Co-author contributed almost nothing and is blocking publication

Question

Alice and Bob have co-authored a paper together. The contribution (data collection, analysis, writing) was 100% Alice and 0% Bob, except that the original idea was initiated during a conversation between Alice and Bob. Bob acknowledged several times in private that he did not contribute to the project, but he claimed co-authorship for the idea and Alice did not object to that. Alice spent almost an entire year working on the project. Bob spent less than a couple of hours in total. A manuscript with both names has already been circulated, submitted and rejected from one journal.

Bob is now trying to block the publication of the paper due to a personal conflict with Alice. In the meantime, Bob became envious of Alice's early successes and decided to do everything to slow down her career, even at the expense of his own publication record. Bob is already tenured and has no pressure to publish. Alice, by contrast, needs more publications for her forthcoming tenure review. Of course, Bob never explicitly refused to submit the paper. But instead of sending it to a prestigious outlet (where the paper would have a good shot) he insists that they send the manuscript to a non peer-reviewed and unknown journal, which would not help Alice's tenure case. Of course he makes no effort in trying to find an agreement, as he would be happy not to submit the paper at all. Clearly, his decisions are driven by spite and malevolence only and he takes great care into not writing anything incriminating for him.

Is there anything that Alice can do in that situation? Does she have to resign herself to never publishing the paper? What are the risks for her if she removes Bob's name without his agreement and submits the manuscript on her own?

PS: as a response to Captain Emacs' comment, Bob's only contribution was to say "why don't we study the causal effect of X on Y?" in an informal conversation. Alice did absolutely all the rest (literature review, design of the protocol, data collection, analysis, conference presentations, etc.). But there is no evidence of this, other than the fact that Bob would be unable to answer any question that goes into the detail of the paper.

Answer 1

As with the another answer, I couldn't help but notice the almost literary way in which the Bob character is depicted:

Clearly, his decisions are driven by spite and malevolence only

Unless the OP is Bob (what a twist!), she is really not in a position to make that claim. In my experience, in 99% of all human behavior, after sufficient scrutiny, one finds that "driven by spite and malevolence only" is not the right explanation. Moreover, I'm not sure I've ever seen an academic make a professional decision to spite someone else even though it hurt their own career as well. Regarding this the OP wrote:

Bob is already tenured and has no pressure to publish.

Now I really think the OP cannot be Bob, because tenured people still have pressure to publish. The stakes may be different from that of their long term academic survival, but they are not necessarily lesser or viewed as lesser by the tenured faculty.

Anyway, here's the heart of the matter in my mind:

The contribution (data collection, analysis, writing) was 100% Alice and 0% Bob, except that the original idea was initiated during a conversation between Alice and Bob. Bob acknowledged several times in private that he did not contribute to the project, but he claimed co-authorship for the idea and Alice did not object to that.

I accept the premise of the story that Bob has done nothing on the paper past one initial conversation and is now (for some reason or reasons) acting against its timely publication in an appropriate venue. Which is terrible behavior on his part, of course. However, I must point out that Alice has also made a terrible mistake at some point in the process. Bob "claimed" coauthorship for a project that someone else worked on for a year and that he had one conversation about. That's egregiously improper behavior. You shouldn't "claim coauthorship" under any circumstances; you should propose coauthorship and that proposal should be accompanied by specific proposed contributions. If Alice went away after one conversation and worked for an entire year without telling Bob what she was doing, that's a mistake (and by the way, it could much more plausibly be part of what made Bob upset). If she did tell Bob what she was working on, she should have clarified that if he wanted to be involved in the project he needed to do....something. And no matter how they get to the endpoint, where Alice has a paper and Bob asks her to put his name on the paper, she needed to object to this. In fact (although this is not the point), Alice's lack of objection could be construed as academic dishonesty: it misleads the reader as to the level of Bob's contribution.

This act of misleading seems to have come back to bite Alice in the behind. It is much more awkward for her to take back sole control of her work after having submitted the jointly authored paper. However, it may still be the right thing to do if the publication of the paper is important enough to her. I do not see an ethical problem with Alice deciding to pull away with her work, given that it actually is solely her work. That she may not be able to prove that to the satisfaction of all interested parties makes the action more risky, not less ethical. If Alice and Bob really cannot agree on where to submit the paper, Alice has the right to say "I'm sorry it didn't work out. I am taking my work with me...which as you know is everything except the original idea, which I will credit you for so that you can write a paper on your alternate development/implementation of the idea if you choose." She should not allow the hypothetical threat of Bob's academic dishonesty (i.e., the possibility that he might tell other people that he did the work) to hold sway.

In fact, if Alice convinces Bob that she is serious about pulling away, then with any luck he will see that he has nothing to gain by pressing a fraudulent claim that the work was his that he wouldn't gain better and more easily just by allowing a joint submission to the journal Alice wants.

Answer 2

It was an easy read until

Clearly, his decisions are driven by spite and malevolence only and he takes great care into not writing anything incriminating for him.

This part seemed to have a serious amount of judgment on your part ("clearly", "only"). I'm not saying you're mistaken, I'm only pointing out that this part seemed (to me) to be at odds with the rest of the story.

I like to believe that people generally are reasonable, and hence can be reasoned with. Has Alice tried to apologize for what caused the personal conflict or "misunderstanding"? Has she explained why she wants to publish? Is she really open for a discussion, or is her mind already set on the route to take and Bob objects to "signing off" on Alice's already made-up mind?

Of course, Alice's interpretation may be right and Bob is really a comic book villain. Sometimes you just come across people that are unreasonable. For the rest of this answer, this shall be my assumption.

Since Alice is in a lower position than Bob, she should avoid engaging in a fight about authorship, especially since there are preprints in circulation with both names as authors, which is evidence for Bob's co-authorship.

However, I think it should be possible for Alice to create a spin-off of the current paper, which she rewrites completely, citing the (unpublished) preprint. This way, Alice can claim that she wrote the paper alone, and she doesn't challenge Bob's authorship for the preprint. Since Bob blocks the publication of the preprint, and since the preprint might not be available publicly, this new paper would probably need to repeat arguments for the reader's convenience. I think Alice's own contributions to the preprint could be repeated without falling under (self-)plagiarism, since the previous preprint was not published and proper attribution to the preprint is given.

Answer 3

The fact that it was submitted once with Bob's name on it makes it very difficult (and awkward) to remove Bob's name.

Instead, I'd recommend hot chocolate and cookies. Then Alice should tell Bob that she has addressed the reviewers comments from the previous rejection and will be submitting to Journal of Awesomeness. Ask Bob if he sees any more ways to improve it before submitting to Journal of Awesomeness.

Then, thank Bob for his time, tell him you will do your best to address his comments before submitting.

No matter what, Alice must make it clear that Journal of Awesomeness is where this paper is headed next.

Answer 4

As you need to get on with doing research and writing new papers, you can consider writing up follow up papers that cite the current paper as a paper in preparation or as a preprint.

Answer 5

There are many sides to a story, so I won't comment on the merits or facts of the narrative. However, I will advise that it is my experience that authorship issues that are unresolved post-publication often prove detrimental to both parties making the claim. Thus, every effort must be made to reach a resolution.

The technical term for the situation described in the question is disputed authorship. At the journal level, the standard advice is that authorship disputes be resolved at the level of the institution(s). Journals will generally NOT proceed with publication until clear resolution is reached.

Let me provide two examples.

Case 1. An manuscript is submitted listing two authors (M and N). The manuscript is sent for peer review. While under review, the editor receives a letter from Author M stating that the manuscript was submitted without his knowledge or permission. The editor immediately does two things -- (1) he halts the peer review process and (2) he contacts Author N to request an explanation. Author N admits that he had attempted to contact Author M for the past two months but with no luck. Deciding that sufficient time and effort has passed, Author N decided to submit the manuscript. The editor seeks further details and discovers that Author M has been discharged from his institution and has instituted legal proceedings about a different matter. This situation seems to have been used by Author M as part of his legal strategy. The editor asks the institution to resolve the matter at their level. Over time, Authors N and M reach an agreement that is suitable to both of them and the institution. They write to the editor that the authorship dispute has been resolved. A new manuscript is submitted containing comments and revisions from Author M. The peer review process is restarted. The article has been published.

In some cases, it is out of the hands of the author.

Case 2. A group of authors submit a manuscript for publication. After peer review, the article is published. An individual writes to the editor after having seen the publication claiming that she deserves authorship on the grounds that the the publication could not have been possible without her contribution (she provided the data in the form of a database she has set up). The editor responds by stating that they abide by the authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and that she should provide evidence to support her claim. The third party submits the evidence. On assessment of the evidence, the editor makes the assessment that the third party DOES NOT fulfill the criteria for authorship and authorship is denied.

At the same time, the third party contacts the authors and informs them that she had lodged a claim of disputed authorship with the journal. The authors consider this information and write to the journal, stating that they would like to include the third party on the list of authors. The editor declines the request because the assessment had made and the third party does not fulfill the ICMJE conditions for authorship. The publication is not changed.

The main issue here is the difference between contribution and authorship. The former can exist without the latter, but not the other way around.

Good luck to you.

Answer 6

Reputable scientists normally reject co-authorship suggestions of the type "I contribute the work, you contribute the reputation". Not too ethical, and the risk to publish questionable material on the own name also matters. They should also not be invited into co-authors on the basis "this is because you have told me two valuable sentences in cafeteria". Shame for both.

To save the situation for both, Bob and Alice should agree now on the rewritten paper that (they both declare) does not contain Bob's contribution. As this was just a discussion, no experiments, no analysis, rewriting a few sentences in introduction may be sufficient.

Answer 7

Reading all responses here feels utterly strange. People focus on semantics, on word choice and to find all possible other things to focus but the actual problem: someone doing all the work and somebody else trying to put his name on it.

In fact, the hypocrisy is in the majority of the scientific community (my own experience). Typically, submitting the paper to a journal, one has to declare all co-authors contributed equally and everybody knows it. Yet it seems to be a community standard to prey on people lower in the hierarchy and abuse their superiority.

Why then to create the rules of scientific integrity, research code of conduct or making people sing these co-authorship declarations instead of being transparent, as the theory science should be?

My answer to the question in the topic is: Alice should not sacrifice her own career nor work for a sake of pleasing someones ego. She could write a nice email to Bob, asking him for reasons of his choice of the journal X and to ask him what could he contribute to perhaps improve the paper. This can go many ways, but anything written is a good proof of Bob's attitude and his involvement in the work. Alice should submit her work to whatever journal she wants, with her being the only author. The acknowledgement can state that the idea of the research sparked in the conversation with Bob.

Let's stop making simple things complicated.

Answer 8

Wow, what a difficult position to be in. If Bob contributed 0%, Alice has every right to exclude him from the author list and simply acknowledge his contribution in a footnote. She is then free to submit to whichever journal she feels has the best chance of accepting the paper. For the sake of maintaining some level of collegiality, she should advise Bob of her intentions.

The professional jealousy is an entirely different matter, but her record will stand on its own when she goes up for review. She has an obligation to herself, and not to Bob.

Answer 9

Here is a possible course of action which Alice might consider, but only if she doesn't care about antagonizing Bob even further, and if other courses of action have failed.

It depends on what comes first: (1) The acceptance announcement date at the Journal of Awesomeness, or (2) the submission date at the Journal of Lameness.

If the Journal of Awesomeness deadline comes first, Alice submits without telling Bob she did it. She should try to avoid actually stating whether or not she's going to submit, and sort of let Bob understand She's sulking/angry and that he's gotten away with his little plot. If the submission is rejected - none will be the wiser. If it's accepted, still Alice mustn't tell him, for as long as she can until the Journal of Lameness deadline. Bob won't prepare a draft for that one, and will be expecting Alice to do the work, right? Well, Alice act discouraged and sort of "give up on it". Unless Bob pushes Alice really hard, in which case Alice might have to tell him.

If the Journal of Lameness deadline comes first, Alice should get the draft ready for the Journal of Awesomeness submission, unbeknownst to Bob. She must continue acting frustrated and mopey, and appear to have lost motivation for getting that thing published. Now the Journal of Lameness submission deadline will be approaching. As Alice is the one who does all the work, it's likely Bob won't prepare the draft for this submission, and will be expecting Alice to do that? Well, Alice will sort-of-kind-of be working on it, but not really; she'll try to not show up and not be very responsive as the deadline is coming up. Or she might promise him she'll have it ready on time, but fail to update him on the progress. Alice has to make it so that they miss the deadline.

But when the Journal of Awesomeness deadline comes up - Alice submits the paper; and does not mention that fact to Bob at all.

Finally, in both cases

When Bob finds out (which will be no later than when the next issue of Journal of Awesomeness comes out I suppose) - what is Bob going to do? The paper was already accepted. It's not like he could spoil the publication by claiming uncredited authorship. At most Bob can demand that his name be removed. Bob could theoretically contact the editors and claim Alice published against his wishes - but how would Bob make that argument? It's a perfectly appropriate journal, and the paper was not submitted anywhere else. And Bob has no evidence. And Alice can always rebutt such a claim by arguing it was always clear they were going to submit to the JoA anyway. Win.