Hi bewildered, thankyou for your reply, and for the possibilities you've raised for the 25 years- I've considered all copyright issues and all figures have been credited where due, along with any work done by other people in the group- in fact my current supervisor has told me I've been over cautious about this. In addition the original supervisor has not even seen the almost complete thesis, although my current supervisor has my permission to show it to her and she knows it is available for her to read.
Her signature is on the form and she's dated it as 6th feb, which was the same day as it was given to her so it can't have gone to any committee ( I only received the form back back yesterday when visiting supervisor no 2, he's had it in his office since that date). The work is plain old biochemistry involving lab experiments, no humans, animals or anything with any commercial interest, let alone national security! I've contacted the graduate education council using their details on the links from ian and ckc, having read the report. Five years appears to be the maximum and that's in exceptional circumstances, so I'm just at a loss.

Hi ckc and Ian thanks for the link, no actually I havent seen this before so its really useful, thankyou. I've just seen the academic advisor in the students union who thinks this is bizarre. We have asked the dpeartment for a statement in writing in which they specify the reasons for a 25 year full copy embargo and what premise there may be for this length of time, together with evidence that this is necessary. I have had huge probelms with my supervisor who is a bully and actively tried to get me to quit before I wrote it up, she's just been made a professor and I know is probably concerned about my making a complaint about her (she's right to, I'm just intending to get my PhD first) but because she has good reason to suspect a complaint (and I am talking a big career threatening one here) I am wondering if this may be tactical in some way. She has stated to me verbally twice "you will never get a PhD from this University" so I am wondering, besides nobbling my examiners (which she's already tried, were on the second set now) exactly what she has up her sleeve. It's added stress on top of a deadline!

HI Ian thanks for that useful bit of advice about the copyright. I think she's embargoing it because the data in it will be in a paper which is due to be submitted, and which also may crop up in any spin off's from that she's generated, which is why I expected an embargo of about 5 years. I can't see any reasn for extending this though. Yes I agree you are right about just getting through it and then raising it- all the way thro my PhD I've had to keep quiet about her so a bit longer wont hurt!

dear cathie, first of all, heres a sympathetic hug. I've just posted a thread in which I've mentioned being bullied by my supervisor and as a result have felt probably as bad as you do right now. You seem to be suffering from stress quite badly but there is support available in the form of your students union advisors or the counselling service. If they don't work, and your anxiety is affecting aspects of your life including eating and sleeping, my advice would be to go and see your doctor and request 1) some medical support if your doc thinks you are suffering from depression and 2) a medical note to allow you some time out. It's really helpful to take yourself out of the situation for a few days, to rest and clear your head. You don't mention your supervisor but if they are the probelm I would seriously recommend sorting it out at this early stage in your PhD, perhaps with the aid of the student union or a second supervisor. Good luck, manda

I have had a lot of problems with my supervisor, mainly related to poor supervision, bullying and mis-spending of my grant money (I have an EPSRC grant which I obtained myself but she had financial control of it, as happens at my university for postgrad fundong ). Towards the end of the PhD my supervisor told me not to bother writing it up, then that it would fail (there have been two publications from it so there is no evidence to substantiate this claim). Her unhelpful advice coupled to these comments forced me to seek alternative support in the dept for the final stages of writing up. My new supervisor says my thesis is 'good' and it's due to be submitted in two weeks. As part of the admin process for submission my supervisor had to complete a form upon which she could request an embargo of the thesis. I understand why this may be required in certain circumstances and expected an embargo of five years or so for the electronic version. My old supervisor has not seen my thesis nor requested to yet she has embargoed the electronic and paper versions for 25 years, which is excessive I feel. There is no commercial value in the work which has not already been published so it's not an intellectual property/ patent issue. I can see no reason for this other than the inclusion of some data she doesn't like, because it could be perceived as contradictory other parts of my data presented in a paper likely to be published soon, but the data is real, not due to error and to have omitted it would have seriously undermined the thesis so I had no choice to include it. I have though pointed out reasons why it could be discounted, bearing in mind the need not to undermine a paper on which I'm a co-author. My question is, does it really matter if my thesis is embargoed in all forms for 25 years and if it is likely to do me any harm in furure (say by undermining the thesis) do I have the right to request a formal reason for the embargo and can I challenge it? I only have 2 weeks to possibly do this.

thanks megara, nichola and magictime for your advice, will try and find out what our department grievance procedure is- fore-warned is fore-armed and all that. trouble is my supervsior is the department reader so second to the 'boss' and a very established member of staff. She works part time anyway and has another 2 students including me who she does supervise because they are paid directly from her grant. I'm a bit of a 'cookoo' because I work within the group by wasn't appointed by her to do any of her rant funded work, she's just given me a (pretty dire) project whihc is not generating any data because it's a chemical modification of DNA which won't work on our synthetic structures.
Will keep you posted if I have any luck with the powers that be.....!

Hi Joyce, thanks very much for your reply- yes I have been thinking about going to the graduate research office, which is like the union for research students; it seems such a big step to take but given the circumstances don't feel as if I have much choice. I posted this thread to ask really what others would do in the same situation (I wouldn't wish this on anyone though), and yours plus the other really helpful responses have convinced me that fighting my corner is the only way to deal with this. So I'll try and get to see someone this week having had a miserable weekend writing. Thanks again

been doing my phD for two years now, it's a 4 year part taught programme, so I'm not really 2 years into the research, more like one. But my supervisor palmed me off onto another pHD student working on a related projevt to supervise me 18 months ago and has only, in the past 6 months, paid me any atention whatsoever. The 18 months being supervised with her student was a disaster- it was basically no supervision. When my supervisor 'took over' in Jan, she suggested I started trying to develop a long term project - quite a big experiment but meant not much data on a day to day basis.

I've reached the concusion that this 'procedure' is not going to work on our system, for what I believe are sound theoretical reasons. My supervisor has decided that it's not working because I am incompetent, despite the absence of any evidence for this, it's more like she has appointed a post doc on her grant (I'm paid externally by an epsrc scholarship I earned for myself) who has no lab or desk space unless I am not her after next month.

I have a major progress assesment just before then and with no warning whatseoever, but after the arrival of the new group member, she has failed my progress report and recommended that i am not allowed to carry on. She claims I have no understanding of my project and has put that on the report. She has not, as far as I know, carried out any assessment which could lead her to reach this decision and I have as god a grasp on the project as her last PhD graduate student did when she completed successfully.

She has told me that the transfer report I have to write should be up to MPhil standard yet she wouldn't read the drafts, insisting I gave them to our new post doc whi has arrived from a totally unrealated field and knows very little about my project.

She seems to be doing her best to get rid of me and I'm really at a loss as to what to do, I should have had a second supervisor appointed 2 years ago but despite 4 request she has not done this.

Any ideas on what to do? I'm working 96 hours aweek to get this report beyond perfect, but it's only meant to be a 60 page interim thing, not a thesis! help!!

Hi everyone, thanks so much for your messages- well I'm back in the lab now which is something I have been dreading all weekend but i did crack on saturday and emailed my 'on secondment' supervisor, and basically just told her just how bad it's got and exactly what has been going on.I felt really bad 'telling tales' but only for about 5 minutes!! Anyway my supervsior got back to me and she's going to come in today so we can tave a further talk about it which hopefully will mean I get pulled out from under this girls thumb. Tom you were right about sticking up for yourself- sometimes there is just no option!

Thanks very much guys for the supportive replies- you are all right. I've had a chat with my 'on secondment' supervisor who kind of rolled her eyes and said she knows what this person is like..she said she'd try and 'calm her down'. This was over a month ago and if anything it's got worse. I'm off sick at the moment (virus) but dreading going back in on monday i feel so depressed about the situation. I think the idea of talking to my supervisor again is a good one- maybe if that doesn't work try a meeting with a mediator. Just panicking now because I need to learn this stuff from her in the next month!

Hi folks. I have a problem which feels like a brick wall and I'm at a loss to deal with it.
My supervisor has been on secondment since i started- I'm about to go into my second year. She appointed her leaving 4th year student to 'look after me' which has required this person to teach me the methods of analysis we use (very complex) as well as how to do the experiments (quite straight forward)
On my first day in the lab this person was openly hostile to me and told me how much she resented being exepcted to do this. To cut a very long story short over the past 6 months I have failed to learn what i need to from her because she becomes aggressive towards me, loses patience and will openly raise her voice at me in the office where 12 of us work when we are not in the lab.
She has made it clear she thinks I am stupid because I have not understood her 'teaching' (which consists of basically taking the keyboard off me and doing it herself without the explanation I realy need)
Any ideas on how to deal with her?

Oh, that's the cats fault!!! (blame it on anything really!!) he (honestly) managed to scroll down to a totally un-related message..get off fluffy!...

I wasn't going to reply to this thread, having nothing useful to say, but our new kitten has just walked across the keyboard and produced a reply page. Now I can't remember what the thread is about (long day...they should ban half term..) Will go back and read the thread again. cat now on the floor.

Oh God. Why? and win what? I bet it's something really fab like an automatic tie knotter.....

Um, 'scuse me pleeeese if this sounds like a naff comment- it's not meant to be. it's more a reflection on my experience of this site so far. And this is a kinda observation. I think you might find it naff because everyone else has noticed it ages ago!! But anyway, it seems that international students (for whom english may not be their first language, and /or do not have a family base in the uk)seem to have more problems with being bullied than 'native' students. of course this can't be representative of international students as a whole but it surely must indicate something? ie. non permenant -Uk students studying for a PhD are facing more of an uphill struggle than they should do because of what amounts to racism by supervisors (or possibly lab mates, thinking about another recent thread). Does anyone else feel this?