Some PhD supervisors do ask their students to cite their (supervisor's) articles to increase their (supervisor's) citation profile. Is this practice ethical? Should this practice be discouraged and stopped?
The possibility of citing the supervisor's paper(s) must be justified by its relevance to the paper to be published by the student or supervisee.
Not at all. I'm lucky my supervisor is not "that kind of guy"
Hi Mario, Very good to hear about your situation, which is great!
If the citations were used by the student in formulating the thesis . . . then definately yes.
Hi Dennis, Yes, that is a fair point but forcing students to cite supervisor's papers would be unfair.
Don't generalize all supervisors. It is impossible to cite supervisor's articles , if they do not have any relation with the works of students. If the supervisor's work supports student's project, definitely they are bound to cite them. If the supervisor's work is spurious and have only weak connection with that of the student, it is unethical to insist for citation.
Syed Ghulam Sarwar Shah ,
It may be . S/he is the supervisor of the students. The students went to lean from him. If it is standard than what is the problem? It may happen with quality check.
If the manuscript has a bearing with ones supervisor's publications, there is no crime citing it but if citing out of context is not ethical at all.
This struggle to publish and get a citation, is not suitable for the real researcher, to remind researchers and amateur research veterans how many of them did not care to get a PhD degree and has hundreds of publications, changing concepts worth studying and reconsidering the evaluation of researchers
Is it unethical to force your student to cite your articles? Definitely! Yes! Totally! That does not mean that a student should not cite his supervisor, but the choice should not be based on whether he refers to the publication of a certain person, but whether that publication fits! No point citing a supervisor's essay on urban public in early modern time if you are actually dealing with political debate in post war Germany in the 1960es. But still things like that happen. For a student it is a tough situation, but the supervisor should step back and reconsider. What impression would it make if the reader finds an essay like that quoted of the supervisor of that PhD thesis, even though the topic is completely unrelated? Right! Not a good one for sure!
Anyhow, if you happen to come across a thesis with many essays of the supervisor being refered to , that by itself does not come as a surprise. Think about it this way: you would most likely choose a supervisor that fits your topic. If you were to write about bending the law and Nazi judiciary, you would most likely go to a supervisor who specialised in judicial history or law. It does not come as a surprise that he would have published on related topics and naturally you would read those and quote what you seem fit. No issues there.
The possibility of citing the supervisor's paper(s) must be justified by its relevance to the paper to be published by the student or supervisee.
Th question is "Is it fair for supervisors to ask their PhD students to cite their supervisor's articles? Is it ethical?" The answer is no but the PhD student should cite the source, and it is unethical even if the PhD student doesn’t cite the relevant source as it doesn't matter who is the the source author. I think most of the University publish Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Student which must be followed.
Good question. It is a good academic practice to acknowledge all literature/materials (including works published by the supervisor) used by a PhD student. It becomes unethical when the student is forced to cite unrelated works by his supervisor.
Dear all, your comments and suggestions are great! I agree with most of you; however, I would like to add that there is a very thin line that separates an ethical practice from an unethical practice that involve justifiable and enforced citing of supervisors' articles respectively. I will say that PhD scholars must be left to decide themselves and use what they find relevant to their research including the topic, research design, methodology, presentation and referencing of their theses. What do you think?
Syed Ghulam Sarwar Shah , the final decision should always be with the researcher. He has to decide what is useful and what is not, what fits and what does not. He might feel obliged to integrate and mention essays of his supervisor or he might not. The decision is his and should always be.
A supervisor might sugest literature. He might point to some key issues to deal with, name other authors "I really think you should read this and that!". This is the job of a supervisor. The PhD student after all is not as familiar with some topics as his supervisor is. But when a supervisor asks him: "I really want you to cite my essay on this and that!" or even tells him to remove an essay, article or book of another researcher he does not fancy, he crosses a line. There he is influencing the research in a negative way and that is where it starts to get unethical.
"I don't want my PhD student to quote research of a scientist who is my competitor! My student should only work with my publications!" or maybe the supervisor wants to set his foot into a field he has not yet covered that much and wants a reference as well.
Basically it gets unethical if the supervisor acts in his own interest and not in the interest of his student, where he is directly influencing the research and forces his student to do something he does not want or he is not convinced of. This is an abuse of power by the supervisor, when the student is depending on him most. And what is that? Its' unethical of course!
If the super visor has asked to cite his sources in a manipulative way then it is unethical, otherwise I do not see problems with that.
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