be technically a breach of academic ethics to put their name on as a co-author of a paper they did not write or contribute to. This would be the case in social sciences, at least, but it is different in every field. I think many of the "authorship" practices in the natural sciences are very odd, but of course it is driven by the demands of the journals and the departments.

[adaptations]

I don't see any justification for having your PI listed as an author. As was previously mentioned, they deserve acknowledgement for their contribution and suggestions, but no more if they weren't an active participant. In fact, it should be to your advantage in the long run to publish as the sole author, assuming you get the article published. Although I am in the social sciences, many of my friends are in the hard sciences, and to the best of my knowledge they do not include their PI's unless they actively collaborated with them.

[graciado]

Personally, given that they had nothing to do with the writing of the paper, I don't see much wrong with their asking not to be associated with it as an author. If you're concerned about it being a slight, I would strongly agree with the suggestion to ask for their input in a revision stage. That way, you can find out what they really think, and have justification for naming them as a senior author, fixing both problems. It may feel a bit uncomfortable to ask for her input having received the impression that she's snubbing you, but it would benefit you in the long run, I think.