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    "once she puts your group as an affiliation on the paper, you are able to call the journal one the article is published and most likely cause a retraction" Not at all. For this to happen, there would need to be an official policy which requires authors to have their research approved by their institution. I have never heard of such a policy.
    – lighthouse keeper
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 7:46
  • Let's say i know a postdoc who actually took a lawyer, and for research done within the group the lawyer told to her that this was the case (Germany, federal research). The "maybe it goes trough" part of my comment was that if the research is not done within the group, the journal could be fine with it, but i am not sure about the affiliation usage - there must be a way for an employer to state that somebody does not speak as you employee, but as a private person.
    – Sascha
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 8:16
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    Interesting, I wonder if the lawyer gave more details on the legal foundation of this opinion. In many aspects, academia is very different from a "regular" workplace, in particular since there is the idea of academic freedom. If an academic institution can enforce a right to approve all publications by their academic personnel, this seems to contradict this idea.
    – lighthouse keeper
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 8:25
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    Academic freedom does not mean that you can do what you want and get paid, but that you (as an institution) are not prohibited by the government to do research. The power of the institution is transferred to Professors/PIs, who are responsible for the research (standards, ethics etc.).
    – Sascha
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 11:05
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    Yes, but the point is that is you are paid on a general postdoc for a given project, whatever you do is theirs, not yours. It's different if you have personal scholarship, obviously. But the Question was about working in a program/project. And there the PI is the primary source of decision. Not that I like it, but if fund were misdirected to other projects, the PI will be held accountable. (and yes, there has been work which i did as postdoc just for the purpose of reaching a goal set by the project)
    – Sascha
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 14:58