r/academia • u/Every_Pizza_1580 • 22h ago
Publishing A year after leaving academia, authorship uncertainty is still stressing me out
I moved to industry about a year ago, but I still occasionally visit my former lab and help with projects I worked on during my postdoc.
For one project, I spent two years preparing data, training models, developing the original pipeline, conducting statistical analyses, and preparing the manuscript and figures. I was the first author on the previous submission.
The team is now preparing a new submission, and I’m being removed from author list.
I’ve experienced a similar authorship issue in this lab and previous lab, I’ve followed up to confirm that I’ll remain first author and asked to review the manuscript before submission.
What frustrates me is feeling that, even after leaving academia, I still have to stay vigilant to make sure years of work are properly credited.
I’m happy to help bring the research to publication, but having to defend my contributions is exhausting.
Experiences like this make it hard not to become deeply cynical about academia. I left a year ago, yet this part of it still follows me.
Has anyone dealt with authorship disputes after moving to other institute/industry? If discussions with the PIs failed, what actually helped?