A person added his name to my articles Almost a decade ago, when I was a young student, one of my professors invited me to make a tiny undergraduate research under his supervision. The idea was to solve an optimization problem with applications in our country. I wrote five simple solutions: three of them using mathematical models, a fourth one using an algorithm, and a fifth one adapting the latter for computational implementation (I had to design data structures, rewrite the algorithm, etc.)

The only contributions the "leader of the project" (the guy who invited me) made were to suggest me to use a specific algorithm for the second paper, and then implement it as a computer software.

Here is the problem: when I gave him my LaTeX originals for the three resulting articles in a pen drive (I didn't have much experience with e-mails back then), he recompiled my articles with his name as first author, even when it's last name comes after mine in alphabetical order ... even when he did virtually nothing! He said he sent them to the university journal for publication, beacause I couldn't send them myself (he said).

Since I gave him the LaTeX sources of my articles in person, I don't have a record of my complete authoring. Even worse, I was young so I believed every word he said, and even put in my resume the description "Co-authored with [name-of-Professor]", so I naively acknowledged his name.

It has been 10 years from that moment, and I haven't found any of my articles to have been ever published. This professor said he was the advisor, so his name should be included, even when his apport was marginally minimal, and that I couldn't send them to another journal until we get a response from the university journal.

Now I want to publish the articles as chapters of a tiny textbook I am writing, but I think he doesn't deserve his name to be mentioned in any way in this work. Is there any way I could achieve this? Nobody has been able to help me on this matter here in my country.

I really want to publish these articles. They are not exceptional in any sense, but they are part of my work as a young mathematician, and they're even an important achievement, since I wrote them without previously knowing the subject. So they are important for me.

Thanks in advance for your answers!
Now I want to publish the articles as chapters of a tiny textbook I am writing, but I think he doesn't deserve his name to be mentioned in any way in this work. Is there any way I could achieve this?


Pretty sure the answer here is no.

First, your textbook needs to cite its references, so in the Bibliography, you would need to list the paper where he declared himself the first author.

That being said, you will probably chose some citing format for your textbook such as "According to [3]", rather than "According to DUDESNAME, 2008".

If your book is written in first person speech (which I dislike, but is your option), you can still claim "Back in 2007 I've done A and and B, as explained in [3]". Your former advisor will likely not dispute those claims with you, but you would probably gain very little from this passive agressive strategy.

Moreover, having your advisor who contributed very little as a co-author is very common. Although he usually would have contributed in other ways, such as providing equipment, references and guidance, which may not look like a lot of hard work, but it does take a lot of hard work to have the knowledge and resources to do this properly. Also, the co-author status is part of his reward for advising you. He making himself the first author sounds pretty unethical though.