27 August 2010
By Matthew Salois
Most papers these days are hardly ever written as a solo effort but rather as a collaborative endeavour. With co-authors comes delineation of responsibility, joint effort, and as recently discussed on this blog, the order of authorship once the final work is complete.
Complete is the key word.
Recent experiences have got me wondering whether a number of my working papers will ever get finished. And it is for not lack of trying. All of them are works with other authors (all senior to me by many years) who have become either non-responsive or non-cooperative with their portion of the paper. They have disappeared into the proverbial mist of nothingness.
What do I do in these instances? Do I drop my losses and move onto other things? Do I get pushy (I have already tried polite) and use terse words to spark action? Or do I finish the papers myself and submit them on my own, suffering repercussions later? None of these seem like palatable options, considering the amount of work I have done and not wanting to burn any bridges behind me.
The lesson I have learnt here is to choose my collaborators more carefully, noting that an enviable publication record does not necessarily mean that person is good to work with. Of course, this doesn’t change the quagmire I have found myself in. In the end, I feel like I have no choice other than to write-off these working papers as mistakes and to move on.
I’ll live to hunt the co-authors in the mist another day.
Hannah Dee27 August 2010 at 01:11 PM
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This is a problematic situation, and not one I've found myself in! I've had co-authors disappear, but they've been peers, and it's been because they've left academia or had personal problems or too much work or similar. They've all been happy for me to continue (sometimes without their name, sometimes with a re-ordering of the mast-head, and sometimes we've just waited until their crisis has passed).
Would an approach like this work?
Dear Professor Illustrious-Elusive
I am keen to continue with the paper we were collaborating on, and I understand that you are a very busy person. Are you able to contribute to this article as it stands? If not, would it be acceptable for you if I continued this work without your assistance? As I am sure you understand, this work is important to me and I would like to get it out-of-the-door as soon as possible.
Yours,
Dr Hard-Working
I guess this depends a lot on whether you're happy or able to do the paper yourself, but hey, single-author papers are as rare as rocking-horse shit in my discipline, and count for so much more.
Matthew Salois27 August 2010 at 02:22 PM
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Hi Hannah, your comment kept me laughing for a minute. Unfortunately, the situation would be easier if my co-authors were peers, but they all have been my superior in some form or another. Perhaps I will use your suggestion and simply ask if I can continue the paper on my own. I haven't done this so far because I greatly prefer to not dig into extra work, but this may be what is necessary.
Simon SmithEdited: 27 August 2010 at 07:51 PM
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I'd ask myself three questions in your situation:
1. Have my co-authors already contributed enough to merit co-authorship?
2. Can I complete the paper on my own?
3. Am I willing to do all the remaining work unaided?
If the answer to all three is Yes, I'd just get on with it, send them the final version for a last chance to contribute (and give them a deadline), then submit, without changing the authorship details.
If you feel the answer to question 1 is No, then you'll need Hannah's delicate negotiating skills ;-)
Matthew Salois31 August 2010 at 08:43 PM
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Sadly, I think the answer to question 1 is "kind of," to question 2 is "not without a headache," and to question 3 is "only as a last resort."
So I guess plan B is to continue the annoying negotiating process!
Tennie Videler09 September 2010 at 10:14 AM
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I was recently nearly a co-author in the mist. Luckily (well, not luck, on purpose) I had always kept a dialogue going with my PI from that particular project. We have now submitted the paper, with I think a good chance of having it accepted. Since I left, an enthusiastic doctoral candidate took over the project after a couple of years of near dormancy and the results are now in much better shape than when I left. Which was six and a half years ago! I was just wondering whether this is some sort of record?
Matthew Salois13 September 2010 at 02:15 PM
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That must be a record indeed!
However, if I can finally get my co-author to finish the paper, it will have been from inception (2002) to completetion (2010) nearly 8 years.
As I wrote that, I realized that I should just give up. A decade? Why am I still even thinking about it?
Sarah Davies14 September 2010 at 10:59 PM
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I think the reason you're still thinking about it is - if you're like me - you hate to give up on interesting work and to waste what you've already done on it. It seems such a shame for good stuff just to linger in a computer when the world could hear about it!
Having said that, your 8 year figure makes me feel a *lot* better about the fact that I'm still struggling on with publications from my PhD - based on fieldwork carried out in 2005-6...
Matthew Salois26 September 2010 at 05:44 PM
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Hi Sarah, that is it exactly. But once again here is where thinking like an economist is helpful. My past work is but a sunk cost.
An analogous decision is how much longer do I wait in a queue before I just give up and leave? What matters isn't how long I have waited, but rather how much longer I have to wait.
I am letting go of all the hard work I have done and moving on. There are bigger fish to fry.
Elizabeth Dodson27 September 2010 at 12:29 PM
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I have been in similar situations, where sadly the non-responsivness of a co-author meant that we missed the boat - ie. the data became too old to use. By the time the co-author got around to their part I would have had to start pretty much from scratch on collecting and analysing new data - at which point I lost the will to continue. I wish I had taken Hannah's tack to push it forward rather than waiting politely and ultimately wasting the work I had already done...