hey everyone, am currently waiting for my supervisor to get back to me on my work and meanwhile i want to complete the conference paper i've been working on in the midst of submissions. After the conference, the paper has been reviewed three times. By two academics and by someone in industry. I've been writing this paper since October last year and i've wanted to get it out of the way, but each time i've send it to colleagues its come back with comments which i've endeavoured to incorporate. i've decided that this is about the last time am incorporating comments. My problem is, this paper, substantially forms chapter 3 of my thesis - in a general way and my supervisor has never seen it.

should i publish anyway, show it to her first? am afraid of being discouraged - last year i showed my other sup my paper and he reckoned i should wait til i knew more in the area. What should i do? am also thinking of publishing a paper from every chapter i complete and hopefully when i get the first two chapters approved, i'll do that. or should i wait til i get to ch.3 with my sup to publish? what would you do? i sometimes feel that having to get my sups approval for everything slows me down. am planning to go ahead without her but i don't want to appear distant, rude or disregarding of her opinion or worse, working on other stuff instead of the first two chapters she been had me redo several times. am in the social sciences by the way, so i have a right to publish independently. its only PR am concerned about and the viva. would you show her your work?

Hi Jojo

I think opinions on this might be polarised. If I had submitted without my supervisor's approval there would have been fireworks! Saying that though, my situation was very different in that I also worked for him and he was an author (so would never happen!) Even in your position I would not submit something that so closely resembles a PhD chapter without first showing your supervisor.

Sorry, I know that is not what you wanted to hear! I do understand and empathise about the many comments issue, I have found that difficult to deal with in the past also. It seems that you will never have a 'final' version, and even then, you know it will be amended due to reviewers' comments anyway. I would suggest running it past your supervisor and then no one else before submitting.

Good luck. Maybe others will disagree though.

Hi Jojo, I'd show it to my supervisor too. Don't think you have to incorporate all of their comments though. But obviously they have more experience (you hope!) about what works in a publication etc.

fluffy - am an open minded person. am not looking for sympathy here, am looking for honest opinions on the PR surrounding this. so thanks for your opinion.
in that case, i think i'll just update it and hold on to it til about end of June, then i'll submit a revised version as chapter 3 and later show it to her as a proposed publication. i just wish i didn't have to wait forever, it kills motivation. meanwhile, am not gonna be a PhD student forever, am afraid of a viva without publications at this rate and not being able to get a job in academia coz of waiting for people to catch up. for that reason, i feel i should just show it to her. besides, it was already written and presented at a conference before she came into the picture. so am only doing what's natural by wanting to publish this paper and not disregarding her direction.

thecoastman - she's an editor of one of the journals in my field though her work concentrates on the same issue in a different geograhical area. so maybe it won't be so bad if i show her this paper.