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Comment by msravi | Hacker News Reader

My masters' thesis supervisor took my thesis and submitted it to a well known journal and a couple of other conferences with himself as the first author and me as the second. I had defended my thesis and started work and did not have the time/motivation to write it out for the journals/conferences. He selected portions of my thesis, formatted them for the journal, and submitted it. I was too uninterested and busy to pursue the matter any further and just let it be.

So yes, given that stuff like that happens, I do find it impressive.

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i'm not sure what is wrong with this. Normally, it's done the other way around, IE you write the papers, publish them, and then write the thesis (whose copyright ends up being owned by some random monopoly company in the midwest). But, you got your name on the paper, and your supervisor, who almost certainly had scientific and funding input to your research, was rightfully coauthor.

I wasn't funded by him. I was on a scholarship and then on a TA, and was funded by the department.

You also didn't seem to do any of the effort to publish the paper or follow up with it. Of course your adviser should be the corresponding author. They actually care about the paper and getting response to it.

First author should be the person who did the work, that’s pretty strandard. Corresponding author doesn’t always need to be first author.

Honestly this does sound pretty terrible. The student doesn’t have to publish, and you don’t get to misrepresent yourself as first author if they don’t want to.

Really really want to be first author, redo the work yourself. That’s the only way you can claim credit (and responsibility) for having done the work.

I think if you truly cared about this, didn't mind trashing your reputation, and had proof of your copyright at the time the faculty member did this, you could write a letter to your dean (with backing data) as well as the journal. The journal will retract the paper (otherwise it's plagiarism) and the dean will have a chat with the faculty member. However, there are many risks associated with this strategy and it could backfire without fixing anything. In a normal program, the thesis advisor and you have a close relationship and you would submit papers together, voluntarily.

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