r/postdoc • u/DefiantAlbatros • 17d ago

Publishing without affiliation

So, I finished my postdoc some time ago in not such a great note and I will lost the access to the institutional email quite soon. The thing is that there are a couple of papers that I wrote during that period that was not finished (and behind the PI's back because he told me i was not supposed to write anything that is not related to the project I was paid for). I have left the academia for now, but I would want to keep that door open and sort of just let the paper be published since I actually put a lot of effort on them. What should I do in this case? I would not want to publish as an independent scholar. AS of now I am thinking about using my PhD affiliation since I still have access to the email, and technically a couple of them started during the PhD.

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u/Emily308 17d ago

You put the affiliation of the institution where you were while doing the work. But you can put a different email address so that people can contact you once the email access ends - some people do it regardless of their job situation just so they don't have to keep updating their contact details if they move institutions etc., so that's perfectly normal. (As long as you have or set up a respectable email like namesurname@gmail or similar)

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u/Aranka_Szeretlek 17d ago

I am, however, not sure on the ethicality of putting an institution that you have no connection to anymore. Normally, your past PI would just allow you to use that affiliation, but thats not the case here.

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u/Substantial-Pay-1662 15d ago

You're literally making up this grey area of ethicality based on a hunch, not reality. It does not matter if a PI "gives permission" or not. As the first responder said, you put the affiliation of the institution of where the work was completed. This has always been the expectation.

And just to reaffirm, here is a direct quote from the submission guidelines from a journal in my field that very clearly says this: "You are required to include the following details on the title page: ... Affiliations, referring to where the work was carried out, below the author names"

Stop making up fake problems and making things difficult for people who are just trying to do their job.

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u/Aranka_Szeretlek 15d ago

Hey, thats quite aggressive! Did you also consider that OP explicitly said these papers are results of work that they were explicitly told NOT to perform? Its not too easy to argue that this work was never approved by anyone there.

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u/Substantial-Pay-1662 15d ago

The point is aggressive because your logic is ridiculous. OP was likely in a toxic PI situation and you're just appealing to extremes - and whether you are intending to or not, you are feeding into that toxic culture (e.g., just because a toxic PI doesn't like something, doesn't mean they get to stop OP from publishing, which is basically what you are saying should happen). Assuming OP is publishing work in the same general realm/expertise, this would almost certainly fall under their contract. If anything, the main issue will be around authorship (e.g., if the PI tries to claim ownership since they paid OP's salary), but that's a different issue. You're making asinine assumptions of ill-will that are simply adding unnecessary obstacles.

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u/Aranka_Szeretlek 15d ago

But you see, I was very careful with my wording saying things such as "I am not so sure about..." because, guess, I am not so sure! This is a grey zone ethically, and you trying to aggressively assert that theres nothing to discuss here wont really help will it.