Hi folks,
What I always understood about the PhD is that it's some sort of ground breaking research leading to novel discoveries. I think in most of the cases ,it is. I always thought this from the beginning of my PhD and I was quite excited about my PhD as well the topic of the project I was allocated. But sooner my enthusiasm diminished to see that my both the supervisors were not interested in what i' m doing except meeting me and asking questions about how I did this and that. Later I also found that my both the supervisors are not even from the field of my expertise .I specializes in bioinformatics and one of my supervisor is a chemical engineer but got into bioinformatics after attaining some online certificate one year before my enrollement to PhD .I could understand well about this after few discussions with him and slowly started working on my own and always keeping this in mind that I need to publish with great results.
4 months back I found outstanding results which are unique to my research area. I informed these results to my supervisors and also wrote one draft in view of publshing. My supervisor kept on asking about the methods and all the references i used to investigate to further validate my results(I thought this).I did whatever he asked but now it's 4 months that he is not serious about it. I'm sure he still does not understand what I was doing and also done. I cant take anybodies help as he asked me not to discuss my results outside and now he has gone on holidays. I'm really scared as i' m also writing my thesis which i have to submit in December.
I could not publish what i discovered and even dont know whether I would be able to publish it in future? I even dont know what should I do in this case.I even cannot change my supervisor at this stage.Please help me,if somebody is also suffering from the same situation.
Many thanks for spending time on reading this.

Perhaps in the sciences. a phd is meant to be one novel discovery of something, but in the social science, hardly! So, I do not quite share the view that a phd is 'some sort of ground breaking research leading to novel discoveries', it is in my mind, my very first piece of (guided) research, where I learn how to do a task that I will now do for the rest of my life, in the process spreading word about what I am doing, entering a network, learning the rules of academia and how to work within/without them.

technically, anyone can publish anything. However it is polite to kep your supervisors informed of what you are doing/about to do. I do not know about issues of intellectual property in a science phd, and questions of peoples names on papers, all I know is, if you think you have publishable work, it is best to inform im that you want to go ahead and give it a try.

Honestly, a science person will help you better than me, with this.... best wishes!

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sausage finger syndrome - ignore

eh?

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I exlained this in the next sentence, that in my opinion, a phd is not usually a novel discovery of something, (sometimes it surely is, for instance the exposition or addition of a novel perspective, or interpretation and similar)... it is original, in that sense perhaps novel, but not novel in the sense of ground breaking all of the time....

at least, I do a social sciences phd, and it is one that is not ground breaking at all, it is a piece of hopefully competent research that will advance the literature in my field a tiny bit, I hope, in an original way....

anyway.... feel free to disagree, it's just my inteepretation! :-)

i'm not sure i fully understand what the problem is here - why can't you publish the work? what is stopping you? if you have a manuscript that could be submitted to a journal, then tell your supervisor you are going to publish it, and that you will be putting his name on the paper. why would he disagree? also, publications are not the be all and end all, and you need to focus on your thesis as a priority. publications should be a definite second. but if as you say you have a draft manuscript ready, then polish it up and send it off!

I really want to publish ASAP but with whom? I need a support of my supervisors as my current topic of research is still under debate and it's related to evolutionary aspect. I have seen other Authors in my research area ,when they publish it's always a joint effort of the specific research group.Further,It's my first publication and donot have any prior experience of publishing research articles and thatswhy i'm a bit lost and expecting that my supervisors should contribute their expertise into it .I'm sure my results are new of it's kind and highly suitable to be published in the high impact factor journals but i have lacked confidence as my supervisors are not serious and the only reason for this irregularity is their no involvement with the project. I'm International student and don't want to involve myself into complaints and further enquiries as i know it will only add to lose my concentration and waste of time.I have 3 months left to finish the thesis.
Is it possible to discuss and propose these results with other scientists around the world who are working in the same area and then publish it along with them after i finish my PhD?...i'm just wondering as i'm really concerned with the results