Authorship

[av2010]

What is the standard for giving authorship to your advisor? I recently wrote a paper, I wrote the paper entirely myself, designed the study, collected and analyzed the data for the most part by myself. My advisor's role was editing the IRB proposal and the paper. I am going to be submitting to a conference, would it be standard/expected to ask if she wanted to be second author?

[moar_skool]

In my experience, having your advisor as 2nd author is a given if they helped with the paper/poster (but you still get to be 1st author).

[cheesecafe]

I agree with the post above. In my field (Psychology), I would add my advisor as second author if in addition to editing the IRB proposal and paper, they provided valuable feedback on design or on how to analyze and interpret the data. There are guidelines to authorship in psychology. You could see if your field has similar guidelines or ask other students that work with your advisor what their standard has been in the past.  

[rising_star]

This definitely varies by discipline. In my area of the social sciences, you wouldn't be expected to list your advisor as second author if their role was only editing. That said, ask your advisor what their expectations are.

[TakeruK]

Definitely ask your advisor what their expectations are. Hopefully you have a relationship where you and your advisor see eye-to-eye. If you are unsure about your advisor's answer, then find another faculty mentor and talk to them. (I especially recommend finding other mentors if you and your advisor don't get along).

As others said, this will vary a ton by discipline. Advisor being second author is a given in my field. And no one will take a single author paper from a student seriously (there are some exceptions, but most single author papers by students aren't the best quality). But standards/expectations do vary from field to field: editing the paper is usually the minimum necessary to be a coauthor in mine (i.e. if you have a large team that contributed to the proposal but you aren't sure if they all want/need to be on the analysis paper, you "invite" them all to read and submit edits in exchange for coauthorship). However, I realise now that "edit" might mean different things. For me, it means proofreading at minimum but useful edits include suggestions of new analysis, providing insight on how to present the data, providing thoughts on how your results fit in with the literature or how your results might raise new research questions. Because of the nature of my area of work within my field, most papers have very long author lists (10+ people) and require a lot of management of people in order to get your drafts and submissions done on time!