Yes that’s right. They get paid less since their stipend comes directly from the government not the university.

Just out of curiosity. How do professors get paid since the higher education is free for students in Egypt? Do professors in Egypt get paid less than other countries?

As always- awesome post Alex -and I agree with you on several aspects: 1) about how some faculty take the power dynamics too seriously (i wrote a little about that in my blog as well), and they intentionally continue to reinforce the power by showing who is in charge through titles and actions (like students ever forget). 2) I understand that faculty are busy individuals and don’t always have the time to be creative (due to all their responsibilities) but what they don’t realize is that they create more work for themselves/ and others, long term by being unintentional now.

I think most journals – open access or otherwise feel that their journals present platforms for an exchange of knowledge and discussion. However, I think open access journals have a harder time “proving” themselves for various reasons. I think that oftentimes, the lack of income prods journals to broaden their scope or reconsider editing/reviewing processes, which can call their legitimacy into question.

Hey Tanya, thanks for reading. In the case of Ana’s boss it was a NIH grant proposal (if memory serves correctly) and he removed her name and put his own in its place. Coauthorship is a grey area sometimes, but I believe that one is flat out plagiarism. What are your thoughts on that?

Thanks Tanya for your message. I agree. Some of these journals publish a low quality level of papers and they do this to receive more money. Unfortunately, some open access journals do the business instead of scientific activities.

PLOS ONE is certainly a model for high-quality open access journals. The biggest issue I see with the increase in Open Access journals is the massive increase in predatory journals which have arisen. I get several emails a week soliciting publications in these bogus journals. To me, this is frightening as it increases the risk for misinformation to be spread. I would prefer to see efforts made to help reputable journals become more Open Access, rather than the creation of these new, low-quality, scam journals.

In reading this, I’m thinking that there are always many sides to a story. For Ana’s lab boss putting his name on her work, I would assume that in most situations this is completely justified. While journals differ slightly in their requirements for authorship contribution, many PIs readily meet the criteria because they have likely been the ones that: obtained funding for the project (even if it was a grant specifically given to a PhD student, or post doc, the mentors assisted with this, and the mentorship they provide is part of the scoring criteria for most jr investigator grants); provided expert insight on study design; analysis and interpretation of the data; and drafting/critical revision of the manuscript. Just another view on the situation!

“Fake it ’til you make it” is more or less how I got comfortable with public speaking, actually. Maybe acting lessons should be included in the teaching training!