Student resigning from the PhD program , IP issues and Publications

[kerprof]

I had a  PhD student who collaborated with publications, research projects and proposal development for the past 1.5 years. However, he sent an email that he is leaving (resigning) the PhD program.

One of the collaborative paper got accepted and all the others are rejected.

One of the proposal he partially contributed (less than 1 page in 15 page NSF project description) is currently under review. All the other proposals got rejected.

Please advise how to handle the resubmissions of the collaborative work , Authorship and IP issues etc.,

[ergative]

Talk to him. He doesn't disappear just because he's no longer affiliated with your university. Unaffiliated individuals can still be co-authors on papers. I don't see how changing an email address affects authorship or IP issues.

[Hibush]

A conversation will yield the most information and will provide a clear, memorable and nuanced course of action on future publications. The normal rules for authorship should still apply, so the student's contribution to the work reported in revised papers will be the measure of authorship, acknowledgement or nothing.

Should the grant be funded, you will still do something along the lines of what the student wrote up. If the student had a brilliant idea, either in developing a hypothesis or designing an original and powerful way to test a hypothesis, then there is an argument for making them an author years from now. In practice, I find that kind of thing pretty rare. Usually the student does not have a crucial insight, and the experiments that get done are different from those proposed. But credit where credit is due.

[jerseyjay]

I had a  PhD student who collaborated with publications, research projects and proposal development for the past 1.5 years. However, he sent an email that he is leaving (resigning) the PhD program.

Unless I am misreading what you mean by "having" a PhD student, this sounds like somebody you were advising. (I am not in the sciences, so maybe I am misconstruing the relationship here.) I am also assuming that he is not somebody whom you wanted to see leave any way, but somebody who has been doing his job more or less competently

It would seem that you would want to talk (in person if possible, if not over the phone or Zoom) with him. I would be interested in why he is leaving the PhD program. If he just wants to do something else with his life, I would want to wish him well and offer to be a reference or otherwise help him. If he is resigning because of some personal crisis, I would want to see if there was some way of addressing it. And if he is leaving because of some problem (in my lab, with me, with other students, with the program) it would probably be useful to know what these are so that they can be addressed.


Presumably, there might also be other loose ends to tie up (does he have a key to the lab? Stuff in the office? data to write up?). In the context of this discussion, you could discuss what to do with the paper and proposal. Again, with the caveat that I am not in the sciences, my take would be that for the accepted paper, his name should remain since his resigning does not remove his contributions. You can ask him what he prefers as an affiliation, but since my understanding is that affiliations are usually listed based on where somebody was when the work was done, you could say "former doctoral student, Department of Physics, East Springfield Research University." How would you handle this if he had moved to another university, graduated, or died?

I have no idea whether one page of fifteen is much or little (since it is not just a question of writing but of contributing an intellectual underpinning). Presumably if this contribution was large, than he should have some credit in the final publication. Whether this is authorship or a footnote or something else depends on his contributions, the norms of your discipline, and what his expectations are. You might want to put something in writing after working it out with him, in case ten years from now this comes up.

One of the reasons I think you should talk to him is also to gauge what he is now doing. Is he going into a completely different field that has nothing to do with you work, and hence doesn't care? Is he going into industry in which some publications would be good? Is he going into another PhD program in which he would want to have publications? Personally, I would be inclined to me magnanimous and give more credit rather than less.

Again, these are the thoughts of a non-science person.

[hazelshade]

On the IP question--your institution's intellectual property policies are likely to address how students' intellectual property rights work, and it would be smart to consult the policies (and talk with folks in the offices of sponsored programs/research/technology transfer if you have questions). I agree with others that you should talk with the student; I've known cases where students left and were willing to remain communicative and helpful about projects that were wrapping up and cases where they just cut ties and went silent, which will affect how much you should (and can!) plan on working with them in the future.

[mamselle]

Or may walk away with your prize ewe lamb.

M.

[research_prof]

@kerprof, what is the reason the student is leaving?

About papers, his name will be there (obviously), but you might need to handle revisions yourself. About grants, that's why I never ask my students to write anything, but rather give me preliminary data, if needed.

I do not see it as a major problem though. I suppose the student was paid by you (or the university/department through a TAship), so this page that he wrote in your grant stays with you. It's the same as if the student was working as a software engineer. If he decided to leave his job, he would not say "ok, I will also take the code I have written over the past year with me". This code belongs to the company he was working for.

[kerprof]

@kerprof, what is the reason the student is leaving?

He is citing professional (differences with my directions etc.) as well as personal (COVID etc. since Fall 2021 is the first semester we are requiring students to be in person after 1.5 years) as well

[research_prof]

Cannot comment on the second one, but the first one is something that students often say and I still feel puzzled about it. I also had differences with my advisor's directions when I was a student, but I had decided that my advisor is my advisor and I am a student because he knows better than me. So, I better listen to him.

If you disagree with your advisor's directions, then why are you a student in the first place? Ask the university to give you a PhD and promote you to a faculty member.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

Cannot comment on the second one, but the first one is something that students often say and I still feel puzzled about it. I also had differences with my advisor's directions when I was a student, but I had decided that my advisor is my advisor and I am a student because he knows better than me. So, I better listen to him.

If you disagree with your advisor's directions, then why are you a student in the first place? Ask the university to give you a PhD and promote you to a faculty member.

An advisor may spend several hours per week thinking about specific project (often much less). A grad student spends whole week working on it. So, after couple of years good student may know way more than advisor about particular problem and data limitations.
I have witnessed (and actually experienced) myself how such information asymmetry can create tensions, if advisor keeps relying on preconceived notions and does not fully assimilate new data.

However, "differences with my directions " is quite an umbrella term and may mean something completely different in this specific case

[mleok]

It's really not all that different from when a PhD student graduates and goes into industry, their name remains on any papers they made a sufficiently substantial contribution to, and if their co-authorship is in jeopardy because the paper changes significantly in direction, I give them the opportunity to choose between upping their contribution or being dropped from the author list. When substantial additions need to be made, but the original contributions are still important, I might add another graduate student or postdoc to the author list, and reorder the list according to their contributions.

As for contributions to grant proposals, if they're no longer your PhD student, then they don't get to benefit from the funding if the grant gets funded. You're ultimately responsible for delivering on what you proposed anyway.