To avoid any problems supervisor name should be in the article whether he/she is involved or not. You can assume is as your courtesy to supervisor.

This is a one of the critical situation in a student carrier. In my masters, i did the same but after completion, wherever i go people looking for recommendation. Academically, it isa brutal, though you are eligible in all the way. Students need someone to justify their ability.

@ Dear Roel: The work performed by student doesn't come under category of fulfilling his degree research thesis work as the paper work was on totally different aspect. Student did this because she had confidence on her that she can devise a projects of her own and produce papers to improve her CV. No name of supervisor because she didn't seek help or guidance from any supervisor other than doing a lot of literature review, search and devising something herself ( look at it as, every supervisor or professors who writes research grants etc were once student too so why do we question the ability the student who can develop an idea by her own at this stage when we wouldn't question same student for her ability to write a research project as Assistant professor etc??). However, when her supervisor and head of dept came to know about these efforts of student, she was asked why prior permission was not taken to use uni name as her affiliation ( sounds too strange isn't it when a student is already registered student of uni?) and why name of her supervisor was not included? So, I think this is what the reason is. If she had added name of her supervisor no matter the supervisor even knows a single thing done in that paper, it would have been all okay??

@ Dear Gupta, I wouldn't call this courtesy but its rather an indirect "act of bribery" to keep oneself into the good books of supervisor and later on a good recommendation.

@ Dear Dr. Thomas, I disagree that using a uni resources for retrieval of papers justify inclusion of supervisor's name. Does this really justify? Looking this from aspect of supervisor, should a supervisor be confident of having name in any work that has no relation to his work, his area of expertise or any contribution by him but just because some computer or internet facility was used so his name has to be there. Don't know about others but my conscious wouldn't let me feel proud of any such paper in my CV. This also means if we email anyone to send us pdf of his work because its not freely accessible then in return we have to add their name also? IMHO such things IF required are more suitable for acknowledgement section rather authorship. Also, retrieving papers from uni internet is not something we should call as "blessing" these days. 90% of time if you email the corresponding author, you can get the paper if its not open access. Other than this, there are several online groups on social pages where anyone can request for a pdf of paper not accessible to them and others who have access send you pdf copy for Free. Also the use of uni computers is not necessary either, laptops are becoming more and more popular and accessible these days and so is the internet in homes :)

@ Dear Rohan, I might have added this already but mentioning again; Yes, if the student is getting any kind of stipend, scholarship etc from supervisor's research fund or even from uni, then supervisor has to be consulted or included. But what if this student is not getting any kind of scholarship or money in simple words from uni or any kind of stipend whatsoever and instead pays semester dues and other uni fees himself then? In several univ, you get selected while going through admission exam and based on previous education record rather than direct approval of any professor. I don't understand why just cant we see any student ( which is not very common in case of students) to show efforts to improve their skills and CV all by their own. It just appears that student as long as is on the status of being student is just an indirect slave of supervisor whose aim is to keep supervisor happy? This is what it sounds like when you say that student has to add the name of supervisor, just because supervisor IS supervisor regardless of the fact that work published by student is not some stealing of already running projects of lab or anything related to current lab work.

@ Dear Dr. Thomas, You are right that correct way might be to declare himself as "Independent Researcher" but I don't agree with you on adding some big guns name ONLY to make paper more appealing/reputable. If a study had been done correctly and already made its way through editorial and peer-review process without any famous names then why any such name is needed with hope of getting it accepted? If an article is methodologically correct and contains convincing results, then regardless of it coming from MIT, USA or from an unknown univ of poor country, holds equal value. No wonder why we daily see retracted papers from many apparently prestigious authors with hundreds of published papers on " Retraction Watch".

Cheers

It is inappropriate to use an institutional affliation as a student without consent of the institution. I hope that the person concerned did not complicate things by using insittutional facilities (computers/network/etc) in the execution of the work either. Hopefully, the work was in an area completely unrelated to that of the group he is in to avoid a conflict of interest (being privy to insider knowledge)

In some cultures, the head guy is added to all papers from his group but that is increasingly frowned upon in the scientific community and some journals explicitly specify that only those who have added significant intellectual input may be included as authors (e.g. PLOS journals). They go on to state that merely being grantholder or providing lab facilities is insufficient for authorship too and insist that such contritbutions be noted in the acknowledgments only. One of my former bosses (a very big guy in his field) would refuse authorships on any work that he did not have a sizable input into even when I had spent a lot of his lab's resources on it and he considered those that did not to be unethical (even though he was prepared to pay the page charges for independent work from his staff!).

To me it seems like the student should have been communicating with the adviser about the paper whether the adviser has had input or not. Assuming the student is a full time student and has enrolled in the university to learn new info/ skills, the student could have had a better paper by discussing results with other people. The best science isn't done in a vacuum. If the student felt that he/ she couldn't discuss the outside project with other people then it seems like it is not a collaborative environment.

My concern becomes the relationship between the student and the supervisor. I know these relationships vary widely depending on the individuals involved and on the 'culture' of the institution and country involved. However, my experience in New Zealand, USA and Canada suggest that the relationship between student and supervisor are closer than those discussed by this poster. The complete lack of involvement of the supervisor, as suggested by the poster, would suggest that the student feels they have learned nothing from the supervisor during their graduate program ? Or that they attribute none of their research capabilities to the institution that has educated them.

I also agree with the poster who indicated that students should not and indeed are not authorized to use the University as an affiliation without 'higher level' approval from a University representative. The use of a Universities name as an affiliation indicates some degree of review and acceptance of the procedures and findings of the research. What is to stop any enrolled undergraduate publishing their findings that the earth is flat with the Universities name 'stamped' on it ??

The whole point of tenure is to support research that is not influenced by the universities opinion of procedures or findings. For this reason I don't think a universities name should be any indication that a particular work is of quality. I dont know the legal ramifications of stating that you are an affiliate of a university when you are simply a graduate student but I think in most institutions research publications in the universities name are always encouraged, if you are working with an academic on the particular project or not. I know of several examples of graduate students publishing single author papers and listing their university as their affiliation.

Finally I do not think that anyone should be told to add their supervisor as an author on any paper that they have not contributed to in an intellectual manner. However I suspect that most people under-estimate the intellectual input that their supervisor has had in their work.