Hi-
I am new here, but been reading the forums for quite a while. I have tried to search for this topic and perhaps missed because of a clunky search string - apologies if this has been discussed before.
I am in a quandary - as an RA, I have been independently working on getting data, that is not explicitly part of my dissertation, but I am inclined to weave it in, because of all the hard work that has gone into it. Additionally, I would like to put in other work (still to be done) to make a better story and get a publication out later in the year. The wackadoodle postdoc has been goofing off and now that an abstract is due for a conference is pressuring me to hand over my data so that hu can add it to their piddly dataset to beef it up and make it more credible. Hu is offering a byline on the abstract, but my dataset is larger and more diverse, so I am not agreeable to a "second author". In fact, don't even want a first author for this abstract or conference - I would prefer to use this dataset for another conference and/or publication. I have not yet spoken to head honcho, just wondering how to frame it without being too confrontational. Or should I be? Or as an RA, is my dataset not mine to decide what/where it should be presented? I am in the STEM field.
If someone else paid for you to collect the data, it is theirs, not yours. That being said, unless the postdoc has a lot of pull with your advisor and gets to them before you do, you could couch this as "Wacky wants this data for his presentation, but I really think it would have more impact if I published it separately in XYZ journal. What do you think?" You probably have to go along with what he says if he paid for you to collect the data though. Whatever you do, don't tell the postdoc that you plan on talking to your boss about it before you do so - you want to present the first version of they story.
If the postdoc submits it in an abstract, does that not mean you can't write something with him as a co-author later?
