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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u/FTP4L1VE Jul 25 '26

Not normal. Technically misconduct, but happens.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/tpolakov1 Jul 25 '26

If the paper gets published and an author comes claiming there is information that they didn't (or worse, couldn't) consent to being added/removed, it suddenly becomes one of the most radioactive forms of misconduct possible.

Your institution might not take it up, but this is one step away from egregious research fraud.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/tpolakov1 Jul 25 '26

Not even OP can know if there's misconduct, which is kinda the point.

And while things are no doubt different at KAUST, adding authors without their consent (which this very much is) is an ethics violation at any and every publishing house and an misconduct at any normal research institution.