In general I am very generous with my paper author list i.e. if some one contributed some idea, figure, anything else, I put their name in the authors list of the paper. This is to be fair and also to generate good will.
I have a student who used to work for another research group. He claims that he did around 50 to 60% of the work described in the paper (I believe him since he has no reason to lie). He also drew some of the figures in the paper.
However, when the paper got submitted (and published) his name was not in the authors list. He was not even in the acknowledgements.
He came to me and asked for advice on what he can do. He has already written to the senior author of the paper (who is yet to reply). Frankly, I didn't had any advice for him. I do not know what to do in these cases.
What would you do or can do? Is writing to the editors of the journal a fair play? How about writing to the funding agency? Has any one of you or student have been in this situation before?
