Comments on: What Constitutes Grounds for Authorship?

By: drugmonkey

drugmonkey — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:07:10 +0000

Depends how you look at it and what the eventual track record is. Sure, it is clear in the two author scenario that the grad student did the work (unless second author in which case????). But if someone has a CV with lots of multi-author papers this is interpreted as being the field that the person is in. If there are enough first authorships, well, that's all the more to the credit that she pulled this off with so much internal competition for authorship...

Look I know trainees tend to obsess about 2nd, 3rd etc positioning on papers but this just doesn't matter where it counts. There is practically no number of 2nd authorships that trumps one first authorship. You have to have pubs and people do care about pub/no pub so middle authorships count in this way. but as far as the question of "is this person on the track for independence?" goes? first authorship is everything.

By: nosugrefneb

nosugrefneb — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:59:12 +0000

The real credit issues boil down to who is first author, who is last author and who is NOT an author who SHOULD be an author? The question of add-on middle authors isn’t anywhere near as important.

100% agreement. But, that’s not to say it’s not a prevalent thing, as you’ve pointed out, nor an important issue; it is both of these.

I’d guess the harm stems from a perceived “dilution” of the importance of the first author’s work in this case, especially in the case of the tech being added on. All things being equal, a paper with two authors – a grad student and her PI – looks a lot better for her than a paper with six authors, four of whom did next to nothing.

By: drugmonkey

drugmonkey — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:24:40 +0000

sorry, original comment went elsewhere but thanks for placing it where it was intended.

this case is not only real it takes place about a hundred times a day! my question is, where's the cost? who is hurt and how?

The real credit issues boil down to who is first author, who is last author and who is NOT an author who SHOULD be an author? The question of add-on middle authors isn't anywhere near as important.

The PI who substituted herself as first author without mentioning it to the grad student is an interesting issue. The whole point of training is that someone needs to be...trained. So in many cases the grad student (or postdoc!) puts together a draft. and it may take a LOT of effort. but it may also not be really a paper yet and the PI may end up basically rewriting the thing. So what to do? The PI likely did most of the heavy conceptualization of the research area, funded the project and did the effective work on the actual submitted MS. In some views this is the first author. In other views, even if the PI does the whole design/direct/draft paper from start to finish s/he should be last author to show that it is his/her lab group. So the PI has to find a first author and upjumps a tech or grad student.

By: nosugrefneb

nosugrefneb — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:02:33 +0000

I agree with you, drugmonkey, regarding the fairness issue, and I suspect the community level prescriptions you mentioned arose out of situations precisely like these in order to maintain fairness. The case above isn't going to have effects on the entire field, or even an entire lab, but it could have direct implications on the CVs, for example, of those involved. What if the tech were applying for grad school and needed some publications? Certainly, if the PI could help it, she'd be on the paper for sure. What if the second PI were up for tenure? You can bet she'd be lobbying for herself to be on it.

Issues like this come up all the time as you probably know, and we should care about it, not because they have direct implications for us but because they at least have that potential. Incidentally, I heard a story recently of a PI who's up for tenure and, without telling any of the other authors, made himself first author and bumped his own grad student who'd done pretty much 100% of the work. Clearly, this is more of an author placement issue, which indeed is a much different debate for a different time.

Also, to be clear, the case above was real. It happened. Not sure who got on in the end, though.

By: nosugrefneb

nosugrefneb — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:54:18 +0000

From drugmonkey (comment from a different post):

"Easy. All are authors. I just HATE these bogus case study examples in ethics classes. Look this stuff is culturally determined. In some areas of science, all of these are authors. In others, only the prime two. So it boils down to, “what is the practice in your subfield”.

"But let’s examine this a little. We’re not talking about authorship position which is a whole ‘nother debate. We’re talking about add-on middle authors. who cares? I mean really?"

"The issue REALLY boils down to one of fairness if you ask me. Authors only get ticked for adding more middles on their paper if they perceive that they are not being afforded similar opportunity to add to their CV with little effort. But this fairness issue has nothing to do with community level prescriptions for what constitutes authorship…"