I
have a few ‘rules’ (a.k.a. ‘guidelines’) in my lab about the authorship
of articles, but I’ve come to realise that each article requires its
own finessing each time authorship is in question.
After a lengthy
discussion yesterday with the members of
Franck Courchamp's
lab, I decided I should probably write down my thoughts on this, one of the stickiest of subjects in the business of science.
The following discussion can be divided into
to two main categories: (1) who to include as a co-author, and once the
list of co-authors has been determined, (2) in what order should they
be listed?
Before launching into discussing the issues
related to Category 1, it is prudent to declare that there are as
probably as many conventions as there are publishing scientists, and
each discipline’s most general conventions differ across the scientific
spectrum. I’m sure if you asked 10 people about what they considered
appropriate, you could conceivably receive 10 different answers.
That said, I do still think there are some
good-behaviour guidelines on authorship that one should strive to
follow, all of which are based on my own experiences (both good and
awful).
So who to include? It seems like a simple
question superficially because clearly if someone contributed to writing
a peer-reviewed article, he/she should be listed as a co-author. The
problem really doesn’t concern the main author (the person who did most
of the actual composition) because it’s clear here who that will be in
almost every case. In most circumstances, this also happens to be the
lead author (but more on that below). The question should really apply
then to those individuals whose effort was more modest in the production
of the final paper.
Strictly speaking, an ‘author’ should write
words; but how many words do they need to write before being included?
Would 10 suffice, or at least 10%? You can see why this is in itself a
sticky subject because there are no established or accepted thresholds.
Of course, science generally requires much more than just writing words:
there are for most papers experiments to design, grants to obtain to
fund them, data to collect, analysis and modelling to be done, figures
and tables to prepare and finally, words to write.
I’ll admit that I’ve
co-authored many papers where I’ve done mainly one of those things
(analysis, data collection, etc.), but I can also hold my hand over my
heart and state that I’ve contributed more than a good deal to the
actual writing of the paper in all circumstances where I’ve been listed
as a co-author (the amount of which depends entirely on the lead
author’s writing capacity).
It is my personal view that if someone
contributed to any of the components required to complete the article,
then they should be given the opportunity to claim co-authorship. The
only proviso to that policy relates to two of these sub-components: (i) collecting data and (ii) funding the research.
Data collection:
In most cases, it’s pretty clear that that this process takes a lot of
time and effort, so if someone who collected the data you need passes it
along to you, you should probably offer authorship on any articles
arising. That said, there is now a huge number of freely available
databases out there, so it would be completely unfeasible to offer
authorship to all the players involved.
In a legal sense, if the data
are publicly funded and available online, you have every right to
publish papers based on them without necessarily including the
custodians as co-authors. Most such databases give very clear
indications of their specific rules on this matter, so do read up on
them. If it’s a colleague with a less formalised database, then
authorship is a little more straight-forward. My rule of thumb? If in
doubt, include as co-author.
Funding: Scientists spend a huge amount of time begging (errhm, …
requesting … ) funding to do their research, which
inter alia
requires original thought, collaboration, novelty, good communication
skills, impressive track records and certain flair for impressing
funding agencies. If someone funded the work that led to your paper, you
should probably consider asking them to co-author your work.
That said,
if it’s the 500th paper arising from a major grant with
scores of collaborators, it might not always be sensible or necessary to
do so. The main rule of thumb here is that you should always
communicate openly and sincerely with anyone who might be affected by
this issue.
Another problem that can rear its ugly head
is when someone is paid to put together a dataset or collect data. In
most cases I know, the person specifically employed to do so is not
generally expected to be a co-author, unless she/he demonstrates
exceptional effort, novelty, independence and foresight. I currently
have a
research assistant
that meets all these latter criteria and more, and so she is not only
included in any papers arising from ‘her’ dataset, she is also
leading a few papers of her own.
All these considerations, complexities,
social contracts and expectations in mind, the best piece of advice I
can give on authorship is this: it rarely hurts you to include
someone of marginal contribution, but it can really hurt you to exclude
someone who at least thinks he/she deserves authorship. Engrave that
sentiment into your frontal lobe for posterity, because following it
will make a huge difference to your long-term publication success.
Now for the stickiest issue of all - author order.
The main reason this is so sticky is that
there are even fewer rules of thumb to follow. I’ll tell you what I tend
to do, but it really depends on the discipline and the culture of the
labs to which you belong. Of course, first authors should be the ones
that tend to do the most work, and especially the actual writing. There
are times when this isn’t always the case, but it’s so standard that
there shouldn’t be many situations where it’s difficult to determine who
this should be.
In ecology anyway, there’s an increasingly
recognised trend that the second-most important position in author order
is the last. This tradition probably goes back to medical research
laboratories where the lab head generally occupied the final position in
the list of authors (whether or not she/he actually wrote any of the
paper).
The culture was strengthened when the British
Research Assessment Exercise
ratified the practice by placing emphasis almost exclusively on first
and last author positions for papers counting toward one’s track record.
In Australia anyway, the practice is becoming more and more mainstream,
hence one of the reasons that I tend to take the last position in most
papers coming out of my lab and for which I arguably have the second
most important contribution to overall authorship.
Talking to colleagues in France, USA and
elsewhere, I’m not sure the practice is quite as strong, but you should
at least be aware that it exists. After the ‘last position’ rule of
thumb, the next most important position is certainly second author.
After that, it tends to be a case of diminishing contributions up to the
penultimate author.
In cases where this isn’t necessarily clear, and
certainly in many cases of many (i.e., > 10) authors, the ones
between position 2 and n-1 are often listed alphabetically by surname. The latter trick is a good way to avoid infighting amongst co-authors.
Increasingly there are situations where two
or more authors have equal contributions. It is perfectly acceptable and
even now conventional that such authors are indicated by some sort of
superscript symbol as having contributed equally. This often includes
the first two authors, or the last two, but I’ve even seen it applied to
positions 2 and 3, or to even more than two authors.
For anything but
the lead and second author, however, the paper will always be referred
to as SURNAME1 et al., so take the ‘equal contribution’ convention with a grain of salt.
In conclusion, make sure you discuss with
all your authors any issues that could arise BEFORE they do. Heading off
any future problems by discussing them well beforehand is a good way to
avoid woe later on. If you follow our
paper-writing protocol
and circulate to all potential authors from the outset of the idea, you
will also avoid many of the worst problems from the outset. Happy
(co)writing!
