Collaborator published paper on ArXiv without my name In the last four months, I have been working on a project with a friend. After the completion of writing part of paper, I started searching for conferences and found that my friend had already submitted a previous/incomplete version of the paper on ArXiv.

Now my friend claims ownership of the idea and copyright  as it is now already  published in a pre-print. At present we both have the completed paper, codes and results. In reality, I did the most of the analysis in the project although the idea came out of discussion between us.

My friend wants to publish it on their own without giving me any credit. I even agreed  that they can be the first author, and I will be second, but they keep on insisting that they will not include me.

Even if I submit this in a conference, I am concerned that my submission will be rejected as the other author already has a proof of that work. I also hold the proof that I did the writing and computation part because most of the time I emailed them these results, but due to his cheating, I have no way to prove that I did the major work in this project. Any suggestions will be very helpful on how to tackle this problem.

Does a pre-print of the paper (containing the idea and some incomplete results) in their name, gives them an advantage if we both try to publish it?
[…] he claims that the idea belongs to him and he also has copyright for it as he already has published a pre-print for it.


Publishing content does not give you copyright for it; creating content does¹. There are exceptions if you sign over your copyright, but that would involve an actual contract, which I assume not to be the case here.

If you wrote parts of the paper or generated figures, publishing the paper without your name and consent is a copyright infringement. Hence, if you have proof of this, you have a legal case against your “friend”.

Moreover, publishing this paper as a sole author and thus denying you authorship constitutes a severe academic misconduct, which may very well end your “friend”’s academic career if you can convincingly prove it.


  Any suggestion will be very helpful on how to tackle this problem.


Collect and secure all evidence that you contributed to the project, in particular any statement from your “friend” that implies this. Get a time stamp for the full paper as soon as possible.

Assuming that you do not want to or gave up to save your relationship, take the issue to a relevant authority, e.g., your advisor, your “friend”’s advisor, your university’s legal department, the ethics board, or similar. The best choice here depends on the detailed situation and relationships. For example, if you are both students under different supervisors who are friendly with each other, I would take it to your supervisor first.

You might also be able to take the issue to the ArXiv. I am not sure about their protocol for such cases and whether they have any, but I do not expect that they will just leave the paper as it is if you can convince them that you are a worthy co-author.


  Does a preprint of the paper (contains the idea and some results,not the complete one) in his name, gives him an advantage if we both try to publish it?


If you fail to convince others of your authorship claims, yes.




¹ In any reasonable legislation and in particular every legislation that complies with international copyright conventions.