How do you choose the order of names for publications?

[meep95]

I have a project I am presenting at a conference soon, and for that conference I am first author, and I have two more partners as well.  Since this is technically an independent project, my advisor said not to list him.  I am curious though, since we are planning to try and publish this in the future, would my advisor then become first author? Or is that more on a case by case basis of what is decided within the research team.  I haven't actually published before since I am an undergrad, so this is unfamiliar territory.

[fuzzylogician]

It depends, norms change by (sub)field so we can't give you a sweeping answer. Often, the person who did the majority of the work will be first (often: this will be a student or postdoc); the advisor or PI will be last, and others will be in the middle, depending on how much they contributed. In other fields, you go strictly alphabetically. In some fields, the advisor is a co-author on all of their students' work, in others not. The authorship question is often a delicate and complicated one, but I suggest that you bring it up early, before you commit to doing the work. Simply ask your advisor how he expects to determine authorship on the project, and specifically if you will be first. I think that's entirely fair, and you might even want to have it in writing (as in, after the meeting you send him an email saying "just to confirm what we said in the meeting, here is what I understood: [blah]"), so there aren't any misunderstandings later. 

[TakeruK]

As fuzzylogician said, the norms totally depends on each field. You should definitely have this discussion with the other two coauthors before you start writing the paper to ensure you are all on the same page in terms of authorship ordering. For this conference though, ordering doesn't matter as much (but still discuss it!). Typically, if you are presenting, it makes sense that you are the first author, and perhaps the agreement between the 3 of you will be that whoever presents is the first author for that presentation. You should decide how to list the remaining authors though.

Finally, to provide another example, the papers I write use this authorship order:

Me, my advisor, List A, List B.

List A is a short (3-5 names usually) of people who made a significant contribution to the project, in the order of their significance. These are people who generally have performed some of the analysis for me.

List B is a longer list of people who made minor contributions to the project, sorted alphabetically. Minor contributions usually mean something like: they were part of a grant proposal to get the equipment/funding/telescope time or they provided helpful guidance in writing some of the paper. 

We don't typically decide the exact order of authorship ahead of time though. If there are people who might be in List A that aren't already in List B (e.g. new collaborators that I bring in for a specific expertise) then I always make it clear that if they help me, they will definitely be a coauthor. List B is typically the "standing collaboration" that I generally work with (i.e. we write grants together) so when it's time to send around the first draft, I send an email to everyone on List B inviting them to be a coauthor if they wish, with the understanding that I would expect good feedback on my drafts. Sometimes people on List B politely decline because they didn't end up contributing much to the paper at all, or they were part of the general collaboration but not on this specific project. It's no big deal and I've been on the other end as well!

[Quantitative_Psychology]

In psychology it has become very popular for advisor/PI will be last author. First author tends to go to the person who did the most writing but not always. Sometimes people get shafted in authorship order (especially graduate students for very traditional PIs). Personally authorship order has been annoyingly unclear for me in the past with the PI informing us fairly late in the research experience.

[ThousandsHardships]

I'm not sure what the norm in your field is. In the sciences, the first author is usually the person who did most of the writing, whereas the PI is almost always the last author. The ones in the middle are often ranked by the amount of work they did or the significance of their contributions. Sometimes this can be arbitrary though. My mother (a senior scientist at a top university) has sometimes insisted on yielding the first author position to promising grad students or postdocs because she's planning to retire on her present position and would rather have these articles help jumpstart the careers of competent future professors/researchers than to add a distinction to her own CV that she'll never use.

[meep95]

On 3/2/2017 at 4:18 PM, mav160 said:

In psychology it has become very popular for advisor/PI will be last author. First author tends to go to the person who did the most writing but not always. Sometimes people get shafted in authorship order (especially graduate students for very traditional PIs). Personally authorship order has been annoyingly unclear for me in the past with the PI informing us fairly late in the research experience.

okay thank you! I am in psychology. My advisor is pretty great so I don't think he would try to shaft us. It would probably be the same order as we have decided for the conference then, with my advisor being last

[Quantitative_Psychology]

On 3/4/2017 at 0:05 AM, meep95 said:

okay thank you! I am in psychology. My advisor is pretty great so I don't think he would try to shaft us. It would probably be the same order as we have decided for the conference then, with my advisor being last

No problem. Sometimes (but not terribly often) PI's will change the order between conference and publications. Actually, just today, I was moved from first author to second author. I was okay with this because my PI explained that we would be publishing in a medical journal and often times medical journals do not like having first authors with a B.A. Instead they want them to at least have an M.A. It was indicated to me that had it been a psychology journal I would be first author. Personally, this didn't bother me because I felt my PI had my best intentions (wanting a high impact journal). It sounds like you have a pretty good advisor, and you have nothing to worry about. If he/she does change the order, I'm sure it will be accompanied with a valid explanation.