Supervisor feedback on co-authored papers: How to do it in an appropriate way?

Abstract

The topic of this report is supervisor feedback to PhD students on papers they author together. The
aim is to study what appropriate supervisor feedback consists of and how appropriate feedback can
be conducted to PhD students in these cases. The methods applied is a literature review as well as six
qualitative interviews with PhD students and supervisors at Swedish universities. In the conclusions
we emphasize the importance of supervisors clearly showing interest in the work of the PhD student.
We further highlight the importance of giving PhD student the time and freedom to explore research
ideas and identify meaningful goals. Finally, time constraints seem to be a recurrent topic in PhD
supervision, and this can sometimes have direct impacts on the feedback process. The report ends
with recommendations to PhD supervisors.