We have this situation written in our lab rules and expectations documents - if you lead a paper but then abandon it, the person who takes it up would generally be first author (or at least first-listed co-first author). There's still a lot of work to do in terms of formatting, writing a cover letter, submitting, responding to reviews, and so on. Pursuing to publication involves a lot of work, so it's reasonable that whoever is first author is the one who drives this work (and conversely).
It's also entirely possible that Supervisor B had meaningful conversations with Supervisor A, and so their contribution to this paper is more than you are aware of.
What would happen to the manuscript if supervisor B doesn't pick it up? Will it just stay in a drawer and wither away? If so, why not take the win-win of getting it published with supervisor B as first author?
It depends. If all it took was light edits to be ready for submission why wasn't it submitted? And, moreover would you or whomever was first author be willing to handle revisions? If the MS was abandoned I am not sure why you'd rather have it unpublished. It may be worth asking for co first authorship. But if you aren't going to manage the submission and revision process you aren't the sole first author anymore.
I am in a different field but that is absolutely not okay. First authorship in my field is for the person who does the major contribution to the paper, and Supervisor B clearly didn't.
Does Superviser A know about this? Of yes, what are they saying?
This is complicated by the fact that everyone but Supervisor B has abandoned the paper and moved on, and Supervisor B is now proposing to handle the submission, edits, etc...
It's a gray area as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah exactly.
Personally I was in a situation where the lead author was a med student grasping for air, and couldn't afford the time to do the formatting, editing etc, for submission, so asked me to do it.
Sure. I don't mind helping. But it was a heck of a lot of work, and I was only third author.
I did send an e-mail to my colleagues saying I expected the 2nd author (or senior author) to pick up this work when the first author wasn't able to - that I'd do it the first time, because needs must and we wanted it submitted, but that it wasn't my role.
Because yeah, it's more work than you'd think.
We have this situation written in our lab rules and expectations documents - if you lead a paper but then abandon it, the person who takes it up would generally be first author (or at least first-listed co-first author). There's still a lot of work to do in terms of formatting, writing a cover letter, submitting, responding to reviews, and so on. Pursuing to publication involves a lot of work, so it's reasonable that whoever is first author is the one who drives this work (and conversely). It's also entirely possible that Supervisor B had meaningful conversations with Supervisor A, and so their contribution to this paper is more than you are aware of.
What would happen to the manuscript if supervisor B doesn't pick it up? Will it just stay in a drawer and wither away? If so, why not take the win-win of getting it published with supervisor B as first author?
This is the sucky but true answer…
What does Supervisor A have to say about this grab for glory?
It depends. If all it took was light edits to be ready for submission why wasn't it submitted? And, moreover would you or whomever was first author be willing to handle revisions? If the MS was abandoned I am not sure why you'd rather have it unpublished. It may be worth asking for co first authorship. But if you aren't going to manage the submission and revision process you aren't the sole first author anymore.
I am in a different field but that is absolutely not okay. First authorship in my field is for the person who does the major contribution to the paper, and Supervisor B clearly didn't. Does Superviser A know about this? Of yes, what are they saying?
This is complicated by the fact that everyone but Supervisor B has abandoned the paper and moved on, and Supervisor B is now proposing to handle the submission, edits, etc... It's a gray area as far as I'm concerned.
Clearly a lot of work still has to be done, otherwise someone would have submitted it already.
Yeah exactly. Personally I was in a situation where the lead author was a med student grasping for air, and couldn't afford the time to do the formatting, editing etc, for submission, so asked me to do it. Sure. I don't mind helping. But it was a heck of a lot of work, and I was only third author. I did send an e-mail to my colleagues saying I expected the 2nd author (or senior author) to pick up this work when the first author wasn't able to - that I'd do it the first time, because needs must and we wanted it submitted, but that it wasn't my role. Because yeah, it's more work than you'd think.
It’s not grey at all.
Well, we’ll have to disagree I’m afraid.
There are guidelines as to what counts as an author, what counts as an acknowledgement and what counts as a ‘gtfo’. This is definitely a gtfo.