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What contribution to a research project is worthy of an authorship?
09 July 2012
By Rob Hardwick
An interesting article in The Scientist (http://the-scientist.com/2012/07/01/alls-not-fair-in-science-and-publishing/) describes the experience of an academic who did not get a mention on a journal publication despite offering crucial advice to the interpretation of the results.
This got me thinking - what contribution to a research project is worthy of an authorship? In this case the scientist involved gave his interpretation of the data to his collaborator, who then proceeded to publish without offering him an authorship. This sounds wrong to me – surely he should be a co-author as his intellectual contribution formed the basis of the paper’s conclusions. But where do you draw the line with advice received from colleagues and authorship? What about other contributions, like routine experimental work? Has anybody else felt they have been denied a paper authorship they have deserved?
Blanka Sengerová14 July 2012 at 08:49 PM
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Good point and an interesting article, Rob.
You say "In this case the scientist involved gave his interpretation of the data to his collaborator, who then proceeded to publish without offering him an authorship." which is not quite true. The author gave his interpretation of the data, DID SOME EXPERIMENTS to test that interpretation and then was scooped by the people who snuffed him and basically repeated his experiments.
My view is that in the case where he only offered a potential explanation of the data without going any further, he shouldn't be a coauthor (his contribution would have been a possible tea break conversation). In the case, as it was, where he did some experiments to test his explanation, he ought to have been included as a co-author.
I've heard about PIs that go to conferences (in the field of cell biology, but may apply elsewhere), see other groups' posters/talks and report back to their lab during the conference in the "you've got to work on this particular experiment to get there before XYZ's lab" manner. But maybe that is just an urban legend?
Sandrine Berges31 July 2012 at 02:09 PM
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This is a question that never arises in philosophy where co-authorship is extremely rare. In my faculty, we sometimes complain that this puts us at a disadvantage when the university assesses our research output, as researchers from science departments, whose names appear as co-authors on publications, end up with a much longer list of articles than we do. This means that they have better pay, and less teaching. So of course, we say 'it's not fair!'.
But the article you mention sounds more like a case for an acknowledgment in a footnote than a co-authorship. This is probably what we would do in philosophy (if we did anything like analysing data, which of course we don't). Maybe this is where we go wrong.
Blanka Sengerová09 August 2012 at 09:49 AM
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>> But the article you mention sounds more like a case for an acknowledgment in a footnote than a co-authorship.
I disagree, Sandrine. It would have been a footnote acknowledgement if the person had simply suggested the experiment to the main authors. But in this case he actually used his time and his reagents to carry out the experiments they'd discussed so he should have been a coauthor. But science is tought and competitive...
>> So of course, we say 'it's not fair!'.
Yes but presumably all you need for your research is a library and books and computer and written sources which are nowhere near as expensive as the reagents and equipment needed to carry out the experiments in science articles. Not all labs are able to have all the kit so collaborations are very common and important. So working together with other groups, both inside your own university and outside, is pretty important.