Dear Fehmidah,
I am sorry to hear your story.
Congratulations on finishing your PhD.
Concerning your dilema about the authorship on your paper. Although I am aware
that this goes on in academia, I think it is outrageous that your supervisor wants to
change the authorship to promote her career. The BPS publish clear guidelines
concerning authorship, which is based purely on the amount of input that each
member has contributed to the paper (contact the BPS about the exact guidlines).
If the input is equal then authorship is not an issue and should be based on an
arbitrary category, for example alphabetical order. Furthermore, she should be
aware of this and should not put you in this situation. One possible solution is to
forward the BPS guidelines to your supervisor and recommend that you follow
these, as this is standard practice for psychologists.
Warm regards,
paul
>
> Dear all,
>
> I need help and it probably isn't in the form you would think
> someone would use this mailbase for. here goes.
>
> I have recently completed my phd. I was self-funded because my
> supervisor, a psychologist, was based in a nursing dept (covering
> behavioural sciences of the curriculum). The head of nursing
> refused to fund me because I was not a nurse and I was not doing
> a phd in the field of nursing (my area is neuropsychology). Hence I
> struggled emotionally and financially to complete my phd sharing
> an office with nursing phd students who had funding from the dept
> and were garanteed either post docs or lectureships.
>
> I transfered to psychiatry to help me with getting a post doc but I
> was not acknowledged at all as a student or RA.
> I managed to get another RA job in midwifery which I am finding incredibly
difficult to come to terms
> with as its not psychology and not what I had planned to do.
>
> To cut a long story short, I have passed my PhD considering what I
> have been through and managed to get a paper accepted as a
> result of my study. However, my supervisor has asked me to change
> the authorship on the paper so that her name is on it first because
> it will help her with the RAE and get her the promotion she wants -
> a readership.
>
> This is the last straw. My supervisor has let me down. But I am a
> fighter and a survivor and want to do good research. If anyone can
> help me from being emotionally battered please let me know.
>
> ps This all happened at the same University where I am still based.
>
> Fehmidah
>
>
>
>
>
>
****************************************
Paul Redford
School of Social Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN, UK
phone: 01273 606755 ext. 2331
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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