A large funded project is coming to a close and needs publications to complete the promised project outcomes. A PhD student has been funded by the project for the last two years. The student is still working in the data and has further funding to secure the completion of her PhD. The publication from the data on the first project is however coming along too slowly as the student has been carrying a heavy teaching load in the last 3 months and will have similar teaching commitments in the next 3 months as well. Others in the project would like to analyse the data and get it published quicker than the PhD student can manage so that it would be submitted before the funding formally finishes. This would mean the PhD student would not be first or second author on the resulting paper. The student is reluctant to share the data in this manner.

Questions:

  • Do you think the student has a right to hold onto the data?
  • Do you think the project leader, who is also her supervisor, has a right to demand the data?
  • How would you seek to resolve this problem?


Last modified: Tuesday, 12 March 2019, 2:03 PM