Hi,

I'm on a 3-year funded PhD, just approaching the end of year 2. Unfortunately, due to financial pressures, I have had to take on a full-time job. My new boss (it's within the same University and School as I'm doing my PhD) said he'd support me to to write up my PhD on a part-time basis.

My supervisors, however, are extremely unhappy and essentially want me to withdraw completely. Within a week of me informing them of my intentions, they negotiated with the project funder to take on an employed researcher for the final year of the project to analyse my data (interviews and focus groups) and write up three publications (on which they've offered to put my name...)

They claim I won't have time with the responsibilities of my new job to complete my PhD. Objectively, to my mind, this isn't clear grounds for me to withdraw.

They want me to stay on until the end of January to complete a round of follow-up interviews, which completes my dataset - then hand it over.

I would like to know who actually owns my data? I produced the research proposal and ethics applications under which the data has been collected. I conducted all the interviews myself. The transcription of these recordings has been paid for from the project funds. Only I currently have access to my data and I am not about to share it...

The only thing I can find online about academic data ownership suggests that the copyright of the data belongs to me:

So am I correct in thinking that the data actually belongs to me?

Am I under any obligation to share the data with my supervisor?

Is the supervisor within their right to employ a research assistant to complete my study, which I designed, using my data?

Thanks!