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Being
a member of a collaborative research group comes with a set of responsibilities
to that group. Being a faculty mentor to a graduate student also comes with
responsibilities. In this case study these sets of responsibilities were
in apparent conflict. A major contributor to this dilemma is the lack of
a formal agreement among the members of this collaboration concerning the
specifics of this arrangement. Additionally, the UNH assistant professor
had a responsibility to share with her doctoral student information about
the consortium, since his research was directly affected by this arrangement.
A related issue here is that of ownership
of the data and access to it. Many universities, including the UNH, have
policies in place or under consideration on the ownership and management
of research data. When multiple institutions are involved, the issue becomes
more complex. Individuals involved in research should be familiar with
the policies or guidelines in effect at their institution on this issue.
Discussion of authorship issues during the establishment of a collaboration
and periodically throughout the formal association helps to prevent misunderstanding
and disagreement later in the study.
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