Question - primarily for European scientists
Hi everyone.
After a long and protracted, as well as a very troubling process that involved being forced to commit authorship fraud by my superior (I refused and didn't back down, but it did cost me), I am finally about to disengage from the nightmare that has been my recent employment. And here comes the rub.
Lab notebooks. I know they belong to the Institute (I work at a private research institute), but, but, but.
One, my understanding was that they also belonged to the laboratory director/PI. I've seen in many places how PIs took their lab's notebooks.
Two, one of my students abruptly quit the lab after two and a half years. Mid-way through the PhD. The student was supposed to go with me to my new place at an internationally renown University. It took me quite some effort to negotiate various administrative hurdles so that the contract for that student could be organized, in part because the place from which we are coming is not well-known. All of a sudden the student announces that they don't actually have to/want to go because of the support promised to them by the institute which I am leaving. So I say that the student can't continue doing this project without me, to which the student replies, let's let the Director decide, because he promised support. Well, my project-my rules, so the end result is that the student is no longer in my lab, but still in the Institute, I am at any rate gone in a few weeks, and there is a written promise that the new topic of the student will not be related to my research topic. The point, however, is that we were working on two manuscripts, that now I have to finish by myself (obviously the student will remain co-author, probably even first author as planned, as they did the significant chunks of the work and in one case already quite some writing), and the information is in the notebooks. And all of a sudden I get this request to make sure that the notebooks are in place, because they are entitled to them, and to the data. Specifically mentioning those of that very student.
So what I am feeling like is, I leave, they quietly give the student back the notebooks and the data is there, and I am left with what? It took me more than three years of very careful data collection (involving proposal-based measurements and national facilities) to get to this point, with this student and the previous Master students; protocol development, etc., etc., and I am supposed to leave all this to them?
Now, Spain is a very particular country. I know a couple of national agencies I could write asking for help, but I don't know if there is a European body that could help me. What I want is either the notebooks, or a formal letter stipulating that the material in the notebooks will not be published by them without my explicit agreement - because I don't want later to be forced to go through a complex process of disentangling the situation with the editors, who do not like students to get hurt in the process (and neither do I).
I am also a little confused as to what they want to do with the notebooks. If some questions about my research come up, it would be me who'd have to answer those questions anyway.
Questions? Comments? Remarks? Suggestions?
After a long and protracted, as well as a very troubling process that involved being forced to commit authorship fraud by my superior (I refused and didn't back down, but it did cost me), I am finally about to disengage from the nightmare that has been my recent employment. And here comes the rub.
Lab notebooks. I know they belong to the Institute (I work at a private research institute), but, but, but.
One, my understanding was that they also belonged to the laboratory director/PI. I've seen in many places how PIs took their lab's notebooks.
Two, one of my students abruptly quit the lab after two and a half years. Mid-way through the PhD. The student was supposed to go with me to my new place at an internationally renown University. It took me quite some effort to negotiate various administrative hurdles so that the contract for that student could be organized, in part because the place from which we are coming is not well-known. All of a sudden the student announces that they don't actually have to/want to go because of the support promised to them by the institute which I am leaving. So I say that the student can't continue doing this project without me, to which the student replies, let's let the Director decide, because he promised support. Well, my project-my rules, so the end result is that the student is no longer in my lab, but still in the Institute, I am at any rate gone in a few weeks, and there is a written promise that the new topic of the student will not be related to my research topic. The point, however, is that we were working on two manuscripts, that now I have to finish by myself (obviously the student will remain co-author, probably even first author as planned, as they did the significant chunks of the work and in one case already quite some writing), and the information is in the notebooks. And all of a sudden I get this request to make sure that the notebooks are in place, because they are entitled to them, and to the data. Specifically mentioning those of that very student.
So what I am feeling like is, I leave, they quietly give the student back the notebooks and the data is there, and I am left with what? It took me more than three years of very careful data collection (involving proposal-based measurements and national facilities) to get to this point, with this student and the previous Master students; protocol development, etc., etc., and I am supposed to leave all this to them?
Now, Spain is a very particular country. I know a couple of national agencies I could write asking for help, but I don't know if there is a European body that could help me. What I want is either the notebooks, or a formal letter stipulating that the material in the notebooks will not be published by them without my explicit agreement - because I don't want later to be forced to go through a complex process of disentangling the situation with the editors, who do not like students to get hurt in the process (and neither do I).
I am also a little confused as to what they want to do with the notebooks. If some questions about my research come up, it would be me who'd have to answer those questions anyway.
Questions? Comments? Remarks? Suggestions?