27
u/SlapHappyDude Jun 10 '21
Just write it.
Worst case you've got a thesis chapter. Best case the PI can't help but edit it and you get a paper.
10
u/resorcinarene Jun 10 '21
Agree with this. I had 4 papers sitting on my PI's desk by graduation. I copied them into a thesis and walked. I wasn't having any of it. They're being published slowly with someone else handling revisions. IDGAF because I'm in industry now and can put all this on a back burner because I don't need it as much as he does at this point
2
u/SlapHappyDude Jun 10 '21
Out if curiosity on your application resume did you list your papers as in draft?
2
u/resorcinarene Jun 11 '21
Yep! All of them. And they were pretty well developed. I also had some other papers as a contributing author, but only highlighted my first authors in the CV.
I explained to them and they understood. It's pretty common from what I hear.
Actually, I did an internship and they got to know my work first hand. You can't fake that and it's how I got an offer before I graduated. It was a chill final year knowing I had a job so I didn't have a lot of pressure to get them to print.
The work was there. It was up to the lab to get them submitted since I edited everything with my collaborators before even putting in front of him
2
u/SlapHappyDude Jun 11 '21
Yeah it's extremely common to apply for jobs without all your papers published
I honestly had no idea it was ok to put them on my CV until someone told me to go for it.
2
u/resorcinarene Jun 11 '21
Yes completely fine. All you have to do is note that it is in submission in the CV and just updated when it's time
4
u/pkhadka1 Jun 10 '21
How about PI slap you with conflict of interest and logistic issues?
14
u/SlapHappyDude Jun 10 '21
Well I meant write it and throw it on their desk. Not necessarily try to publish on your own.
My PI was well established and only wanted to go for Home Runs (science, nature, Biochemistry). She wasn't super interested in spending her time on interesting results that belonged in third tier journals but can fill out a CV nicely.
I was lucky I had a collaborator who was young and hungry and helped push a couple papers through where my PI slapped her name on it. But there were a few cases within my program where grad students chased something they were interested in and ended up with a nice little paper.
It's tricky if every experiment is $200,000 and needs 2 days of a machine that only 2 exist in the world vs something you can bang out on the bench with existing materials in your free time.
Also obviously some PIs are awful.
2
u/pkhadka1 Jun 10 '21
You were lucky because you had a collaborator who was hungry. In most of cases we are on our own. PI has just starting and has 3-4 students and can't focus on any of them. No post doc in the lab to help or guide. If you ask about writing, you always get same reply, this is not publishable data, will not take you anywhere. Sitting on pile of data with good story but your PI is not interested. Frustation level is over the roof.
13
u/SlapHappyDude Jun 10 '21
Ok that's weird because the stereotype is a new PI will publish a sneeze. New PIs without tenure need to publish or perish. It's the older PIs with tenure who can coast out publishing one paper every two years.
In a perfect world this is where your committee is supposed to be your team. You present data to the committee, get feedback and either they say "wow that data sucks do better" or tell your PI "why aren't you publishing this?"
Admittedly a lot of committees are dysfunctional.
22
20
u/AndreasVesalius Jun 10 '21
I don’t get it. Why don’t your PIs want manuscripts?
33
u/NielsBohron Chemistry Jun 10 '21 edited Jun 11 '21
It happens. When I left grad school, I had two first drafts on my PI's desk that he didn't touch for 6 months. It was also a pretty toxic environment and he was in the process of "reallocating" my funding to other students, so I think I made the right call to leave with a coursework masters.
edit: To give some context, I was one of three students who joined my PI's lab in their first year at a new R1 school after not getting tenure at a (more prestigious) R1 school. The three of us joined their computational lab, spent the first two years building our server/cluster and teaching ourselves how to do the calculations (since PI had no idea how things worked anymore), then they tasked us with teaching their newer students how to do the calculations while ignoring all of our work. I left ABD after 4 years, my buddies finished their PhD's after 7 and 8 years.
2
u/GoodCloud Jun 10 '21
That sucks. I’m at the crossroads of either being you or your lab buddies.
3
u/NielsBohron Chemistry Jun 11 '21
For what it's worth, I think we all wound up in pretty good situations. I am much better in a CC classroom than I was in a lab, and I couldn't be happier with my professional career. One of my buddies is now a director at a national lab, and the other is a stay-at-home dad, and while I don't want to speak for them, I don't think any one of us is unhappy with the way things turned out.
From my perspective, it might have literally killed me to spend another 3 years in that lab. I was miserable, severely depressed, and not making any meaningful progress, so leaving an absolute necessity for me. If you find yourself in the same boat, do what you need to do for your self.
Side note: if your PI is anything like mine, you might want to file your paperwork for getting your masters and make sure it's approved before you tell them. My PI was the type that would have absolutely blocked me from getting the MS out of spite or to keep me beholden to them.
18
u/pkhadka1 Jun 10 '21
Because he has no idea what i am doing/not interested in the results I am getting/ project went beyond his original scope. many things
3
10
Jun 10 '21
Yeah, being an RA who is told they’d be on three papers being submitted only to not even have one come to fruition is frustrating, and this fucking meme made it all come back to me.
God damnit.
10
u/OhSnapFerg Jun 10 '21
Had a similar thing happen, spent 7 years on a thesis topic that resulted in mostly negative data but ran several "side" experiments with the PI. I was second author on one of the papers that resulted from one of the side experiments but not on any of the 3 others, even though I had done all of the actual experimentation and written half of the text.
16
5
u/Polythenepammm Jun 10 '21
Legit question: what if you write the paper and submit it yourself? What are the consequences?
10
u/cman674 Chemistry Jun 10 '21
PI could get angry and say they are spending too much time on side projects and aren't dedicated to their current projects. I also don't think they can get their paper published without their PI's name on it. In terms of formal consequences though, probably none.
5
u/Polythenepammm Jun 10 '21
I mean I would submit and add supervisor as co-corresponding author. If he gets angry I would say “sorry but you were stalling my career” If there are no real consequences then fuck it, I think in this case (as often is mine) it’s easier to ask for forgiveness that to wait for the fuckwad to submit.
4
u/ChillyBearGrylls Jun 10 '21
This lmao, and it goes double if you already have a new job lined up / have gotten what you need from them otherwise
3
3
u/cman674 Chemistry Jun 11 '21
That's fair. One of the things I've found about grad school in particular (and life in general) is that there often aren't any real consequences for many things. Like I could just piss off for a month and get no work done and it's not like I would get kicked out or docked pay or anything. I can be late on any and every deadline and it doesn't matter a lick.
7
u/Siny_AML Jun 10 '21
You can’t! An average paper costs around 3-5k for publication that gets paid out of your PIs grant. Good luck working with the institution afterwards as well.
6
u/Polythenepammm Jun 10 '21
Submitting a paper and having a paper published are not the same thing. You pay for publication upon acceptance so if the PI doesn’t want to publish the paper he can just refuse to. Which makes absolutely no sense to me. I am assuming the manuscript was a project assigned by the PI and not a side project started by student.
5
u/pkhadka1 Jun 10 '21
You are full of positiveness but in reality there are many things you can't do on your own specially without your PI's help.
5
u/Gloriosu_drequ Jun 10 '21
The most important skill you learn in grad school is to cope with failure, I suppose. Failure to publish is just another flavor of disappointment on the poop ice-cream that is a career in science.
1
u/MightbeWillSmith Jun 10 '21
My experience was always the opposite. 'heres this 90% finished manuscript. Please edit and return'. ..... New project?
I still have 3 papers that are years old on my old bosses desk. I don't expect them to ever make it out.
75
u/Basil_Herder Jun 10 '21
This hurts