Publications

How do you know who gets placed where for authorship on research? I realize that the person who is the brainchild of the project gets first authorship.

Let me explain. This summer I helped out with a research project. I was hired to do a certain amount of hours of field work per week. When the project ended, I was asked to write the a portion of the methods section. I assumed that I would be the last person listed on the paper. I knew that I wouldn’t get the place of first author since I didn’t create the project. So, for about a month I have been helping with various aspects of the paper in addition to writing a portion of the methods. Then a few days ago, the lead author told me that an individual had talked her about helping with the paper. She didn’t know that the individual wanted to help since he hadn’t expressed any interest in helping. She explained to him that she was going to put me as the second author. He got really upset with her and told her that he had put in more hours and done more work on the project. She went on to tell him that part of what he was doing was for his dissertation, not this particular project. He apparently threw a fit because he thought that they (the 1st author and himself) had an understanding (whatever that was supposed to be). The lead author did tell him that I had put in A LOT of work on this paper and project. I put in almost 200 hrs. of field work, many hours of writing, and other contributions to this paper. He has put in, maybe, 30 hours of field work and no more than 5 hours writing and making contributions to the paper. He already has DVM and is working toward a PhD (wildlife biology). I have my BA in Ecology and working toward my MS (wildlife Biology). Should he be given the spot as the second authorship even though he hasn’t done as much as me?

Whose brainchild it was has little to do with the person getting senior authorship. The person who does the bulk of the work in preparing the paper is senior author, usually. Note: this doesn’t mean the person who handled the research work, went out in the field, got muddy, did the scut work, etc. They may not even be given authorship at all, if they did none of the writing. The person who could take senior authorship can take coauthorship, in which case, the names go in alphabetical order. I became first author of a paper this way but nobody who knows us would dream that I did much of the writing.

It is up to the senior author, who gets mentioned as an author and in what order. Generally, junior authors get mentioned in alphabetical order. If they are not, it is assumed that they are listed in order of their contributions.

Sometimes people who did none of the writing are given junior authorship. Often this means that they are graduate students of the senior author, have worked on the project, and would benefit from having a paper to list on their resumes. There is some justification for this, I suppose. What I can’t tolerate is the practice, mostly in medical papers, of listing everyone who could remotely be connected to the project. Most egregious is the demand of the person who controls the funding to be listed as senior author on all papers emanating from the lab.

In short, it’s up to the senior author. Stay out of it, especially if the names happen to fall in alphabetical order. Nobody reading the paper cares about the difference between second and third author.