Disagreement with adviser about submitting paper

[besh]

I have a problem  with my adviser about publishing. I want to send a paper for review and he doesn't! It is usually the other way round so I don't really know what to do? I told him my career is on the line (and he agreed) and that at least I need to send it for review. But he says no unless I unless I do this, and that, and this. You may think this is normal but believe me I regret the day I chose him as my adviser because he is the dumbest person you can imagine. He almost single handedly destroyed my career in the past 4 years. It is not only for me, all of his other students had the same problem. Only in the last 6 months did I realize the severity of the problem. So I decided to shut him up, and work on my self (mostly computational work) and started getting results. I work better when I don't listen to what he says because he doesn't know anything about the subject.  In that time I managed to work on my dissertation from ground 0,write a draft and submit for defense. I have also extracted three papers out of it and ready to submit and I have no wish at all to work on it further. He was very shocked at my progress, so now he wants me to do more. I told him I just want to try my chances at publishing and had enough. I submitted the first paper couple of months when I got tired of his requests. He didn't like that at all but now that it got accepted he shut up. He has warned me that we will 'push the button together' from now on , so I can't send the other papers now. What do I do?   I can not expect to have an academic career when I don't even send papers for review. What do you do when the co-author doesn't agree with the paper?

[fuzzylogician]

You can't submit a co-authored paper without the consent of the other authors. There are several options - you two can sit down and agree on the content, you can get him to agree not to be co-author and then you can submit whatever you want, or you don't submit at all. I'm still not following exactly why your advisor doesn't want you to submit, or what he wants you to do before then. Why does he appear to be sabotaging you? Is it on purpose? -- that would call for a different course of action than if he is just asking for things you disagree with, in which case I'd say find a way to make it work that you can live with and just get the paper out to review because the process will take a while and if you're right about the changes, the reviewers will ask for them anyway, and you can just figure it out once the paper comes back from review. You're in a delicate spot because you need to get a letter of recommendation from your advisor to get your next job.

 

One possibility that comes to mind is getting a post-doc and doing all of your publishing once you're out of this person's reach, especially if it's possible for you to then submit papers without him as co-author. Or else if it's possible to just give him a reasonable X amount of time to suggest changes or to approve what you wrote and tell him that after that you're submitting either way, without him as co-author if he can't contribute, that'd be an option too (but then there is a delicate issue of how credit is distributed, and I don't know how that's decided in your field since you don't specify what it is; I know that's not really an option in some fields). It might also help to get support from another faculty member at your current department, though that too is difficult because of the inter-departmental politics you'll be disturbing. Is there someone on your committee other than your advisor who might be willing to take on the role of helper? Who might email you and cc him, saying you should submit paper X and do Y before you submit it? That will be very helpful to your cause. 

[besh]

Thank you for your suggestions fuzzylogician. My problems are too many and depressing so I will just focus on the current one I have.

 

I forgot to mention that in those 6 months, I also managed to get a postdoc BUT far from my field of research. From Civil Engineering to Applied Mathematics. It feels like re-starting a new career (after a PhD!), but I so much hated my current field because of my adviser, anything would have done. I didn't have journal publications (only conferences) at the time so I sent him  a section of my thesis that was relevant for the position. He liked me and appreciated the effort I put in my thesis and gave me the position. One of the questions  during the  interview was , 'Why did you do all this work (something they are interested in), when you don't have to in your field'. I told them my adviser encouraged me to do it, but the truth is it is something I came up with while desperately looking for something to do for my thesis. 

 

I can publish papers while doing the post-doc but I won't be continuing in the same stream so the situation doesn't change much from now. In fact it is

better to get it over with now, because I may never come back to my current field again. Weird to say that after a PhD but that is how it is.

 

My adviser is one of those career-driven professors who only know of 'catch-phrases' in the field. I know my limits so I just want to finish with the 

goal I started with, and not add stuff he hears of from the next conference. I tried to explain to him many times the scope of the paper 

but he has made up his mind. Whenever I come out a meeting with him, I feel  completely drained with his negativity and ignorance.

Edited September 27, 2013 by besh