Stolen Science: Authorship Misconduct in Academic Research and Preprint-Based Defensive Strategies for PhD Candidates

Academic authorship misconduct—encompassing ghost authorship, honorary authorship, and outright intellectual-property theft—represents a persistent and structurally enabled form of research fraud. This paper reviews (i) historical cases in which scientists were denied credit for foundational discoveries, (ii) contemporary patterns of advisor-driven authorship appropriation in doctoral programmes documented through surveys, testimonies, and court proceedings, and (iii) practical, evidence-based strategies by which PhD candidates can protect their intellectual property through open-science preprint repositories such as Zenodo and arXiv. Drawing on the #PleaseDontStealMyWork campaign (Denmark, 2022), studies of ghost and honorary authorship in the social sciences, and international copyright frameworks, this paper argues that early and systematic preprint deposition constitutes the most accessible, cost-effective, and legally defensible mechanism available to doctoral researchers. Recommendations for institutional policy reform and individual protective practice are provided.