The Changing Teacher-Disciple (Guru-Shishya) Equation in Modern Times

• Main Authors: Sunanda Das, Aarti Garg, Hemant Jain
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: JCDR Research and Publications Private Limited 2017-10-01
• Series: Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research
• Subjects: Authorship; Co-guide; Guide; Postgraduate
• Online Access: http://jcdr.net/articles/PDF/10797/13051_F(AP)_PF1(EKAP)_PFA(EKAP).pdf

Guidelines for authorship have been outlined by various international bodies like Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). However, instances do arise where these guidelines fail to resolve authorship conflict. A common example is when an article based on a thesis/PhD work, is submitted with the name of the guide or the student (principal investigator) missing from the authors’ list. It is expected that the guide as well as the principal investigator are among the authors in thesis articles. On the contrary, a displeased guide may choose to publish the thesis, omitting the student’s name, stating that the student did not work hard enough to gain authorship. The student might also consider not providing authorship to the guide believing that the guide did not appropriately ‘guide’ him during the research. After completion of the degree, the student might lose interest in publishing his work. The guide therefore may decide to unilaterally publish the thesis for dissemination of knowledge. However, the fact that the student has actually collected the data cannot be denied. The true contribution of the student or the guide in the thesis work as well as the manuscript preparation, to merit them as authors, remains debatable. In this paper we present a series of cases where we had to face student and guide authorship issues. Further we discuss the literature on such issues and the steps that were taken by the editorial for resolution of these disputes.