Hi all,

I am a little confused about something, I have found out that my supervisor has been sending my research out to others in the university without my knowing. I have found this out, because people have approached me about documents that I have only sent to my supervisor. Who ever I have spoken to at the university for advice have said that they have not heard of this before and that it is not right for the supervisor to do this. I would understand if it was published work that my supervisor was sending out, this is not a problem and infact encouraged in research. But this work that the supervisor is sending out is unpublished work.

I would just like to get some extra input from others out there.

Thanks

I have similar problem, anyone has advice on this?

Human, oh I didn't know anyone else who had this problem, now I do. I hope the community have some good advice and suggestions for us.

If it was happening to me, I guess my reaction would depend on who the supervisor was sending stuff to, and why. For example, my supervisor occasionally used to send my stuff to another professor who used to work at my uni, to ask for his opinion on things. He never told me he was going to do it, I just got an email afterwards saying 'I showed Prof X your work and he thinks you should do this next....' In this situation, I didn't mind at all as it was useful to have someone else look over my work and comment on it. I know my supervisor also sent stuff to other students as they would mention stuff to me that I had never told them about, but again it didn't bother me as it helped to bounce ideas around with other people.
Has your supervisor given you any idea why they might have done this? Perhaps they thought they were being helpful? Were they claiming the work as their own, or did they make it clear it was your work? I think how you handle it depends on the answers to these sorts of questions, really.

I know that the supervisor has sent some of my documents to at least one other student, I don't know of any others profs who have seen it. I guess I shouldn't be so paranoid about others taking my work and using it for there own purposes unfairly, etc. You know how it is. You spend days, nights, mornings working on something... I assume my supervisor sent it to this student, because the student is doing related work to myself. The thing was I didn't know about it. So I don't know what documents I send to my supervisor will be confidential and which ones will not be. Maybe I am worry too much about it.

I am more concerned about this now more than ever because I need to hand in a paper draft of my thesis to my supervisor (hopefully within the next few weeks). After speaking some others it sounds unreasonable for the supervisor to then take this whole draft thesis and hand it over for other students to read before it have been submitted, checked, approved, examined and published. Of course at this point it is out there for the good of research in the public and thats good and fine.

You might say, well why don't you approach the supervisor about it. The fact is exactly as you mentioned Smoobles, I want to make sure I am dealing with this in the most professional, helpful and reasonable manner.

Thanks, I look forward to more discussion on this.