Title: Co-Authorship Conflicts

Author: Adapted from a case written by Anji Wall

Description: A graduate student discovers that the lab she once worked for plans to publish research in which she played an integral role; she argues for co-authorship.

Keyword(s): Authorship, Mentor-trainee Relationship, Plagiarism, Research Misconduct

Based On: (Shamoo & Resnick, 2003, p. 65)

Case: Hiroko is a graduate student who has been working on protein replication. She has spent almost a year developing the methodology for this project, but is not getting along well with her advisor. She decides to move to another lab with a new advisor and begin a new project. A few months later, Hiroko finds out that her old lab is about to submit a paper to a journal on research conducted by a new graduate student using the methodology Hiroko developed. Hiroko feels that she should be a coauthor and raises this concern with her former advisor. Her former advisor explains that the data being published are not from Hiroko’s project and, therefore, she should not be a coauthor. Hiroko brings her complaint to the chair of the department, arguing that her technique is not available in the open literature, so the data could not have been collected without her work in the lab.

  1. What are the key ethical issues in this case?
  2. How should the department chair respond to this situation?
  3. Hiroko’s former advisor offers to write a smaller paper focusing solely on the technique developed by Hiroko. Hiroko would be included as a coauthor. However, the paper would not be published until after the original paper had been published. Should Hiroko accept this offer?
  4. Was Hiroko’s former advisor justified in not including Hiroko on the original paper? Why or why not?
  5. What should Hiroko have done prior to her departure to prevent this situation from happening?

Source: Shamoo, A., Resnick, D. (2003). Responsible Conduct of Research. New York: Oxford University Press.