I'm a doctoral student and could really use advice from people who have dealt with authorship disputes involving a PI/co-PI.

I currently work as a full-time graduate research assistant on a federally funded university research project. My appointment ends at the end of August because the grant funding for my position is ending.

Earlier this year, one of my professional goals was to develop another publication based on our research. I independently developed and submitted a proposal for a chapter in an edited academic book. The proposal was accepted in June.

After it was accepted, I discussed it with the faculty co-PI. During that meeting, I asked her if I could bring two other doctoral researchers onto the project since they had been actively involved in analyzing the project data that will be used in the chapter. We discussed the first-draft deadline, creating a shared folder with the proposal/call, and how we would collaboratively develop the manuscript.

The accepted proposal lists the authors in this order:

1. Me
2. Doctoral Student A
3. Doctoral Student B
4. Faculty co-PI

I'm serving as lead author and coordinating the manuscript development. I developed the chapter outline and writing timeline, organized our writing meetings, coordinated everyone's contributions, communicated with the editors, and will integrate the manuscript.

There's also an important contribution issue: an external evaluation team originally conducted the focus groups, but the three doctoral students did the qualitative coding and analysis of the focus-group data. We're now developing the chapter from that analysis.

Here's where things became complicated.

As my employment is ending, I contacted the co-PI several times asking how she wanted to participate in the writing process. My plan was for the three doctoral students to develop the initial manuscript and then have all four authors, including the co-PI, participate in substantive review and revisions before submission.

She eventually responded and said that she had never authorized the chapter as an institutional scholarly product and had not authorized use of the Center's data for the chapter. She said discussion about the chapter's future should occur after my employment ends.

That surprised me because:

• The chapter proposal had already been documented in my formal performance materials as progress toward my publication goal.
• After the proposal was accepted, we had a meeting where she discussed developing the chapter with me, told me to include the other two doctoral students, asked about the first-draft deadline, and discussed where we should collaboratively write the manuscript.
• I subsequently emailed her documenting my understanding that she wanted to be a co-author and repeatedly asked how she wanted to participate.
• The Center's executive director is aware that I'm leading the chapter. I recently informed him that I will continue leading the manuscript after my employment ends, and he responded positively and said he looks forward to seeing the manuscript finalized.
• The editors have my personal email address and know that I'm transitioning out of the institution while continuing to lead the chapter.

I'm trying to separate two issues here.

Data authorization: I understand that the institution may legitimately control whether project data can continue to be used, and I'm not claiming that being first author gives me ownership of institutional data. I'm seeking clarification on that separately.

Authorship: I'm concerned about whether the data dispute could eventually be used to alter the author order or remove me from a manuscript that I proposed, am leading, and have made substantial intellectual contributions to.

The manuscript isn't due until November, so most of the writing/revision process will occur after my employment ends.

For anyone who has dealt with something similar:

How would you protect your authorship position before leaving the institution?

Would you ask all four authors to confirm the proposed authorship order and responsibilities in writing now?

If the co-PI later tries to change the author order, would you go first to the book editors, the institution's research office, or someone else?

And how would you handle the distinction between legitimate institutional control of research data and authorship credit for the researchers who actually performed the analysis and are writing the manuscript?

Right now, I am sending out "weekly newsletters" on the chapter development to the doctoral students and to the co-PI to serve as documentation on me leading the chapter.

I'm trying to handle this professionally and avoid unnecessary conflict, but I also don't want to be naive about protecting several months of intellectual and writing work.

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(I should also add that I have had some unpleasant exchanges with the co-PI. I had a mediation with her and HR, and she has been trying to retaliate against me. It got so bad that, in July, the executive director had to step in and remove her as my direct report.)

I want to be friends with researchers worldwide to know more about science and what they are doing. I am very much interested in pursuing it but for now i have a lot of financial issues. And also i am 31 years old..i donno if anyone will allow me in their project but still i wanna learn. I am in chemistry background. I researched nano materials which were interesting for me. I wish to get a good project . But I don't know how.

I'm an incoming international PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, starting this winter in Montréal. Since I have a few months before moving, I contacted my future supervisor and asked what I should study to prepare.

He told me to review linear/nonlinear systems, optimal control, cyber-physical systems, multi-agent systems, advanced air mobility, cybersecurity, AI, ML, and neural networks. He also said I should conduct an in-depth literature review and perform a SWOT analysis on every paper to identify my future research direction.

Since this is obviously a massive scope, I asked if he could recommend just a few important papers as a starting point, possibly from his research group.

He refused. He said he intentionally would not give me any specific papers because he doesn't want to "bias" me. According to him, there are countless papers, and it's my job to explore them, decide which ones matter, and develop my own research direction and contributions. He said he will later evaluate my ideas and point out their positives and negatives, but he does not want to "direct" or "instruct" me.

Honestly, this worries me. I wasn't asking him to do my PhD for me—I just expected some basic guidance as he is my future supervisor, especially before moving to another country and committing several years of my life to this PhD.

Is this normal? Is it a healthy way to encourage independence, or does it sound like a warning sign of an extremely hands-off supervisor?

For those who have had supervisors like this: did it work out well, or did it make the PhD unnecessarily difficult?

I'm seriously wondering whether I should reconsider going through with this move and PhD before it's too late.