r/AskAcademia • u/ViolinistBusiness674 • 12h ago
Interpersonal Issues Should I collaborate with this professor?
I’m a PhD student (22F) at the beginning of my phd. In my lab, there’s a professor who works on a topic very close to mine, closer than my supervisor’s. I’m hesitant to collaborate seriously with him. On the one hand, he’s very competent, and the few times we’ve worked together, it was helpful. On the other hand, some of his behaviors bother me: as we were leaving a work drinks event, he asked to be co-author on a paper he didn’t work on, he criticized my supervisor, and he gives me lingering looks when we pass each other, which I find hard to interpret and which make me uncomfortable.
He’s told me several times that he’d like to work with me. I feel like I should keep my distance, but this collaboration could be useful and open doors for me after my PhD. I’m not sure whether I should trust my gut on this one.
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u/Red_Pen_Writer 10h ago
As a woman, I've been in, seen, or heard this story, or some version of it, so many times. There are times where senior faculty genuinely want to be helpful for junior scholars. Sometimes they do that by like leveraging name recognition or clout as a short cut. But someone willing to put their name on a project they didn't even work on is all the evidence you need that this might not the best person to work with. Of course, Id leave the door open, especially if your field is small and chances are you'll be working around this person long after your PhD. Just tell him you're too busy right now.
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u/etzpcm 11h ago
Quite apart from the dubious personal issues, as a PhD student you should be fully focused on your PhD project with your PhD supervisor.
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u/ViolinistBusiness674 11h ago
So you mean that collaborations during a PhD aren’t a good thing?
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u/cat-head Linguistics | Europe 11h ago
It varies a lot by field. In my field it's not rare for students to write 1 or 2 papers with someone different from their supervisor. What is weird is for senior faculty to be consistently asking this one phd student for collaborations. It is usually the other way around because we usually don't have enough time for all the crap we have to do.
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u/ViolinistBusiness674 11h ago
I think he’s struggling to publish and he’s trying to build his research team
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u/Obvious_Animal_8362 6h ago
Then expect that his goal will be to take advantage of you, using you to advance his agenda and career — and likely in ways that may be to your detriment and which may imperil ypur working relationship with your supervisor. My take is that you are at risk here. There are so many red flags.
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u/Toasty_coco 11h ago
Collaboration can be good. It can also be bad
However, you should always involve your supervisor.
He asks you to collaborate: “please talk to my supervisor”
He asks to be co-author: “please talk to my supervisor”
He wants to discuss details with you: “let’s arrange a 3-way meeting with my supervisor”
He surprises you and wants a one on one meeting: “I cannot discuss this without my supervisor”
Phd students should not normally be making these decisions about collaborations or authorship
If you do work with him make sure your supervisor is in the middle.
Also talk with your supervisor and tell him what has happened so far. If I was your supervisor I would be very annoyed that he tried to collaborate and gain authorship without talking to me.
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u/Cold_Shine5167 11h ago
I have actually heard advice to not coauthor with senior faculty during your PhD. You run the risk of people assuming the big name did all the work. (Other PhD students or new TT professors are good to coauthor with, though!)
I don't really know how true that is, but it's something you could tell him if he keeps being pushy about coauthoring with you and you want to turn him down politely.
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u/DubsToastedBread 11h ago
Maybe it’s field dependent, but that’s terrible advice IMO. Productivity, quality of work, and quality of training are things people will consider when evaluating CVs. Pubs with big or senior names often can be higher impact (due to more funding and longer career history) and also signal to others you’ve been trained by a successful scientist. Big/senior names often have big networks, and connections open opportunities. Of course, you want to demonstrate you know the work as well as anyone and were actively involved. I also say this as someone who came from a smaller lab for grad school and was my PIs first PhD student, so it’s not that I have a preference for more senior or successful people.
If coauthoring with senior faculty was viewed poorly, people from successful labs would rarely go on to be successful.
At the end of the day, I don’t think a PhD student should choose what faculty they work with based on rank, status, or name. They should collaborate with people who match their research interests, they can learn from, and that aid their productivity and growth.
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u/Cold_Shine5167 10h ago
Yeah, I definitely see what you mean. I don't really know what to make of that advice, other than 1. somebody much more successful than I am told it to me once, and 2. it might be useful strategically for OP in this case.
But I really don't know! I'm not exactly out here fending off a long line of full professors who want to write papers with me, so I haven't been in a situation to use it or not. I can't imagine that, given the opportunity to coauthor with a Nobel laureate, it would be a good idea for any PhD student to turn it down, right? On the other hand, I've definitely been on hiring committees and seen somebody with what I thought was an impressive publication list get criticized by the rest of the committee, because every paper was coauthored with big names. Hard to say those candidates would have been better off without those pubs at all, though.
I guess a weaker and more acceptable form of this advice would be "anticipate that your contributions to pubs with a famous coauthor will be discounted, and make sure you do some single-author work and work coauthored with peers too"
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u/SnooGuavas9782 11h ago
Should trust your gut. Also what does your PhD supervisor think of him?
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u/ViolinistBusiness674 11h ago
He’s the type to play it safe politically and avoid getting on anyone’s bad side, so it’s hard to know what he really thinks
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u/SaintScholastica Premodern Lit 6h ago
Do you have other trusted people in your department or field you can ask about him? Someone not male, FI, if you're worried he's a creeper?
If you can ask someone who doesn't directly work with him, that can be beneficial, because they have less reason to be worried about politics.
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u/SnooGuavas9782 11h ago
Did you ask him?
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u/ViolinistBusiness674 10h ago
I did talk to him about the collab. He was on board until things got a bit too much (we even had a few meetings with the three of us). But I haven’t told him that the professor makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t really feel comfortable bringing it up. It probably wouldn’t change much anyway, since my supervisor has his own reasons for wanting to stay on good terms with this guy.
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u/SaintScholastica Premodern Lit 6h ago
It's sounding like you can't trust your chair with this specific conversation due to the local politics of it. This is where having other mentors (esp. those who don't work or report directly to the professor in question) can be extremely useful.
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u/SaintScholastica Premodern Lit 6h ago
I learned pretty quickly I couldn't trust my chair about questions about "is person X a creep" or who might harass me— not because he was an a-hole, but because he was 1) often (perhaps intentionally) clueless about those things and 2) way too tied into the "prestigious old guys" network to risk pissing any of them off. Having female mentors in my field and outside my institution were really valuable for getting the occasional gut-check about who was safe and who was legitimately a creep.
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u/soggiestburrito 11h ago
as a woman, i’ve been in this position and i have kept true to my gut. it isn’t worth it i would say.
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u/Harmless_Poison_Ivy 11h ago
He sounds like a creep. Your supervisor could be more insightful with their perspective actually. Things don’t have to match one to one.
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u/TildeAyalaPlank 5h ago
Short answer: NO!!!!!
Longer answer: Totally, absolutely NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
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u/Grouchy-Profit7661 10h ago
What field are you in? Why is your topic not aligned with your advisor's? Generally, in my field, your advisor is the one who determines your topic with guidance from your committee.
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u/ViolinistBusiness674 10h ago
We met before I started my PhD and decided to prioritize the working relationship over everything else
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u/rscortex 8h ago
I copped downvotes in another thread for questioning sexism claims but I would say this is definitely suspicious and you are right to be concerned. Even if he's innocent he should be more careful with his behaviour, as a senior scientist. Everyone is saying trust your gut but I think this is clearer than that. He's teetering on official complaint territory.
Maybe if you discuss the collaboration request with your supervisor, and say you don't want it, they will probably have a view of whether it's innocent, sabotaging or sexual, although they likely won't reveal that.
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u/SaintScholastica Premodern Lit 6h ago
This may be an unpopular take (partly based on being in a field recently known for its sexist jerks), but life is far too short (and academia too long) to put up with people who creep you out. Whenever you can, find other good people, do good work together, and lift each other up. It's far more useful for all than giving crap people yet another publication while they make you miserable.
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u/observer2025 3h ago
"he asked to be co-author on a paper he didn’t work on, he criticized my supervisor" -- stay away, plenty of red flags, simple.
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u/NerdSlamPo 11h ago
Hard to say if you are reading too much into his comments/actions or not. He could genuinely think you’d be a good fit for a project and just have a staring thing (dudes in academia space out in awkward ways in my experience). That said, I would never want a PhD student collaborator to be uncomfortable. I would just flag to your PI/advisor that he approached you about possibly working together but that you would rather focus on your own research. Then say you talked with your supervisor about possible collaboration to the guy if the guy asks again and that your advisor said they wanted you to focus on other projects.
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u/Antifa-Hecate 9h ago
woman: this man is making me feel uncomfortable
other men: he’s just awkward3
u/NerdSlamPo 7h ago
You know that’s a bad faith take on what I said. There is not a thing in my post that defended a faculty member making predatory moves towards a student or downplayed the situation. But you do you.
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u/Antifa-Hecate 7h ago
no, you are gaslighting op in your first sentence by alluding that they are perhaps reading too much into it. but “you do you.”
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u/RoastedRhino 3h ago
It’s rarely worth working with shitty people.
I have worked with a lot of collaborators and I NEVER thought: he was an asshole but I happy we worked together.
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u/cdougherty 12h ago
Always, always, always trust your gut