It has been seen that guides who supervise and facilitate postgraduate students to complete the research study, claim to be the principal investigator or the author of the study. Although the contribution of the guide is a very significant majority of work is done by postgraduate students. In such conditions, who own the copyright of research including the authority to be the main author if the findings of the research get published?
It's a good question. This seems to be both an ethical and an institutional issue. Ethically it would seem the person who initiates the project and does the most work should get the most credit and be principal investigator. However, institutions, both academic and business, often have policies about who gets the credit and who owns the copyright. If the researcher is getting paid by a company, for example, to do research, the company typically will claim ownership. That's often the contract that's agreed to. In academia, credit and ownership are not always clearly stated, it's more tradition. The disparity of being principal investigator and credit can go either way, too. Sometimes the guide or facilitator gets to be the principal investigator and sometimes they get no recognition at all. It's important to know at the beginning of a study what the policy or tradition is so not to be taken advantage of. Good luck!
Dear Basant,
Thesis/Dissertation belongs to the students, not the supervisors. The role of the supervisor(s) is to provide guidance and support for which they are acknowledged in the authorship as 2nd or the 3rd authors. It is absolutely unethical for supervisors to demand/coerce their names to be put as the first author, or even corresponding author. It is the right of the student to decide who should be the corresponding author and in what order the name of the supervisors appear in any article(s) that is published out of the research.
Generally, the students or trainees are the primary author / first author of such projects. The supervisor's major responsibility is to guide and facilitate the students in their research work, so they also deserve due authorship. Sometimes, students don't have enough time to submit their manuscripts, in that case, upon consensus, their supervisor may become corresponding author.
Although we are agreed that a postgraduate student who conducts a research study is the primary or main author of the entire work. But still, it is not considered in promotion at many institutions.
Basant Kumar Karn you have highlighted two issues here;
1. " Who is a principal investigator when postgraduate students conduct research, student or guide of the students?"
2. " Who own the copyright of research including the authority to be the main author if the findings of the research get published? "
In my opinion these are separate issues (post-graduate research and authorship rights), likewise the answers to the above questions could also be considered separately;
Q.1: As rightly mentioned by Madelaine Lawrence, it mostly depends upon the policy of the postgraduate institution in question, which is usually guided by the definition of postgraduate research in that institution.
Q.2: Publication rights will depend upon two factor, which is 1) the institution's policy on publication of postgraduate research plus 2) the COPE and ICMJE guidelines in case of health sciences.
Thanks, do you think these definitions should be universally the same so that there won't be any confussion?
In my opinion the Investigating Resident should be the PI. Thank you for raising this genuine question
- Badges
- Science topic