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Post-PhD Data Ownership help?!?!?

T

Hi

I am a former PhD student who has moved away from academia (and has no intention of ever going back!)
Firstly I wanted to know if I have ownership of the data in my thesis i.e. am I the only one who can use it for publications and does someone need my permission to use the data for their own publications or presentations? Basically supervisor is wanting to use my data to write publications himself whereas I don't want to do this at all.
Secondly (and the thing that has really annoyed me) I have found an interview my supervisor did with an online magazine discussing a paper I wrote where there is no mention of myself and it says it is his research conducted by him! Is he allowed to do that and pass off my work as his own without even acknowledging me?

Thanks

It sucks when supervisors claim your work. My supervisor did that to me recently at an internal talk, were she claimed my work and did not acknowledge me at all. As you aren't in academia they think they can claim your work and that nobody would notice. The funny thing there isn't much you can do about it except promote it yourself. I think this is pretty common and I have just accepted it.

With regards to data, first I would check your PhD contract. Some of contracts specifically state that your data belongs to the university. But are you trying to publish the work yourself? I think if you aren't trying to publish it is fair for him to try. Part of research is disseminating the results and if you aren't doing that why did you bother at all?

I think you should talk with him and talk about authorship. You could still be first author and let him be the corresponding author (if your field allows). That way both of you get acknowledged and he does most of the work. Maybe you could write it or copy and paste from your thesis. However I don't think you should outright block publication.

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