Monday, November 28, 2011

Publication etiquette! (or maybe My Life as a Female Engineer 3?!)

Ok, I need some sanity check. Sometimes somethings are such primitive and obvious rules of behavior to me that I get so upset if they are violated, and more if it is perceived that I am over reacting and everyone is cool about it. So, I need your sanity check and point of view.

I have a collaborator. He has been working on a paper based on the work he did when he was a visiting scientist at my institution. He had shown me a draft. I had provided feedback, requests for revisions, more input, and even asked for more experiments and results. He thanked me. Said he will work on them and will keep me posted.

Couple of months pass. He sends me a draft for a different paper for my feedback. It reminds me of the first paper. I ask him about its status. He informs me he has submitted it to a journal and is waiting to hear back the response.

He never sent me the version he submitted with my name on it. I do not even know where something with my name is submitted to. He is a professor and is supposed to teach publication etiquette and culture to his students not to violate them for God's sake! I get upset, very upset. I am trying to draft an email to him as polite as possible and am afraid that I may upset him, and I get upset at myself for feeling this way too. I get even more upset because he had a history of submitting a poor paper to a conference without my knowledge in the past. In that case, I worked long hours before his presentation trying to make it a reasonable version, not to mention getting approval for its publication and release from my employer, and being reprimanded by higher management for my delay and not following rules. I saved the paper before publication and presentation and what happened? He missed his flight, arrived late to his presentation, and the paper was withdrawn. I was happy it was!

Now, this time, he thinks he had done all he had to do by showing me a draft and asking for feedback. Yet, I do not know which journal he sent the paper to, when, and I did not see the final version, and he is using, I would not say my name, I am not such a big shot, but my affiliation. Am I over reacting? How would you handle this guy? He probably even thinks he is doing me a favor, writing papers and including me. How can he feel so comfortable to walk over me? Is he like this with everyone, the result of him being clumsy and easy going, or is it because I am a young female professional who is not being taken seriously?

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