Too many advisors

It sounds like a significant part of your problem is coming from treating your three advisors equally when, in fact, they are not equal: one of them is your main advisor, and that distinction matters.

You can use the distinction between main advisor and co-supervisors to break the symmetry that is giving your difficulties. You don't say whether it's your main advisor or one of the others who is currently holding up paper submission, so let me treat both scenarios:

  • Your main advisor thinks your paper needs more work: Then your paper probably needs more work, because your main advisor is the one probably closest and most responsible for your work. Discuss the opinions of the others with your main advisor, and if they aren't convinced that it's good enough, then you need to do the work.

  • One of the others thinks your paper needs more work: If your main advisor thinks the paper is ready to submit, then have a discussion with your main advisor about the objection. If your main advisor agrees with the objection, then you probably really do need to do the additional work. If your main advisor still thinks the paper is ready to submit then you can enlist your advisor to help explain to the co-supervisor why the work isn't going to be done.

In either case, if you focus on the relationship with the main advisor, and make that the locus for decisions, you can still keep the benefits of the inputs from the co-supervisors without becoming paralyzed by their differences of opinions. Your co-supervisors may disagree with the main advisor, but if you make it clear that you need to follow the opinions of the main advisor in case of disagreement, then they are likely to view it in those terms rather than feeling upset with you because you aren't taking their advice.


It's hard to answer without knowing more about what your field is, and what the nature of the collaboration is. Is it you, primarily, doing the work, and the advisors give feedback on what you've done? Do you all together design experiments, and then you conduct them?

In any case, generically, I'd say that your option (1), to take more ownership yourself, is fine. In addition, I'd recommend getting all the advisors in a room together when you all discuss your work. It's much easier to reach consensus this way than by endless virtual discussions.