Worried about my authorship in PhD publications

July 16, 2006 4:05 PM

Computer Sc. PhD student: Should I be worried that I am the second author in most of my publications ?

I am a PhD student in Computer Science, and have been decently active in publishing articles in journals and conferences. However, in most of them I appear as the second author (usually after my advisor). When I asked him, he said that it is quite regular to assume that the advisor would put his name first in joint publications with his students.
I am wondering if this is so. Would this affect how my resume looks (for jobs in the academia) ? Should I start pushing for more publications with me as the first author, at the risk of having a mini-confrontation with him?

posted by raheel to education (23 comments total)

Let it go. It's standard IMHO.
posted by bim at 4:17 PM on July 16, 2006

I consider it unusual that your advisor would take first authorship on YOUR work. I've been the first author on all my pubs and added my advisor as the second (sometimes last if I had other collaborators) only when he contributed in some significant way (actual field work, advice, research funds, writing). Sounds to me like your advisor is taking advantage of you. Does he have tenure yet?

Caveat: I am not in computer science - I don't know if things work differently in your field.
posted by special-k at 4:25 PM on July 16, 2006

I consider it unusual as well (I'm in the biological sciences, not computer science). My PhD supervisor and I always had an understanding that I would get first-author on my papers, unless I quit and left work unpublished, in which case he reserved the right to publish it as first author. This seemed like a good deal to me.

Should I start pushing for more publications with me as the first author, at the risk of having a mini-confrontation with him?

Yes. Do you feel it will actually come to a confrontation? If so, there are usually mechanisms in place to deal with any clashes you may have with your supervisor - this is your career you should be worried about here, not his.
posted by Jimbob at 4:34 PM on July 16, 2006

I am in CS and got a PhD.

During my MS my advisor never did the work but put her name first. I did not question it as all my colleagues had the same deal. I quit (but not because of that!)

During my PhD my advisor never once asked to be on a paper with me. All of my (main) papers I had sole or first authorship along with colleagues. Near my dissertation I asked my advisor more questions than usual about an experiment and I later asked him if he'd like to be on the paper, and he shrugged.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1) Single author papers are not necessarily good. You are not a big name in the field (yet!!) and single-author papers run the 'crackpot risk.' Even if your advisor didn't do the work, chances are, the name is helpful to have on there. It lends you credence and grounding to the field.

2) Most all people evaluating your work will understand that your advisor will get billing one way or another and filter it out as noise.

3) My best papers were collaborative efforts. If your advisor is doing work with you (you don't say,) be grateful and take advantage of his time and good name.

You will be the only author on your dissertation, and whatever journal articles / books come out of that. Until then, I think you should allow the process to continue. However, if it bothers you, you need to talk with your advisor and make a compromise with him.
posted by neustile at 4:38 PM on July 16, 2006

The norms for this practice are very field specific. In my field (business) it is not a problem for a student to be second author on publications. However, there is also a norm that first-authorship should go to the driving author. That means if the papers are your idea and you do most of the work, you should expect to be first author. The authorship discussion is something that many graduate students are too scared to really do right. This should happen at the beginning of the publication process. You should discuss your roles on the paper and then decide who deserves first authorship. This is where an unethical advisor could easily use the differences in power to demand first authorship.

One thing I will say, it is easy when you are first beginning in graduate school to feel like you did all of the work on your paper and that you deserved to be first author. However, when you have a little more experience you may realize that although it was your basic idea, and you did the leg work on data collection, that it was your advisor who took the raw idea and transformed it into something publishable. Remember, ideas and data collection are not the critical input in getting good publications, it is implementation of those things. Really take a hard look at yourself and your contributions vis a vis your advisor's contributions. Maybe he is legitimately the first-author on those papers. However, now that you have more experience maybe you are more able to make those necessary contributions that deserve first authorship.
posted by bove at 4:43 PM on July 16, 2006

To answer your actual question, I definitely think it is quite regular. When I see "Person, Famous and Grad Student" I always assume the grad student did the work.
posted by neustile at 4:45 PM on July 16, 2006

Having been on a number of search committees for new assistant professors, I can tell you that one or two publications where you are senior or (especially) sole author will dispel the idea that you are riding on coattails. I don't think your fears are unfounded, and you should worry about this. But I would worry more about the fact that your advisor sounds like a jerk. Good professors are much more likely to let grad students take first authorship when they don't deserve it than they are to usurp it when they dont. Is he/she an assistant professor? If not, his/her behavior is abominable.
posted by Crotalus at 5:07 PM on July 16, 2006

I mean usurp it when they DO.
posted by Crotalus at 5:08 PM on July 16, 2006

Yes. Do you feel it will actually come to a confrontation? If so, there are usually mechanisms in place to deal with any clashes you may have with your supervisor - this is your career you should be worried about here, not his.

Um, just keep in mind that your advisor has tremendous power over your career, especially if you are aiming for academia. You do not want your advisor to be writing you lukewarm letters of recommendation. There are always such mechanisms in place (formal appeals to the department/division/union/etc), but I find it hard to believe that the student is ever the one who wins in the long run, if they're put in a position where they have to take advantage of them.
posted by advil at 5:09 PM on July 16, 2006

Sounds to me like you are getting mildly screwed, but your field is different than mine and I could be wrong. A good place to ask would be the Chronicle of Higher Ed forums: http://chronicle.com/forums/
posted by LarryC at 5:17 PM on July 16, 2006

I've only published one paper, and on that paper the faculty advisor was the last name published. However, he had only an advisory role in the project. If the paper is part of a long-term publishing effort towards a common goal, under the direct supervision of the professor, spanning many years and many students, then it can be appropriate for the professor to go first.

As I recall, in mathematics, most papers are published with the authors in alphabetical order. How logical!
posted by muddgirl at 5:19 PM on July 16, 2006

In economics too, the alphabet rules. I felt sorry for my teacher Zhang.
posted by TrashyRambo at 5:37 PM on July 16, 2006

In chemistry, it's the grad student who did the work first and the professor is always last. And it does matter for getting grants and fellowships. And also for your thesis, many schools will allow a relatively unmodified article to be used as a chapter in your thesis if you where first author. Sounds like it's different in CS.
posted by 445supermag at 6:11 PM on July 16, 2006

I have a PhD in Information Technology and I was always the first author on my papers, but my supervisor (it's supervisor in Australia, advisor in the US, same thing) was always on there too. I agree that a single author paper might slim your chances of getting accepted, but I also agree that you did the legwork, so you should have the first authorship.

Having said that, this is very much an issue for debate. My supervisor and I discussed it on several occasions and she told me that I was "lucky" to be first author and that sometimes it didn't happen that way. Personally, I don't know if I'd publish the other way though, since I did the grunt work!

As for a supervisor shrugging their shoulders and going "whatever", I must say, I'm quite surprised! My supervisor had to submit a yearly report as an academic and one of the categories was "papers published". Putting her name on my papers was always an easy way to increase that number. In fact, I don't know that she's published any papers "on her own" (ie. without a PhD student) for a number of years! A professor that goes *shrug* must be doing something very fancy to think that more publications no longer matter in their career!
posted by ranglin at 6:15 PM on July 16, 2006

The advisor has been nice to me overall, and a lot of papers have had us both working on it, although he has mainly contributed a few ideas with me working the details.
I do have 3 proceeding papers with my first name, though second in the 2 journal articles. He is an assistant professor, just starting out (3 years now). I guess I am being a bit rash, specially my thesis work hasn't resulted in any publications yet...
posted by raheel at 6:55 PM on July 16, 2006

Maybe it's field-specific, but in biochemistry the senior author goes last. If there are 2 or more faculty members on a paper, the one who goes last gets the lion's share of the prestige. Students go first, in descending order of contribution. So the first student/postdoc/etc did the most grunt work, and the last professor/PI/etc did the most advising, grant writing, and reviewing.

Not only would it be quite gauche for the senior author to go first, s/he would be assumed to be the lowly peon at the bench! (By those who didn't know the players in a particular area of research.)

That might be something to look into in your area - check out some papers in your specific field, where you know the big names, and see how the order of authorship runs. If the big names are last, you can point out that being first author might backfire on your advisor.
posted by Quietgal at 7:29 PM on July 16, 2006

As you probably know, there is some risk in choosing an assistant professor as an advisor. Tenure anxiety, especially around the third year, is often all-consuming. In your situation I would recommend a couple of things. First, you could meet with your advisor and tell him that you're concerned that you have no sole/senior authored pubs. Ask him what the division of labor might look like on a paper where you are first author, and if his answer suggests some acceptable terms, tell him you'd like to work on a paper under such an arrangement.

Sometimes an advisor will say something like: "It's my data set, therefore I'm senior author" or "You don't have the academic preparation to be senior author." If you get this type of response you might have to lump it, and I can assure you that the latter response is sometimes (often?) true.

If you can't launch with solo or senior authored pubs on your vita, you should make sure that your advisor notes the extent of your contribution to your papers in his rec letter. It is common for students in your situation to meet with their advisors and have a frank discussion about your strengths and weaknesses as a job candidate. In meetings like these, you can finesse the content of your letters of rec.

Finally, if your publications haven't lit the world on fire, you might want to concentrate on some other things that can help compensate. For instance, evidence of good teaching matters in all academic settings except the largest reserach universities. You might want to pick up a couple of classes where you are, or as an adjunct at another nearby college. In fact, I would strongly urge you to consider distinguishing yourself as a teacher, since it is unlikely that an asst prof who is just out of the chute himself has the gravitas it sometimes takes to place a student in a big research university. I find that most Ph.D. students have unrealistic expectations for the job market, and spend their time preparing for jobs they are never going to get. A realist with classroom experience and a coherent teaching philosopy will get a job at a regional state college or liberal arts school over a failed idealist any day.

Just my .02.
posted by Crotalus at 7:54 PM on July 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

CS PhD here (graduating today!). I'm first author on all the papers based on my work. My supervisor is second. I did the work, but would not have been able to do it without his input. He's had virtually nothing to do with the implementation side, but the ideas implemented have all been discussed with him. In my department (research-heavy, UK, probably in the top 20) all PhD work that gets published has the author line "A. Student and A. Academic".

What happens with other PhD students in your department? What about other CS PhDs in comparable institutions?

I know quite a lot of people with PhDs (comes with the territory I guess) and I've not heard of this very often. It usually occurs when the supervisor has done a good deal of the leg-work for the paper in question. This is rare. I've done a lot of teaching and have got a few conference papers out of work with undergraduates I've supervised, and the undergraduate's name has gone first because they did the hard work.

If I were you I'd carry out a mini survey of other PhD students in your department, or even ask a friendly Prof. just to make sure it is odd in your situation, then bring it up with the advisor. Is there a postgraduate committee or representative you could talk to? Do you have an assigned mentor on the staff or anything like that? This is the sort of situation in which some sort of informal/semi-formal advice from within your own department could really help.

Email's in the profile if you want to talk further -
posted by handee at 12:40 AM on July 17, 2006

IT PhD here. My supervisor is second author on all my papers, despite contributing little more than word choices. He made it clear what the rules are from the outset.

But also, my papers haven't, yet, been important. If I was to do something earth-shattering, I wonder if he might suddenly want to become first author! In which case, it would be a good thing, because you're doing great research.

Remember that academia is a feudal system; Everyone "owns", capitalises on, and benefits from the work of those they supervise. Doing a PhD is how you move from serfdom into nobility.
posted by cogat at 4:08 AM on July 17, 2006

I'm a PhD candidate in CS, and my advisor always puts my name first (if there's a question about it -- see below), but there are some who don't. But what area are you in? If you're in theory, the names almost always go in alphabetical order. If his name is first and you're in theory and his name is last in alphabetical order, that could be a little strange.
posted by transona5 at 6:31 AM on July 17, 2006

Just as another data point, I'm a CS PhD student in the computer graphics field and the PhD students' names always come first and the advisor's name last here. (Here being Belgium, I wonder how much this is a regional thing)
posted by Runkst at 6:59 AM on July 17, 2006

Biological sciences Ph.D. here, with a bunch of papers. On all the ones with my advisor, I am first author, he is second (or third, if an intern or other graduate student contributed as well.)
posted by nekton at 11:36 AM on July 17, 2006

Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. You will need your major advisor for recommendations and various things to get that first job. If you make an enemy of him/her, you will lose more than you gain. Think long run, not short run.
posted by bim at 8:27 PM on July 17, 2006