Can a co-author prevent me from submitting our joint paper to any journal except the one he prefers?

Question

I‘ve been told (by a PI who is a co-author of the paper) that I cannot submit a jointly authored paper to any journal in my field except Frontiers because anything else is “politically incorrect” or “too slow”.

We have a new method developed with a colleague in a different (more quantitative) field, the results are new, answer an open question and are replicated in two languages.

I found out this week that the PI saying we cannot submit to a regular journal has just had another paper accepted on part of the same topic at a good journal in our field. The findings we have in this paper go against the findings of the paper he wrote five years ago with that group (and I’m guessing maybe against this paper then too, but I have not read this paper).

Is there anything I can do?

At the moment, I have suggested PLOS One as a better alternative to Frontiers, but honestly this is just such a waste - the results are really cool, it took us a year and travelling to get them, and they come from a really good interdisciplinary collaboration. I’m really angry and upset about this - I’m in the third year of a postdoc with no publications, and we finished this data collection over two years ago. Do I have to accept the decision of the PI even though I am first-author and the decision has explicitly not been made on the content, quality or potential readership of our paper?

Note: The paper isn’t a particularly confrontational paper: it just presents previous conflicting results and then shows how the new method is more sensitive and so validates most previous experimental results whilst showing that the theoretical implications people were drawing from them. I‘m sure it’s solid, and I know the co-authors think so too - we had checks worked into the method, replicated it in two languages and again in one of the languages. This type of paper is usually published in a good discipline-specific journal (and it is very rare to have data like this in our field). Both professors are retiring - one already is and wants to use the data in a course he’s teaching - the other retires soon, and is very politically engaged (I have been told to turn down invited talks because they would have involved plane travel). The question is whether as first-author I have any say in where the paper goes.

Answer 1

Jointly authored papers require permission from all authors. If he is a co-author and you can't convince him, then you are pretty much stuck. Editors will expect it.

And fighting with your PI is probably not the wisest career move.

It is a different story if the PI isn't one of the authors, but that only applies to the first point above, not the second. The "we" in your question wasn't completely clear about who is included.

It may not be too strong to say that a good letter of recommendation from your PI is one of the most valuable things you get out of a post doc. It lets you move on and get away from improper behavior. Winning a battle, but losing a war is sub-optimal.

Answer 2

I'd suggest you analyze your options in a more strategic way rather than going heads-on against the PI:

• First, is there a way to clarify things with the PI, maybe reach some kind of compromise? Ask them to clarify exactly what they mean by "politically incorrect" or "too slow". They might actually have reasonable conditions, in which case you could try to find a good journal which suits both of you.
• If this doesn't work, you need to identify exactly the obstacle. Normally the PI should tell you, but apparently this might involve this other paper that they published. If so, is there a way to smooth things up? Maybe by re-writing some parts of your paper in some kind of diplomatic way, like acknowledging previous findings and presenting the present work as a contribution which goes beyond them, as opposed to bluntly confronting them. Scientific progress often involves healthy debate of ideas, it shouldn't involve conflict of egos.
• You mentioned another colleague and also "a good interdisciplinary collaboration", so it seems that the work involves multiple co-authors right? Where do these co-authors stand on the issue? Could they be convinced to support your cause? Would some of them be in a better position than you to convince the PI, or at least to put a bit of pressure on them? If the work is really good, I would expect the other colleagues to also be eager to publish it in a good journal. And if your PI is blocking the paper for selfish reasons, their position is going to be weak in front of the other colleagues.

Answer 3

Here the resolution/answer:

I spoke to the second PI/co-author alone. He agreed that he thought the data were excellent, and suggested he speak to the other co-author alone, recommending I choose which journal to submit to. This was definitely the right move.

Unfortunately, it turned out that there was a different motive: the first PI wanted to switch to a different project and so needed to show that he had one publication out from our project. He gave comments on the paper to change straight away although on holiday, and I was told that he would not accept any discipline-specific journal because they would not be out in time for his application.

I replied again to the second PI saying this was not right, and he apologised for the situation again and said the first PI would not change his mind so I would have to choose whether to make a formal complaint or accept the compromise of journal (not Frontiers but not a discipline-specific journal). I’ve accepted the compromise of journal.

Essentially: I spoke to the second PI alone, he agreed I could decide where to submit and agreed with what I had suggested, he spoke to the first PI, the first PI changed his position from Frontiers but wouldn’t accept a discipline-specific journal. We are proceeding with this. The next step would have been to make a formal complaint.