Hello all,

I would like some honest feedback about sharing work with supervisors. When you produce work (even work my supervisor has not directly asked for, how do you trust your supervisors not to pass your work onto others without your consent or use your work for other purposes. I guess this comes down to good old fashioned "trust". I really wouldn't want to start putting disclaimers on the work produced. I feel silly asking the question, but would like to gather the thoughts of others on this.

Thanks

I think it has to come down to trust. My supervisor has asked me if he can reuse tiny pieces of things I've found out along the way, and then only with my full consent. But otherwise I trust him not to abuse the findings, and to respect that it's my work for my PhD.

Also I'm not sure that putting disclaimers would be any use. If a supervisor was planning to abuse the trust then disclaimers probably wouldn't stop them.

I have absolute trust that my supervisor would never use any my work in any way without my consent.

I'm with Joyce on this one- I have absolute trust that my supervisors would never do this. It wouldn't even cross my mind not to trust them unless I had a specific reason for doing so. What is planting the doubt in your mind over this? KB

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Yes , I agree with previous posts, I trust my supervisor 100%, I can't think why they would abuse the trust?
But I heard some people saying don't trust too much ..etc I guess everybody got a different situation.

Blimey this is definately the lucky crowd! I don't trust mine as far as I can throw them.

There have been too many examples of my ideas being poo-pooed and then suddenly regurgitated by my, ever so wise, supervisor as their own idea. On a couple of occasions these "unworkable" ideas of mine have also ended up making up part of someone else's project. The thing is I wouldn't have minded if my sup had said "interesting idea, do you mind if I pass that on?" or words to that effect.

So yes, I guess the answer is that it relies on good old fashioned trust. Unfortunately my expereince has made me less likely to invest that trust in academics. I'd also be expecting the growth of extra/new forked tongues now the budget for HE has been cut.

Anyway, I'm warming up for some (gift), which should take my mind off the crazy world we live in!

Thank you everyone for your posts. In response to

I guess I am new to PhD's and not sure how certain things are handled, for exmaple I always wondered how 5 or even more people can write one paper equally? etc. I am trying to find out how these things work, and this forum is brill for that.

Thanks again everyone :-)

======= Date Modified 24 Dec 2009 18:59:21 =======
Well, it would be good to think that you could trust your supervisor, but I guess not absolutely everyone is trustworthy unfortunately. With multiple authorship, there are certain 'traditions' that are followed with respect to order of authors, and this can vary according to field. Obviously,first author is always desirable, and you should expect that you will be first author on your own PhD work that you have written, although I know from other people that it doesn't always work like this, and different supervisors have different views of what is appropriate when it comes to this. After that, in my field, the nearer first author you are, the better, and this can be agreed upon (or not!) according to whose idea/theory the research is based on, who collected the data, who analysed the data, who wrote the paper, who won the grant etc, and it can also be rather political. Yet my flatmate says in her field, if you're not first author then the next best is last author, and last authors are often the grantholders for the research. So it does vary a bit. Personally, I cannot imagine my supervisor cheating me out of authorship or sharing my work etc without my consent, but maybe I am just very lucky or somewhat naive!!! Happy Xmas! KB