Thesis chair trying to be first author on my thesis?

[preciosa]

I graduated a couple years ago and my thesis chair and I talked about publication. However, some data was missing (28 out of about 140 articles that were being analyzed were initially missing from LexisNexis). She went back and hired someone to code these articles. She said she did a lot of work on this. I was aware that some edits were being made for publication, but I had moved across the country and my data set was back home with my mother--I gave these to my thesis chair to help with the process. After that, I did not hear much about the process. First authorship was never discussed and after awhile I assumed that nothing was happening. Two weeks ago I found out she is trying to publish as first author because of her contributions. However, my lit review, methods, some equations I created and the results were almost duplicate to my thesis. I understand she put work into this, but my understanding was she was helping me to publish to get included as the second author. Now she is trying to accuse me of slander because I contacted the department head and journal editor telling them I had no knowledge that this was about to be published and I would like to halt the publication until a settlement was found.

I feel that since the article used most of my intellectual content from my thesis and she was less than communicative with me that she planned to be listed as first author, taking credit for my ideas, that she is in the wrong. I knew she was working on it a bit, but did not think she was altering it very much--which is what I confirmed when I saw the proof to the journal. I just wanted to get advice from others on this however.