Harassment: Due credit

“Papers are the prime currency to anyone pursuing a doctoral degree. However, some supervisors blatantly disregard the contribution of the student writing the paper and do not give them their due authorship. This breach of trust is not uncommon and has hurt the interest of countless PhD scholars across the country, including me.

It started when I decided to bring in my co-supervisor from a premiere institute to help me with my thesis. My supervisor and I had mutually agreed that collaborating with necessary people with the required expertise will help in the progress of my project and in networking. Thus, the said person came on board as my co-supervisor in 2020. Although he did have a reputation in the institute, I had already worked on a paper and project with him earlier and personally had a good relationship with him.

Things started changing in 2021 when I was in the middle of hosting a virtual conference. Because of the pandemic, the conference was being held online where I was one of the organizers. We had to put in long hours to arrange the zoom sessions. My co-supervisor asked me to get some work done during this period. I initially voiced that I was preoccupied with the conference and would get the necessary job done as soon as the conference was over. But he wanted the data analysis right away and therefore I had to work all-night so as to manage everything together…