In the last few months, I have taken myself off of some collaborative papers where I felt I had not contributed much. The person from my group who actually did the work was my postdoc, but he is pretty independent and didn't really need my input to do what he did as part of these collaborations. Therefore, I think he should be a coauthor but I shouldn't, so I asked to be removed. I think one lead senior author may have been a bit upset by my request to be removed, because he only removes himself from papers that he doesn't want to be associated with (e.g. doesn't believe the science). I do that too (luckily only had to do it a couple of times in the past), but this was not the case of questionable science -- I simply do not think I contributed in a substantial enough way, so I don't want to be a coauthor just because someone puts me automatically on everything that my postdoc contributes to.
We are here to yet again discuss the evergreen issue of authorship assignment. I don't want to discuss the cases where a person is clearly one of the key personnel, without whom the paper would not have happened -- they made absolutely critical contributions to the design, execution, analysis of data, or writing up of the paper. I am talking about the middle-of-the-author-list people, who were not key players but whose contribution may (or may not) have exceeded a byline in the acknowledgement.
So I have been thinking about what my own minimum is for being comfortable with my own coauthorship. I think it is being involved in at least some (preferably most) collaborative meetings and discussions about the project (i.e I have made some intellectual contribution to the project's design or analysis), combined with a significant effort on the manuscript writing and editing. Alternatively, instead of collaborative meetings I could do a lot of work with my own group member on the theoretical side of the project, combined with a serious effort on writing and editing of the paper.
I don't know; maybe it's my overall state of being progressively more exhausted, more jaded with my job and doing science in a very fast-paced, competitive field... The idea of being an author on a paper where I haven't really pulled my weight seems to become more and more distasteful to me as I grow older. I have realized that the ballooning discomfort with the concept of courtesy authorships has little to do with the prescribed authorship assignment code (although we should all be aware, and teach our students, what ethical behavior in our field is); rather, it comes from my own internal code of ethics and even so more from my own sense of professional pride.
However, a few senior colleagues tell me that I am shooting myself in the foot by declining courtesy coauthorships (more papers --> more citations and more recognition etc.), that I need to relax and accept the courtesy authorships or, better yet, that I should in fact proactively seek them out. Gaaaah. I really really don't want to do this. It feels pathetic, like I can't do anything substantial on my own, so I have to leech onto other people's work.
What are your own coauthorship-comfort criteria? How much do you minimally do for papers on which you are a coauthor? When (if ever) do you remove yourself from the author list? When (if ever) do you insist that someone put you on the paper as an author? Have you ever fought to have someone else taken off/put on and for what reason? (I have fought to get my postdoc on the author list a couple of times.) Lastly, do you think all these courtesy authorships are really important to one's career, that not having them hurts your record in the long run?
23 comments:
I am in a theoretical field, and I am always always wary of being on papers where I don't know the content enough to be confident of its correctness. Even if someone else has done most of the work, I always go over all the proof details, and ask to play with the simulation code before I put my name on the paper.
At an early stage, so happily will accept each and every courtesy authorship. You know there are bean counters around...
I really like it when people think about whether they have contributed enough to be on a paper. I have declined to be shared first (but instead be second) when I felt that I hadn't done enough work to justify being shared first, even though our collaborators offered me to be shared-first.
However, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people that don't feel this way and will happily accept anything that's offered to them. And considering that those are people that you compete with for grants and jobs, I'm never sure if it's a smart thing to decline authorships...
Big birthday coming up.
Big birthday coming up.
You mean the baby? Yes! :)
I always get an extremely good impression of someone when the person declines authorship because of not having contributed enough. This means I am dealing with a very self-confident and fair person. Such people are very rare and I think in the end this behaviour might result in more, not less publications. If someone insists on co-authoring although not having contributed much, I will be less inclined to include him/her in my next project. I imagine other people might feel this way too.
Then again, for us postdocs it takes a lot of courage to decline co-authorship. I have never decline co-authorship yet, but in retrospect I think I really should have in some cases.
There are far more papers to which I've contributed thought and effort and am *not* on the co-author list than papers where I'm a "courtesy author".
It's normal to have a range of papers--some which are your intellectual babies; others in which you've played a minor (but still important! role).
Here are some of the tricky issues that I've seen arise:
You are paying your postdoc from your research grants, and your postdoc is doing an interesting collaboration with others resulting in a paper. Should you be on the co-author list?
Your lab runs a nice piece of equipment, and a graduate student from another lab uses it to make a measurement. Should you be a co-author?
Ideally--your postdocs and students & visiting researchers will share their work & progress & questions with you so that you will be in a natural position to contribute intellectually to the work and therefore be a co-author.
Completely agree...courtesy authorship seems like a sham to me. But given that publications are numero uno for hiring and firing, few are going to decline, especially in our early years (which may then develop into a habit that persists indefinitely).
I think the only way the courtesy authorship culture will change is when hiring and firing isn't based only on getting as many publications as possible with as many cites as possible, but on one's actual contribution (however one can define that...)
This is a painfully relevant issue to me right now, and might appreciate help from the crowd. I have had a number of conversations with a frequent collaborator, but these have all been fairly tangential to the paper as it has ended up written. My advisor strongly believes that this collaborator shouldn't get a courtesy authorship, though the collaborator might expect one. Anyone have a good way to "nudge" away a courtesy authorship?
AC, this is a pretty tough one. Has the collaborator invested quite a bit of time and energy in conversations with you as part of a joint project? Then I think he probably does deserve a co-authorship, especially if the original plan was to have his contributions in. Sort of how you shoot a movie, but not all the scenes make it in. I am sure the actors who were in the deleted scenes get to be paid, too?
If the collaborator has been active and responsive and generally engaged, I would err on the side of including him as an author. Ideally, he will remove himself if he feels he hasn't contributed enough. In contrast, people often hold grudges if they feel they have been left out of a paper they think they contributed to. I am not sure why your advisor insists on removing the collaborator?
You can also try a solution that unfortunately no one ever tries in the overwhelmingly passive-aggressive academia: ask the collaborator how he feels about his coauthorship. You could try something like "Dear Dr Helpful, I know you have invested a lot of time talking to me about X & Y, but it appears that the manuscript advisor and I are working on is focusing on Z instead. I am not sure if you want to be a co-author on this manuscript, since our correspondence was somewhat tangential to Z. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!"
I am also interested why your advisor is so dead-set against including a long-term, contributing collaborator on this paper... If your advisor won't hear of having Dr Helpful as a coauthor under any circumstances and regardless of Helpful's potentially feeling slighted, then all else is moot; no need to piss off advisor ove this. It's clearly something between them and it's best you stay out of it.
Good luck and tell us what you did!
I was a postdoc in an environment where damn near everybody in the group was on every paper. I was willing to reluctantly play along on listing some cow-orkers, but I felt really awkward when I was listed on a paper describing simulations that had been completed before I arrived in the group. My solution to the problem was to try to contribute something meaningful to the interpretation of the results during the editing process, but it still felt unreasonable.
There was one case where the leader of another group had lunch with my boss and said "Yeah, that sounds like a plausible hypothesis." On the basis of that, he was added as a co-author on the paper. The rationale was that he would collaborate with us on some follow-up work....follow-up work that never happened.
A related question. I have a grant that funds several postdocs and PhDs. They are working on papers related to my project, but where I personally am happy for them to publish alone or with other collaborators (as long as they acknowledge my comments and the grant). But...how do I deal with this on my CV? Do I have a separate section of 'publications from my group where I was not a co-author'? I've never seen this but in a recent faculty hire we were gobsmacked to find that one candidate listed almost no papers with his students - assuming that this meant they hadn't published - until he told us that he made them publish alone. From his CV we would not have known this, and almost did not shortlist him as a result....
A recent situation in our lab, for your thoughts:
Grad student did the majority of experiments and wrote the paper.
Undergraduate student did one experiment that became one important figure, using novel ideas and techniques well outside of grad student's (and PI's) expertise and skill set.
Postdoc trained undergraduate student, contributing several techniques that PI did not possess. Also contributed crucially to experimental design. However, because there was significant ESL problem with Grad student, Postdoc did not raise issue of authorship until the paper was written (avoiding a massive amount of grammar editing).
Who is on the paper?
Grad, PI?
Grad, Undergrad, PI?
Grad, Undergrad, Postdoc, PI?
I think it's generally better to include authors in borderline cases than to exclude them. Including them doesn't really hurt you (assuming you are first or last author), but excluding them could annoy people if they consider authorship differently.
In working groups that I've been a part of, they recommend discussing criteria for authorship before even starting collaborative research. If only - it would probably save a lot of headaches.
Anon, June20, 9:56
I would go for fourth option:
grad, undergrad, post-doc, PI
All seem to have contributed in some way. In old times, this would only generate acknowledgment for undergrad and post-dc and even for PI, but now when the number counts, you don't want to hurt anyone's CV.
Extremely relevant issue that all early career academics should take note of! Thank you for bringing it up GMP. I personally do not think that you should accept courtesy authorship on publications. I definitely do not agree with labs that put all of there members on papers, just so they can all have a big publication record, this is bordering on fraud (just to be a bit dramatic :) ).
I am currently having to fight with my supervisor to get someones name off my paper as a co-author. I do not know this person from a bar of soap, and all they have contributed to the work is to post us one sample (of which I have 50 of my own), and this sample does not bring anything to my paper and sort of stands out and screams-'WHY AM I HERE!'. I want to leave the sample, and the persons name, off my paper, as it does not make sense to me to have it there. However, my supervisor has promised a joint publication, and believes that having this person's name on our paper will 'look good'. However, being a glorified postman does not warrant co-authorship in my book! If said person had also contributed some novel ideas to my project this may be a different story. Said person is not even in the same field of expertise and would not even know if what we are writing is correct or not.
Courtesy coauthorships are not the norm in pure math. In fact, that would go against the ethical guidelines of the American Mathematical Society:
"All the authors listed for a paper, however, must have made a significant contribution to its content"
(http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics).
The courtesy authorship malaise stems directly from the beancounters' obsession with the number of publications the (only) evidence of research output. And from experience, when one offers courtesy authorship, the quid-pro-quo is almost expected.
I have accepted authorship on a few papers over the years with the following properties:
1. Much of the research has already been done by the time I am invited to participate;
2. The authors are not native English speakers and need some help with writing;
3. I cannot rule out that they think my co-authorship will "look good" (I am not the hugest big shot, but closer to that status than the lead authors in these cases)
In each of these cases, if I agree, I at least make sure to put a solid effort into editing the text, which typically results in substantial changes. (Usually I agree with the lead authors that they need some help.) Sometimes I find that I need to suggest additional calculations as well (I'm in a non-experimental field).
I feel that this is not unethical, because my input is substantial. Nonetheless I have become uneasy about accepting some such requests as time goes on, esp. those from people outside my institution whom I don't know well. I don't want to become just a paper doctor for hire.
There have been some other cases where I have been involved in the research, but not very deeply (a couple meetings, a little minor advice) and my authorship rights are questionable. If the lead authors exclude me from authorship in those cases, I don't complain. If they ask to include me, the first thing I ask is whether my contribution is at least equal to others on the author list. If yes, and I accept, again I make sure to give substantive comments on the manuscript. How much those are important or needed of course depends on how good a writer the lead author is.
A Big Name that I had worked with in the past once tried to put my name on a later paper their group put out without telling me (I found out from one of the other authors and only as an aside). They didn't even send me the manuscript to look over before submitting it with my name on it.
I was pretty pissed. What if the science in the paper sucked? What if I disagreed with the methods/conclusions/etc? What if it made me look like a greedy jerk to have my name on something that I did not work on at all? I certainly consider such people to be greedy.
I insisted on being taken off pretty strongly and eventually was. There are still some preprint citations out there that include my name though...
EarlyToBed asked
"
You are paying your postdoc from your research grants, and your postdoc is doing an interesting collaboration with others resulting in a paper. Should you be on the co-author list?
Your lab runs a nice piece of equipment, and a graduate student from another lab uses it to make a measurement. Should you be a co-author?"
In both cases, the answer is "NO!"
You are confusing funding with authorship. An acknowledgement of the equipment loan suffices in the second case, and acknowledgement of the funding grant in the first.
Anon from June 20, 2012 7:52 AM asked:
I have a grant that funds several postdocs and PhDs. They are working on papers related to my project, but where I personally am happy for them to publish alone or with other collaborators (as long as they acknowledge my comments and the grant). But...how do I deal with this on my CV? Do I have a separate section of 'publications from my group where I was not a co-author'?
Anon, what field is this? Is it math, CS? In the fields I am most familiar with (physics, chemistry, materials science, various branches of engineering) it is assumed that if you are paying a student or a postdoc from your grant, that you are also providing training and mentoring to those people (unless it's one of the huge centers grants, like MRSECs, in which case everyone is only involved in a tiny part of the whole program and the PI obviously isn't an author on most of the papers produced). I would assume that if you invest a lot of time in talking to them, brainstorming ideas, troubleshooting, that you are typically eligible for authorship. Why wouldn't you be an author if you actually invested considerable time and effort in the project? That's as wrong as being an author without having done much...
I really don't know how to put these "advisorless" advisee papers it on your CV though... In my case, it is rare that my student or postdoc works on something where I have little input; if that happens, then I am not on those papers and they don't appear on my CV, but it's not a big deal because these are few and I am (deservedly) a coauthor on the vast majority of my group members' papers. I would think in a situation that you describe, where you are in danger of it looking like your peeps don't produce at all if you don't list the papers without you, then by all means have a separate section with just those papers... Again, this would really be unusual in the fields I am familiar with...
Grad, undergrad, post-doc, pi.
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