Supervisor wants me to add my name on someone else's paper to be published I have a particularly unusual problem that puts me in a bind. I am a first year Masters student at my faculty, and recently my supervisor have pushed me to "update" her previous student's unpublished paper (few years old, so need to find newer papers to cite inside and format it properly for submission), add my name onto it as co-author and publish it to IET. I feel it's unethical, although my supervisor has assured me permission will be obtained from the original author. Feeling uncomfortable with this practice, I delayed doing that paper.

What are the implications if I proceed with it? Would it pose any problems to me in the future? I'm inclined towards not doing it, though, but I want to hear expert opinions on this kind of practice. Thanks.
Publish it. As you mentioned that your supervisor obtained permission from the original author and you will be working/editing it, then I assume its 100% ethical to put your name as coauthor and will be no negative sequences. Indeed, this kind of preparation that your supervisor follows is beneficial for you. At the level of PhD, I got the same task. I converted 3 years old master thesis to conference work and I put my name at second coauthor and the original author was mentioned before the name of the professor in the affiliation! since your supervisor is involved in this task, I assume that he knows what he is doing.