Academic integrity - supervisors publishing student work
A supervisor requests delays for the publication of their students theses in our publicly available institutional repository so that they can publish a paper based on the thesis.
They use the same title as the thesis. They do not cite or mention the thesis in the paper. The student gets a co-author credit.
Academic integrity - supervisors publishing student work
I raised a concern on two fronts:
1. Using exactly the same title leads to confusion in academic search systems like Google Scholar that often end up thinking the thesis and the paper are the same thing--which they are clearly not.
2. Our students do not appear to be getting appropriate credit for the work they've done. Getting credit for your research is the foundation of academia and academic publishing.
Am I overreacting?
Academic integrity - supervisors publishing student work
Supervisor's response:
We publish research papers from the thesis of students. For that reason we don't want the thesis to be published on [the institutional repository] before we have published. When the thesis is published later, the question of writing in the paper that it is part of the thesis is not required. This is a standard practice. Why should the title be different when the paper is being written from the research in the thesis.
Academic integrity - supervisors publishing student work
@DonnaLanclos 100% agreed. Thanks for verifying that I'm not (completely) delusional!
This prof & one of their colleagues are miffed: their attempt to submit a paper was rejected because the journal's submission tools reported a >95% similarity to a thesis in our repository.
Shouldn't that induce critical reflection on your practices, rather than a demand that the publication of theses be delayed so that you can slip past tools?
Academic integrity - supervisors publishing student work
@dbs obvs I think yes. I realize there are disciplinary conventions that vary, but also think that some of those conventions (eg publishing student theses verbatim as articles...) were never great to begin with...
Academic integrity - supervisors publishing student work
@dbs I remember when I asked if I should credit my Master’s supervisor on a paper based on it.
"I only ever read it and advised you. It's *your* work". Grateful to him for not pulling sneaky bullshit like this. Thanks for standing up for your students.
Academic integrity - supervisors publishing student work
@dbs "standard practice" doesn't make it right IMO. Also the thesis embargo doesn't make sense in these days of pre-prints. You have to revise stuff to be an article anyway. Which, is why the titles should be different!