Can a PhD supervisor take unpublished ideas from a student's dissertation?

Question

Rephrased question: Can a PhD supervisor take unpublished ideas from a student's dissertation and work on them hence denying the student the opportunity to work on her ideas herself?

I completed a PhD and took on a short postdoc immediately afterwards with the same supervisor. The idea was to be doing something while I apply for bursaries or funds to continue research on the ideas I proposed in my thesis. Throughout my PhD I had minimal supervision and minimal input of any sort from him. In fact, in 5 years, he never proposed or even simply put me on track to an idea or a solution. I know for a fact that my supervisor barely read a fourth of my dissertation; however, I had spoken to him about my ideas several times and they are mentioned in my dissertation as my own. I know he is aware of that because I sent him the acknowledgement part by email before putting it in my thesis.

Now he decided to take my ideas for himself and got a new student to work on them with the contacts I developed myself because he was incapable of doing that himself. I supervised the new student who is working on my ideas for a particular application and got him going etc and I will be on the eventual paper. However, my supervisor has now decided to apply my idea to another application which I proposed myself in my thesis as well and given that I am leaving soon, I’ve been told that I will not be on that paper because I haven’t contributed directly. Beside the fact that this is still an application of my idea and one that I suggested myself in my thesis, the supervision I’ve given to the student is perfectly applicable to this idea as well because they are related.

Can my supervisor do this even though he knows I want to work on them myself? Can I stop him from doing this? Frankly, I’m gutted and totally demoralised. There is no way for me to compete with him and get a paper out before him.

Answer 1

A PhD dissertation is published work, not a private document. It is publicly available to anyone with a library access (via interlibrary loan or via an appropriate dissertation vendor).

Of course, if anyone (including your former PhD supervisor) uses results from the dissertation, they must include an appropriate citation. That way you get a credit for your contribution.

If your contribution is considered valuable by the standards of your field, you can write it up and publish it in a refereed journal for better visibility (compared to the dissertation). You can also upload your thesis on an institutional repository or arXiv.

My advice: do not waste time arguing about ownership of ideas. It will not help your career. You had one idea that was good enough to interest people; make more!

Answer 2

Your question has two layers in it, and I feel that separating these would be of value:

On the ethical layer, ownership of ideas plays a neglible role in academia: It's commonly said that ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard lifting is in the execution of an idea, and this is also what eventually leads to the most significant kind of academic credit, authorship. So, from this perspective, your supervisor did nothing wrong, as no other person would have done by executing an idea found in some other person's thesis.

On the interpersonal layer, your supervisor is behaving unfairly by consuming your resources (ideas, but even more so skills, time, contacts) while not offering you to join the resulting projects, even though you are interested in them. Unfair treatment feels bad, and you have good reason to avoid your supervisor in the future for that. Other than that, I'm afraid there's not much you can do here.

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Edit: In the second part of my answer, I assume that you have unambiguously and clearly expressed your interest in being involved in the work that will lead to the follow-up paper, even though you will leave the group soon. If this is not the case, this is the thing you should do immediately.

Answer 3

I would explicitly discuss it with him and say that given its your idea and you know the details better than anyone, you want to be involved in the project and still have a leading role. You are leaving so you have nothing to lose by being assertive in a discussion like this. You can say they would lose valuable support and expertise that would help accomplish this whole cluster of projects that just spawned from your PhD. He probably will still come up with an elaborate excuse so that even if you are involved you wont be taking a central role. For the future I suggest keeping your ideas for yourself and share only things with colleagues, supervisors and community overall when they take a more "material" form... By that point then authorship and ownership should be less fuzzy...

Answer 4

Your Ph.D. advisor should NOT be competing with you. Even if his actions don't rise to the level of plagiarism, he is likely violating the Faculty Code of Conduct at his university. You should report him to your university's RIO. It's an RIO's job to look into these kinds of matters, and he or she will NOT be annoyed at you for wasting their time.

Answer 5

Preamble

Since a country wasn't specified, I'll throw in a case against such re-use. Plagiarism isn't necessarily the case if the work was properly cited, used only in relevant parts and not re-written verbatim in large chunks.

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Background

Depending on the intellectual property policy of the university itself, either the student, or the prof, or the university itself, owns the rights to any profit or IP generated through the course of one's studies. Most universities demand that all IP generated in a degree program by a student is owned by the university, regardless of whether or not the university provided any funding or real help.

Two Canadian universities that do not do this (that I know of) are the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and Simon Fraser University in BC. In the case of those two universities, it is very different: the student owns 100% of the rights to his/her research, and around the time of thesis defense, may:

• Make the defense private to only people relevant to the defense.
• Make all attendees sign legally binding waivers (i.e. non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs) that puts them on the hook for "perceived financial loss" if they disclose the contents of the thesis early.
• Decline requests from students, "trouble makers", etc, that want to attend and will sign the NDAs, but likely wouldn't be able to pay for the damages incurred by disclosing the details of the thesis.
• Request that publication of the entire thesis, with the exception of the thesis title (don't make it too descriptive), is delayed for one year.
  • Around 8 months after the (successful) thesis defense, the student may make a request for a second 1 year delay of publication, so that (provisional, draft, or full) patent applications can proceed.

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Summary

If you have the right to delay publication due to you being the sole owner of your research, then yes: you can make your prof hold off on the work for 1-2 years. If you have the right to do so, this will likely sour your relationship with your prof, and being able to use him/her as a reference.

It's quite common for profs (at least in engineering) to have a piece of work that a PhD student did become the basis of the work for a fresh graduate student. Since there's now so much information on the subject, it provides a springboard for the next student to jump into academia.

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My 2¢

• If you intend to patent the work and make money off of it, see a lawyer. Since you likely did not take IP/legal precautions in advance, this likely won't be a fruitful endeavor.
• If you're worried you'll be "muscled out" by your prof writing another paper on the subject, get cracking, and churn out more research of your own.
• If you're feeling slighted by another student taking over your work, that's the norm in that industry, just like in non-academic settings when a new employee is brought in to replace someone who retired.
• If you're upset on general principle that you aren't in control of the research anymore: that's just life, and the advancement of human intellectual progress. Don't resent it: we all benefit by the advancement of this body of knowledge. If that still bothers you, redouble your efforts to be an expert in your specialized area of expertise.

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Edit

Here's an excerpt from SFU's IP policy guidelines:

The result of research is the generation of new knowledge. The "ownership" of that new knowledge, especially when it is knowledge with commercial implications and/or results in scholarly publications, is a sensitive issue. The question of ownership in the context of the student-supervisor relationship is often complicated by the close collaboration between supervisor(s) and student during the course of the research. It is further complicated by the fact that the University and possibly an outside agency provide resources (e.g. space, library, equipment, supplies) in support of the research.

At Simon Fraser University, unlike many other universities, the person (student, staff or faculty member) who generates patentable new knowledge is the owner of that knowledge; the University makes no claim on it, unless the University is asked to help with the patenting of the idea [see Policy R30.02]. The main federal and provincial agencies which support university research through research grants (NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR and SCBC) also make no claims on the results. On the other hand, copyrightable new knowledge (e.g. books and software) is usually owned jointly by the author and the University; consult Policy R30.01.

Research contracts with government agencies or private companies often stipulate that the rights to commercial exploitation of a discovery belong in full or in part to the sponsoring agency. Because it is University policy that the rights to a patentable discovery belong to the discoverer(s), the University will approve contracts containing such stipulations, as long as they do not restrict the ultimate publication of the results (see Graduate General Regulation 1.11.3).

And here's the policy for the University of Waterloo, outright noting that research and all possible IP derived from it, is the property of the owner/inventor(s). It's no wonder these universities churn out so many startups and inventors: the student has a reason to care about the commercial viability of the research due to having an exclusive view to a profit from furthering the research.

University of Waterloo has long been known for researchers who are entrepreneurial thinkers and industry partners.

At the core of entrepreneurship is Intellectual Property (IP) Rights Policy #73, also called "creator-owned," which grants ownership to the inventor. It's the engine for driving commercialization success of research-based innovations and may be the most entrepreneurial oriented IP policy in North America.

Waterloo embraces the philosophy that providing incentive through IP ownership is the best motivator to ensure that commercialization of research provides broad societal and economic benefit. The policy is a feature in attracting entrepreneurial oriented faculty and graduate students who want to engage in commercial enterprise (i.e., through contract research and licensing opportunities with industry or independently with their own research outcomes).

The policy and the university's entrepreneurial culture has positioned Waterloo as a national leader in the transfer of ideas and technology to the private sector.

Answer 6

If he can use the material you developed while working there depends on your local laws. Are the rights owned by the individual teacher/researcher or the university or the boss of the research group or maybe someone else entirely?

However, there is nothing stopping anyone from doing their own work based on anyone elses ideas. Often it is not the idea but how to put it into action and make it work that is interesting.

It is not so seldom that an idea is presented in one paper, does not get much attention and then brought up again later by someone else who gets much more attention because of a better explained application or implementation of the idea.

Answer 7

I am not sure what the laws are in other countries, but in the United States, almost every university has a research integrity officer, whose job it is to look into these kinds of matters.

For example, here is a page about research misconduct at UCLA: http://ora.research.ucla.edu/RPC/Pages/ResearchMisconduct.aspx If you click on their Policy 993: Responding to Allegations of Research Misconduct, you can then click on "Look up contact person" to find that UCLA's Research Integrity Officer is Ann Pollack. Almost every university has such a policy and a person whose job it is to investigate.

You should write up your allegations of plagiarism clearly and include any supporting documents. If you are at a public university in the United States, you can frequently use the Freedom of Information Act (or its state equivalent) to request official copies of emails, for example.

Answer 8

Just for example, there is a detailed explanation in Ownership of Intellectual Property for Purdue University.

Under Purdue policy, the University shall own all domestic and foreign rights in and to any and all inventions made or developed by all faculty, staff, students, and visiting scholars in the course of employment by the University, or through the use of University resources.

University resources mean any support administered by or through Purdue University, including but not limited to University funds, facilities, equipment or personnel, and funds, facilities, equipment or personnel provided by governmental, commercial, industrial, or other public or private organizations which are administered or controlled by the University

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If a graduate student/post doc believes that they have participated in creating intellectual property that may be owned by Purdue University, they should first bring the intellectual property to the attention of their major professor or supervisor, or the head of their department. Then, the student/postdoc, in consultation with their advisor, supervisor, or head, should disclose the new intellectual property to the Purdue Research Foundation’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC). OTC has been assigned responsibility for evaluation, protection, and management of intellectual property owned by Purdue University.

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Under University policy, net proceeds derived from licensing University intellectual property will be distributed one-third to the inventors/creators and two thirds to the University. One half of the University share will be returned to the inventors’/creators’ departments.

Basically, if there is no patent corresponding to what your idea is, there is no way you can prevent others from using the idea. Furthermore, the University insists that they own a majority share of any arising patent.

Answer 9

I really don't think that is fair. A student in your class worked effectively and produced an outstanding piece of work that has not been published before. For you to take credit from your students work shows that you aren't teaching to help your student but instead teaching to improve yourself. Regardless of what is legal, you should not be allowed to teach if you are teaching to benefit yourself and not those who are there to learn from you.

Answer 10

You are asking: "Can a PhD supervisor take unpublished ideas from a student's dissertation?" What do you mean by "take"? My answer is: If somebody "takes" your idea and says: "this idea belongs to such and such person", he/she can take it and do anything with it. But if somebody attributes this idea to him/herself, this is plagiarism.

My definition of plagiarism is: "Plagiarism is a falsification of the fact of authorship." Unfortunately, my definition of plagiarism has not been adopted. In fact, it is legally correct.

Now, there is also another problem here. One cannot simply "take" unpublished idea. If it's unpublished, you can speak about it only with the note "personal communication from ....", i. e. the author gave you permission to publish it. If the idea was published, you must give valid reference, to journal, published dissertation, etc.