Authorship on Article

[ajacot924]

I am working with a professor and another colleague on an article we plan to submit for publication.

My professor is lead author, so her name with go first.

For myself and my colleague, is there a way to decide whose name goes next? Is it alphabetical? Does it matter (i.e. does it show that one did more work than the other, etc.) 

Thanks!

[fuzzylogician]

It definitely matters. Different fields have different conventions for interpreting first, second, last, etc. (when there is no convention that authors are listed alphabetically), but I can't see any reason why you would want to be third rather than second. Normally second is perceived to have contributed more than third, though this changes some if the third (last) author is a professor. Either way, it's better for you to be second. The best way to discuss this is to just bring it up at a joint meeting; this is something you want to clarify early on so that no one is upset and disappointed down the line.

[n_psych]

You should discuss this very professionally before submitting the paper. Usually it is ranked based on who worked more. Either way, it is important to have this very clear so no relationships or feelings get hurt. 

[Guest |||]

Often times graduate students write the paper and the supervisor will have the last name on the list.  If however you are certain your supervisor will have first name, then as stated, you should have a conversation with the other individual to determine where things stand.

[selecttext]

If you wrote the MS then you are the first author. If your supervisor puts his or her name first then you have a pretty bad supervisor. The first author generally picks the order of authors, using common sense of course. In Europe, the first author for some reason is sometimes last. I would not follow that convention if I was you hehe...

Edited February 25, 2013 by selecttext

[Dal PhDer]

If you wrote the MS then you are the first author. If your supervisor puts his or her name first then you have a pretty bad supervisor. The first author generally picks the order of authors, using common sense of course. In Europe, the first author for some reason is sometimes last. I would not follow that convention if I was you hehe...

 

I would say this isn't always the case. 

 

Authorship should be discussed before the project begins...from my experience, it can get into a situation where you're not getting what you feel you should. It's hard to manage authorship with your supervisor, as they are a power figure in your life, and it can be difficult to confront the issue with them.

 

I would say that you should talk to the first author and say, 'listen, I've done this..this..and this, the publication would really help me with this..this...and this..., I feel I deserve second author". Something like that!

 

Good luck!

[selecttext]

i've never met an academic who would put his or her name above a students who performed the research and wrote the manuscript. I know it happens but professors are generally decent people. It makes no difference to the career of a tenured professor to be second author unless of course it is a submission to nature or science which few students could accomplish on their own. What you described, DalPhDer, would be a case where the student has not written the manuscript.

Edited February 25, 2013 by selecttext

[ajacot924]

Thanks everyone for your input.

We are in the very beginning stages of this project (we only have an abstract and intro), so I feel a decision couldn't be made as to who did the most work.

It was my idea to do this in the first place. I approached the professor and brought my colleague on secondly. I do feel that I should be second author.

How should I broach this with my professor and colleague without sounding greedy or whiny?

Thanks so much for your help.

[fuzzylogician]

Thanks everyone for your input.

We are in the very beginning stages of this project (we only have an abstract and intro), so I feel a decision couldn't be made as to who did the most work.

It was my idea to do this in the first place. I approached the professor and brought my colleague on secondly. I do feel that I should be second author.

How should I broach this with my professor and colleague without sounding greedy or whiny?

Thanks so much for your help.

You need to decide on authorship so the work can be distributed accordingly. It's a bad idea to do a lot of work and then try and do book-keeping of sorts to see who did more - that almost guarantees that someone will get upset. Honestly if it was your idea and you're the one with the initiative on this project, I think you should be first author. Even if it's already implicitly (or explicitly?) clear that your advisor will be first, you should bring up authorship very soon and sort things out. Don't think of it as sounding greedy or whiny but rather as being assertive and taking charge of the project. You need to take care of your own CV - no one else will - and if this is something you initiated and you are a lead person on, then you want to communicate what you think is your status in this project and ask for the recognition that comes with it. Together with that comes varying amounts of responsibility - e.g. if you are first author then you will likely be expected to write the draft of the paper, with input from the others. If you are second or third you may only be contributing to one aspect of the paper, for example the design of an experiment or an analysis, or you may have come up with the original idea but not done a lot of the work developing it into a full-fledged project. It depends on many factors and you should work it out sooner rather than later, and preferably as a collaboration with everyone rather than having it decreed by the first author without the explicit agreement of other project members.

[Dal PhDer]

i've never met an academic who would put his or her name above a students who performed the research and wrote the manuscript. I know it happens but professors are generally decent people. It makes no difference to the career of a tenured professor to be second author unless of course it is a submission to nature or science which few students could accomplish on their own. What you described, DalPhDer, would be a case where the student has not written the manuscript.

 

No, I'm referring to a personal situation where I, after the data was collected by a third party, analysed and wrote a MS to be published. Because I did not clearly state my desire to be first author at the beginning of the project, I didn't receive it...I'm not saying that all professors are like that, I'm just reinforcing the notion to discuss authorship at the start, because it's not a promise that you'll be first author.

 

If you are collecting and writing the data, then yes, that is your own research and intellectual property if you came up with the idea, research plan, etc...but, you get into a grey area when you work with your professor to (a) come up with a project, ( are apart of a project but are responsible or the MS, or/and © are using existing data to analyse and write. 

 

I went into the situation with the idea that if I wrote it, I would be 1st author...but that's not always the case. As the GCers know, I discussed this issue on here, and learned quite quickly (and the hard way) that being upfront about it, is the way to go....even though I felt, as  fuzzy said so eloquently,' whiny and greedy', it's what needs to be done from now on when I write with people!

 

ajacot- hopefully you can have a chat with your PI and figure it out! As fuzzy said, it helps delegate the responsibilities so that authorship is correct!

[selecttext]

ha next time put your name first. collecting the data doesn't necessarily even warrant a co-authorship.

[fuzzylogician]

ha next time put your name first. collecting the data doesn't necessarily even warrant a co-authorship.

 

Different fields have different conventions for what merits authorship and how the order is determined but I highly doubt it's acceptable in any field to unilaterally put your name first without bringing the matter up for discussion.

[selecttext]

i'm not going to argue anymore but there really is no need to discuss your own first authorship if it is your work and your manuscript. you simply list the order of authors on the ms and if anyone has a problem they can email you.

[fuzzylogician]

You live in the world I would like to live in, but for me and Dal PhDer and for others in the writing forum whose posts you can easily look up - and I suspect for the OP as well - the world is more complicated. Sometimes it's not as clear who gets first/second for all kinds of reasons, sometimes you think it's perfectly clear and someone else has their own agenda. There are politics involved with collaborations and you need to handle them in a smart way. That normally includes figuring out authorship very clearly and explicitly, and early on. It should not include making unilateral decisions which may backfire, like trying to dictate to colleagues and supervisors how you think the world should be (even if you're right!). I've personally witnessed cases where more than one person truly believed they should be first and the situation got out of hand because one person just put themselves first without asking; there should be a discussion and if indeed it's as clear cut as you say then everyone should agree, no problems. But sometimes it's not that simple, and those cases are better preempted as early as possible.

[selecttext]

i'd be curious to learn of your experience with individuals who haven't written the manuscript yet expect first authorship - like what their rational was.

Edited February 26, 2013 by selecttext

[Dal PhDer]

i'd be curious to learn of your experience with individuals who haven't written the manuscript yet expect first authorship - like what their rational was.

 

It's often related to who received the funding to do the project, or who came up with the project/idea. It's further complicated if the work was done through a paid stipend from the lab or an RA position.

 

I can't speak for Fuzzy, but I'm referring to projects/work/an MS outside of your thesis/dissertation research. Sometimes papers are written in a way that one person does a comprehensive lit review to build a background/rationale for the paper/funding, and then someone does the analysis and discussion. When you divide the work up like that, it can be difficult to know who should be first author, as everyone has contributed. You can also get into the weight of analysis...if you're using a complex methodology and require expertise to perform and/or interpret the data, then someone could spend hours on just the results (this has been very relevant in some of my work where data analysis takes months to clean, convert, build models around, etc.). A lot of work can go into a project outside of a MS, and that is often considered heavily when determining authorship.

 

We're not trying to argue, we're just presenting our experiences with the situation. I've worked on many interdisciplinary teams where 10-12 people have contributed to a project, and then only edited a MS I've written up. I was never first author, because all I did was write up the project and findings...they did all the other work. In my other experience, I was in a bind because the data came through the lab, thus it was the property of someone else. In my case, this determined authorship. Authorship, as simple as it seems, is not black and white. And if you realize that now, then it'll help with future projects.

[fuzzylogician]

You'll forgive me if I don't share details. My identity is not private on this site so it'd be too easy to identify who I am talking about. However, I can tell you that these things sometimes happen for no nefarious reason, for example in my subfield experimental work is a very recent thing so there are no clear conventions. People make things up as they go along and that sometimes leads to misunderstandings. In addition sometimes people do have nefarious reasons - for example you hear of advisors who are up for tenure taking over a student's paper, or an advisor giving a paper to an older student who will soon be on the job market even though a younger student did the majority of the work (you can look up such posts on the grad cafe). Sometimes two or more people contributed enough to potentially be first and then you want to sit down and decide who takes on the rest of the work and becomes first - but it's possible that both people want it. As Dal PhDer says, it's not always clear what contribution merits authorship and also what is considered "most important" or "first author worthy."