A university does not allow its employees to use its affiliation on papers done in spare time; how normal is that? Together with a colleague from a different university, I wrote a paper that has passed peer review in a respectable journal and is currently in press. The topic of the paper is very far removed from our usual research areas; let's say that my colleague is a chemist but the paper is about history (all details changed). We collaborated and wrote the paper in our spare time.

Now my colleague spoke to some university administrators and was told not to use university's affiliation on any papers that are written in the spare time / are outside of his or her direct responsibilities. As a result, my colleague wants to remove their affiliation from the paper.

I should add that my colleague is a senior researcher employed by the university, and that it is quite a well-known university in Western Europe.

My question is: How weird is that? Is such a policy common?

I was under impression that universities are only happy when their affiliation is used, and unhappy if it is not used.
Generally the opposite is true in the United States -- the university wishes to have jurisdiction over all work done using university resources -- which includes the laptops and computers we use. Since faculty are exempt employees presumably we have no "free time," but instead work 24x7 for the university (except for the summer months for 9-month employees). So basically any idea that I come up with from August to May of the calendar year and that I use my school resources to work on, is the property of the university unless specifically disclaimed.

Just ask your patents and licensing office to sign a document saying that your university hereby releases you of all possible intellectual property and inventions that may come out of your paper (even if it's in History!) and see if they change their tune.



Note also that many American universities require their faculty to fill out a "Faculty Activity Report" every year that details all of their publications (as well as service/teaching work). The university uses it internally to determine promotions and retention; but it also forwards this data to organizations such as the National Research Council -- that determine university and department ranking using criteria such as number of publications.

Thus it is in the university's best interests (both for IP and for ranking purposes) to capture every single faculty publication that it can. So I would think your scenario would be implausible for most R1 universities in the USA, at least.