Hi, I am a final year PhD student. I am doing my PhD in abroad. I came from my country expecting more exposure in abroad than my country. In the beginning of my PhD, i mean in 3 months i realised about character of my supervisor and co-supervisor. Co-supervisor used to insult, degrade me for silly things in front of others.He is short-tempered guy. One day i asked for small help in my experiment. Instead of answering whether he can help or not, he was pulling my Master degree, credits, grant etc. he said, you had nice credits in Bachelors, Masters, so go and solve by yourself. Since the relationship was not good with my co-supervisor, he created bad impression about me to main supervisor. Since they are close friends, whatever this co-guide says guide will believe it. Co-supervisor used to pretend in front of supervisor like helping me for my PhD. Truly, he never guided and helped at any time. I am the only foreigner in this group.

Even though i realised everything in 1st year itself, i decided to continue over there because i thought i could manage everything. Moreover after getting there, me and my parents spent lot of money, time, energy to obtain Visa and sending me to abroad for PhD. Also i am getting government grant. These are the reasons made me to continue over there. Till third year i managed everything. I am a hard worker. I started having nice results from 2nd year. In two and half years i almost finished all of my experiments. I never had proper meetings till final year of my PhD. From the final 4th year of my PhD, i started having meeting about my PhD work once in every two or three weeks. This meetings are not personal meetings. I used to have with other Master and PhD student.

Coming to the point, still i dont have any publication. In few more months i am entering 5th year of my PhD. Anyway,one of the article my guide is writing with my results, as i said results are very nice. One day he asked my data. He started analysing by himself and writing. he informed me later and i was shocked. I asked him about that, he said since there are complicated things to discuss and write he would like to write it. There is other phd student who did simulation on my data. My guide discussing only with that student about my results. I feel that student also taking advantage of my work. He does not recognize me at all. He never motivated me. He never sent me to any conference or workshops or abroad stay. He has been writing that article for 3 to 4 months. Still i do not know what he is writing, discussing etc, I am wondering if he uses my work, 95% i will be 2nd or 3rd author. I am really depressed when i think about this. Is it possible to get post doc only with one publication with co-author? Is he using my work?...

This is difficult, but also quite common for international PhD students I think. The first thing to remember is that the work you have done is not really yours, it belongs to your supervisor and university, so they are within their rights to write it up and publish it. This isn't good practice however and most supervisors will put their students as first authors even if the supervisors write the paper.

Yes you can get a postdoc with a co-authored paper, but obviously first author is better.

Also, this is your PhD. You don't have to wait for your supervisor to invite you to a conference, find one and apply for it, and if you want to know what is happening with the paper, ask your supervisor.

5 years is not a short time. You can't lose this. You should have started to talk regularly to your supervisor long time a go but it is not late to start now.

Hey,
That sounds awful and I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm also international so know how stressful visas can be. Can you talk to any impartial advisors at the uni, such as a post grad advisor or international student advisor? Also I'm not sure it's always the case that your supervisors own your data, at my uni it depends on what paperwork was signed at the beginning. It might be worth double checking what your rights are, just so you know where you stand.