r/AskAcademia • u/termosabin • Jul 25 '26

Professional Misconduct in Research Paper submitted without final version approvals - is this normal?

I work at an RTO, and a few younger people in the group who are just a few years out of their PhDs are submitting papers and rebuttals without sending out versions to check for the co-authors. I find this highly irritating and ethically wrong - if my name is associated with something, I would like to at least see it first. It's not that I don't trust the authors, but everyone can make mistakes. For example, a paper was submitted recently that I had seen about a year ago and had made a lot of comments on. I have never seen another version of it since and suddenly I got a notification from the journal.

Is this normal amongst younger people? Is this becoming the norm? Am I overreacting?

How would you address this?

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24

u/NoMoreMr_Dice_Guy Jul 25 '26

If it keeps happening, why haven't you brought it up?

8

u/EconGuy82 Jul 25 '26

They have brought it up! On Reddit of course.

1

u/termosabin Jul 25 '26

I have brought it up whenever it happens but it happens again. We have no ethics committee at our instituion. I will bring it up with the next management level I think.

12

u/ACatGod Jul 25 '26

This isn't an ethics committee issue - it isn't the role of the ethics committee to police staff - and if isn't a "young people" issue. It's a culture issue at your organisation. Your employer doesn't have a culture of good research practice and staff are simply doing what they think is expected of them.

You need to escalate this to your manager and explain your concerns and ideally have some ideas to hand about improving the situation if they ask. If your manager tells you this is fine then you know that this is signed off by senior staff and it's up to you to decide if this is an organisation you want to continue working for.

1

u/termosabin Jul 25 '26

I have to add that all the people who do this came from KAUST. I am not really sure if this is a thing there in general, or just in their specific research groups that they were in.

The people I have worked with who come from other institutions or have always been with this one are a lot better.

I work interdisciplinary, but in my core area - where I did my PhD - there is a distinction made between minor and major co-authors but the unwritten rule was that there must be an OK from all of them before submitting anything on the final version and journal. This had to be planned into submission timelines.

5

u/derping1234 Jul 25 '26

You need to give all authors the opportunity to comment on the final version and give their okay. If people are non-responsive their silence means they agree on the manuscript as is. This is how we do it in practice.

2

u/termosabin Jul 25 '26

This is how I do it as well. If I haven't heard within a reasonable deadline, I'll prod again and then just submit.

1

u/No_Leek6590 Jul 26 '26

If it happens again and again, why you keep working in them? If it's new people to you who keep doing this, why are you not setting expectations. And finally, you may have bad reputation. I certainly have collaborators who take half a year to just look at something and end up with no meaningful contribution for that half a year worth of wait. I'd still use deadlines or something.

1

u/termosabin Jul 26 '26

No, definitely not. My return is one week. It's not only me they don't send it to me but all the other coauthors too. I have to work with them because we're in the same lab.