manuscript disagreement with PI

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bluebubbles

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Hi,

I have a problem. I worked on a paper in med school as first author that was reviewed favorably in a C/N/S specialty journal. My PI and I had a disagreement about the revision; my PI wanted to put in an extra thing that I felt detracted from the main innovation of the paper, but I ended up going along with it. This extra weakened the paper because it's half-baked, one reviewer fixated on it, and the paper ended up getting rejected despite being green-lighted by the other reviewers. Now, my PI wants to work on the extra with my co-authors and submit a rebuttal (which I feel like is a waste of time) but I want to take the extra out and re-submit to a different journal. Based on its journal review history, I feel like it can get accepted at a journal of equal IF.

For reference, I'm no longer at my PI's institution and I'll be working with new professors very soon.

What do I do? I feel like I'm losing a great paper & many months of work. I emailed my PI already and encountered polite resistance to re-submission. Options I'm thinking about:

1) let my PI add the "extra" over several months and hope for the best; the problem with this is that our field is very fast-paced, and several months is a long time
2) call my co-authors and ask them to talk to my PI
3) email my co-authors and PI a list of reasons why the paper should be re-submitted
4) work on related projects with new professors using data/methods I generated and/or developed for my rejected paper (so at least my work wouldn't be entirely wasted)
5) recreate & refine the major conclusions of the paper (it leverages publicly available data) and submit independently

Appreciate any advice the forum can offer.

It is your PI's data, money, and oversight that made the project. It is their call at the end of the day. Move on.
 
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There's nothing you can do. Do whatever you boss tells you to do. You are too inexperienced. You *COULD* try a campaign with co-authors and what not if you have advanced jedi interpersonal skills to influence your boss, but keep in mind any action has consequences. It may go well. It may not go well and then you might tick him off.

Based on the few things you've written, your PI sounds pretty savvy and is doing the right thing. Late rejections at a brand journal can often be appealed and is a negotiation. This process also involves complicated schmoozing with the editor and possibly secondarily (through the editor) with the reviewer. This is probably the best case scenario to get the article published. Frankly, all the other scenarios in your head are complete garbage.

My suspicion is your interpersonal skills are actually mildly deficient, which is why my suggestion is to kiss up. Make SUGGESTIONS and show some enthusiasm to LEARN the process, rather than making it sound at all as if you know better than he does. You don't. You don't even know what you don't know.

You cannot really submit anything "independently". Your career in science will be over if you decided to do that. It's the equivalent of mutiny in science. If you decided to do that 1) the editor will reject the paper. 2) your boss will not write a letter of rec, which gives a weird resume gap that makes the admit committees assume the worst. 3) you may get blackballed later if anyone asks your formal boss about you.
 
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Anyways, I spoke with my PI over the weekend and I'm happy we agreed to a good compromise.

Good to hear. In the end, it's almost always better as a trainee to work things out and move on. Burned bridges and a scorched earth strategy may feel right in the short term but it will rarely help you in the long run. Severe remedies should be used only as a methods of last resort (research misconduct, fake data, etc.).
 
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