What makes a co-author?
November 25, 2009 2:50 PM Subscribe
I worked on a project with some other academics. Now I want to present on and write about the project. Help me understand the etiquette of co-authoring.
I'm an academic librarian. Anonymous because some of you know me. Some colleagues and I, as part of our job, collaborated on a big project with multiple parts, over about two years.
Perhaps unnecessary background:
Last year I was accepted at a conference to present on the first part of the project. I worked very hard on my proposal without help from the other people who participated (though they knew I was working on this). After my proposal was accepted, my teammate Bob found out he got external funding to attend the conference. A third team member told me it'd be appropriate for Bob to present with me.
I probably should have said yes, but I was taken aback at the time because I had done a ton of work outside of the work day on the proposal. Also, it was going to be a short presentation, and Bob is one of those types who creates endless powerpoints and reads them and runs out of time before getting to the heart of the content.
I was also being selfish. I didn't know if I had funding to attend the conference when I submitted the proposal. Bob waited til he had guaranteed funding to even raise the issue of participating in the presentation.
Also, the paper itself, for the proceedings, was going to take a ton of work--the angle I was taking in the presentation was going to require substantial additional research--and so it wasn't just about sharing the limelight (which, admittedly, I did not want to share). I wasn't sure if Bob was really ready to put the time into writing the paper.
In the end it didn't matter; because of family illness/emergency, I couldn't attend the conference, and Bob didn't want to step in with my powerpoint. The paper was never written.
But I did bungle it, and created some ill will at work in our team. (Which was never discussed but simmered for a long time.)
Fast forward til now, when I am working with a different team. I am again proposing to discuss this project (which got much bigger) at a big conference which also has a paper component. I alerted my old team members. No one can attend the conference, but one is very enthusiastic about co-authoring the paper (and she, "Sue," happens to be the other person who led this part of the project with me). I know she will put a lot of work into it, and we work well together. Bob responded in a very confusing way, saying it was a group project and I should let people write the parts they know.
What is the proper approach for co-authorship? Do I list the whole team because it was a group project? Or only those who are willing to do the extra work to write the paper? Is there a certain amount of work expected? Papers in other fields often have endless lists of authors, but you don't always see this in librarianship.
My other concern is that if I include Bob as a co-author, he'll expect to have a lot of input, which then I won't like. I need to publish for my job, but Bob does not. So there's more on the line for me.
Regardless of co-authorship, I plan to credit the entire team explicitly in any papers I write about the project.
What should I do? I'd be interested in general input about co-authoring in academic fields, and advice specifically about my situation. Thanks.
I'm an academic librarian. Anonymous because some of you know me. Some colleagues and I, as part of our job, collaborated on a big project with multiple parts, over about two years.
Perhaps unnecessary background:
Last year I was accepted at a conference to present on the first part of the project. I worked very hard on my proposal without help from the other people who participated (though they knew I was working on this). After my proposal was accepted, my teammate Bob found out he got external funding to attend the conference. A third team member told me it'd be appropriate for Bob to present with me.
I probably should have said yes, but I was taken aback at the time because I had done a ton of work outside of the work day on the proposal. Also, it was going to be a short presentation, and Bob is one of those types who creates endless powerpoints and reads them and runs out of time before getting to the heart of the content.
I was also being selfish. I didn't know if I had funding to attend the conference when I submitted the proposal. Bob waited til he had guaranteed funding to even raise the issue of participating in the presentation.
Also, the paper itself, for the proceedings, was going to take a ton of work--the angle I was taking in the presentation was going to require substantial additional research--and so it wasn't just about sharing the limelight (which, admittedly, I did not want to share). I wasn't sure if Bob was really ready to put the time into writing the paper.
In the end it didn't matter; because of family illness/emergency, I couldn't attend the conference, and Bob didn't want to step in with my powerpoint. The paper was never written.
But I did bungle it, and created some ill will at work in our team. (Which was never discussed but simmered for a long time.)
Fast forward til now, when I am working with a different team. I am again proposing to discuss this project (which got much bigger) at a big conference which also has a paper component. I alerted my old team members. No one can attend the conference, but one is very enthusiastic about co-authoring the paper (and she, "Sue," happens to be the other person who led this part of the project with me). I know she will put a lot of work into it, and we work well together. Bob responded in a very confusing way, saying it was a group project and I should let people write the parts they know.
What is the proper approach for co-authorship? Do I list the whole team because it was a group project? Or only those who are willing to do the extra work to write the paper? Is there a certain amount of work expected? Papers in other fields often have endless lists of authors, but you don't always see this in librarianship.
My other concern is that if I include Bob as a co-author, he'll expect to have a lot of input, which then I won't like. I need to publish for my job, but Bob does not. So there's more on the line for me.
Regardless of co-authorship, I plan to credit the entire team explicitly in any papers I write about the project.
What should I do? I'd be interested in general input about co-authoring in academic fields, and advice specifically about my situation. Thanks.
Biologist here. In my field at least, there's not a set of hard and fast rules. In some instances people involved with a project might just get an acknowledgment, while in other instances they might be included as a junior author. In my experience it basically comes down to group politics. Personally I think it is best to err on the side of caution and grant these folk junior authorships in order to maintain harmony. After all, the main thing is that you're first author and when it's cited it will be your name.
In my case, for conference papers (rather than peer reviewed journals) I almost always present with my name only, and acknowledge the other contributors early on in the talk, outlining what they did. For proper papers I see no problem in having multiple authors, arranged either in alphabetical order after me, or in the order of the amount of contribution they made to the particular piece of work.
I see your main problem here coming when you divide up the proceeds of this large project into a number of papers. You'll probably find that everyone wants a first author paper out of it. Communication is absolutely essential in this case to avoid bad feelings. Ideally you'd divide up the work sensibly, with each person taking the lead in writing a piece focusing on their particular niche, but collaborating on refining it after the first draft. Although some people describe this approach as "salami slicing" it can be very productive with each of you netting a single first author paper and 2-3 second/third author ones with minimal extra work.
Several journals (e.g. Nature) now have written authorship policies outlining what is required for authorship. In practice this is usually presented in the form of outlining briefly the work that each author did. e.g. A and B wrote the manuscript; B did the analysis for part 1; C did the analysis for part 2; B, C and D collected the data. It might help to try and outline something like that in your case. I believe this practice was started as a way of discouraging "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" affairs where friendly colleagues give each other authorships to inflate their publication lists when only contributing minimal work.
posted by jonesor at 5:08 PM on November 25, 2009
In my case, for conference papers (rather than peer reviewed journals) I almost always present with my name only, and acknowledge the other contributors early on in the talk, outlining what they did. For proper papers I see no problem in having multiple authors, arranged either in alphabetical order after me, or in the order of the amount of contribution they made to the particular piece of work.
I see your main problem here coming when you divide up the proceeds of this large project into a number of papers. You'll probably find that everyone wants a first author paper out of it. Communication is absolutely essential in this case to avoid bad feelings. Ideally you'd divide up the work sensibly, with each person taking the lead in writing a piece focusing on their particular niche, but collaborating on refining it after the first draft. Although some people describe this approach as "salami slicing" it can be very productive with each of you netting a single first author paper and 2-3 second/third author ones with minimal extra work.
Several journals (e.g. Nature) now have written authorship policies outlining what is required for authorship. In practice this is usually presented in the form of outlining briefly the work that each author did. e.g. A and B wrote the manuscript; B did the analysis for part 1; C did the analysis for part 2; B, C and D collected the data. It might help to try and outline something like that in your case. I believe this practice was started as a way of discouraging "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" affairs where friendly colleagues give each other authorships to inflate their publication lists when only contributing minimal work.
posted by jonesor at 5:08 PM on November 25, 2009
My impressions:
In medicine papers can have hundreds of authors. People seem to err on the side of including everyone who participated.
I'm in the sciences where papers tend to have a few (2-7) authors. If I were you, I would have included Bob's (and everyone else's) name on the presentation. I might not have given him lots of input or suggested he join for the actually speaking part of the presentation, but all the people who collaborated on the project would be listed as (2nd+) authors. If I were Bob or the other collaborators I would have been livid with you for this and not anxious to work with you again.
In the humanities publications my impression is papers tend to have 1 or maybe 2 authors, the papers reflect some scholar's studious and deliberate pondering of some issue and having your name appear alone with acknowledgment of others' contributions seems more reasonable, and maybe librarianship publications are more in this category.
I get the impression the difference is because in modern science you need to collaborate to do just about any significant project, while in the humanities it can be done solo. You did not do this work solo, even if you write the paper solo, and should reflect the contributions of others with an authorship credit.
posted by pseudonick at 6:50 PM on November 25, 2009
In medicine papers can have hundreds of authors. People seem to err on the side of including everyone who participated.
I'm in the sciences where papers tend to have a few (2-7) authors. If I were you, I would have included Bob's (and everyone else's) name on the presentation. I might not have given him lots of input or suggested he join for the actually speaking part of the presentation, but all the people who collaborated on the project would be listed as (2nd+) authors. If I were Bob or the other collaborators I would have been livid with you for this and not anxious to work with you again.
In the humanities publications my impression is papers tend to have 1 or maybe 2 authors, the papers reflect some scholar's studious and deliberate pondering of some issue and having your name appear alone with acknowledgment of others' contributions seems more reasonable, and maybe librarianship publications are more in this category.
I get the impression the difference is because in modern science you need to collaborate to do just about any significant project, while in the humanities it can be done solo. You did not do this work solo, even if you write the paper solo, and should reflect the contributions of others with an authorship credit.
posted by pseudonick at 6:50 PM on November 25, 2009
Including people as authors will make them happy and not including them will make them unhappy and possibly angry.
I can see no reason to err on the side of not sharing the authorship credit when there is a solid case to be made for including them.
(I want to emphasize again if this happened to me in the sciences, I would hold a massively negative opinion of someone who wasn't willing to share the author byline with those that shared the work. My adviser included me on some publications that strictly speaking she probably didn't need to, erring on the side of generosity earned her a lifetime of my goodwill.)
posted by pseudonick at 7:06 PM on November 25, 2009
I can see no reason to err on the side of not sharing the authorship credit when there is a solid case to be made for including them.
(I want to emphasize again if this happened to me in the sciences, I would hold a massively negative opinion of someone who wasn't willing to share the author byline with those that shared the work. My adviser included me on some publications that strictly speaking she probably didn't need to, erring on the side of generosity earned her a lifetime of my goodwill.)
posted by pseudonick at 7:06 PM on November 25, 2009
There's a pretty big divide between publishing expectations in libraries and in other areas of academia, especially the sciences. My impression is that in the sciences, and to a lesser extent in the humanities, if you work on a project, alone or with others, a paper is forthcoming from that work. No (or very very few) exceptions. My lived experience in libraries is that many projects are never written or presented about at all. So, overall, it's much less of a professional slight for someone to say "hey, I'm going to write this up" and not include everyone, because no one necessarily expected any writing to happen in the first place.
Not to say that the sciences folks are wrong, just pointing out that the expectations and cultures are really different.
posted by donnagirl at 7:30 PM on November 25, 2009
Not to say that the sciences folks are wrong, just pointing out that the expectations and cultures are really different.
posted by donnagirl at 7:30 PM on November 25, 2009
My thesis advisor advised me once, when I was struggling with should so-and-so be a co-author, that it's better to be generous. It doesn't cost you much, and it makes people happy, and someday you might be listed on a paper that you didn't do as much on as some other author.
In mathematics, for what it's worth, there is no first author/second author status like in the sciences; authors are listed alphabetically, and you can't tell who did what. Collaboration is very frequent.
For what it's worth, I find the assumption that Bob would of course present with you at the conference to be weird; presumably he hadn't submitted the presentation proposal. But I don't quite understand about the difference between the project you did at work with the team and the paper you are now writing. If it is something akin to you collected a lot of data and did experiments with the team and now you are analyzing and writing things up---that is, really adding a lot of new stuff---I'm not sure you would have to have everyone's name on every paper that comes from the data, although you certainly could (again, to be generous), and maybe should. But it also seems like you wouldn't have to accept Bob's input on a paper that you are writing with new analysis, unless the paper is simply a summary of stuff that he and you and the rest of the team had already accomplished, in which case, yeah, they all should probably be listed on the paper.
posted by leahwrenn at 10:08 PM on November 25, 2009
In mathematics, for what it's worth, there is no first author/second author status like in the sciences; authors are listed alphabetically, and you can't tell who did what. Collaboration is very frequent.
For what it's worth, I find the assumption that Bob would of course present with you at the conference to be weird; presumably he hadn't submitted the presentation proposal. But I don't quite understand about the difference between the project you did at work with the team and the paper you are now writing. If it is something akin to you collected a lot of data and did experiments with the team and now you are analyzing and writing things up---that is, really adding a lot of new stuff---I'm not sure you would have to have everyone's name on every paper that comes from the data, although you certainly could (again, to be generous), and maybe should. But it also seems like you wouldn't have to accept Bob's input on a paper that you are writing with new analysis, unless the paper is simply a summary of stuff that he and you and the rest of the team had already accomplished, in which case, yeah, they all should probably be listed on the paper.
posted by leahwrenn at 10:08 PM on November 25, 2009
Not an academic librarian, but currently working as a research assistant at a library school. The papers and presentations I work on are usually the result of collaborative group work, and we always err on the side of including as many people as co-authors as is appropriate. Because our work is usually conducted as a team, we include all the team members on a paper or poster, with the order being determined by the amount of people's intellectual contribution. So even though I write the first drafts of a lot of the publications, the principal investigator on the grant is usually first author, because I'm often fleshing out his ideas and work. If there were a paper or poster that I had done the majority of the intellectual, not just writing, work on, but in consultation with other team members, I would be first author. But for us, at least, it's not really about who does the writing itself, but about the amounts that people have contributed intellectually to the work being written about. And everyone who participated significantly gets authorship if they want it.
posted by MsMolly at 10:12 PM on November 25, 2009
posted by MsMolly at 10:12 PM on November 25, 2009
I'm a librarian and have been in this situation. In m experience, most people in the team aren't interested in writing, so I have worked together with those that are. Those that actively contribute something to the paper get a co-author credit, and the others are acknowledged within the text of the paper somewhere.
If you have more than 4-5 co-authors, you need to stop and reconsider. That's not usual, and makes writing the actual paper difficult to manage. FWIW, I generally list myself first (and my name is first alpha usually anyway) because I am the one who does most of the background research, abstract, intro and conclusion, and coordination of everyone's parts to make it sound like one paper.
posted by wingless_angel at 1:01 AM on November 26, 2009
If you have more than 4-5 co-authors, you need to stop and reconsider. That's not usual, and makes writing the actual paper difficult to manage. FWIW, I generally list myself first (and my name is first alpha usually anyway) because I am the one who does most of the background research, abstract, intro and conclusion, and coordination of everyone's parts to make it sound like one paper.
posted by wingless_angel at 1:01 AM on November 26, 2009
Biologist here. I would include Bob and group members whose work was used in the content or they somehow directly contributed (helped edit, etc.). Group members who have had nothing to do with the project can be left off or given an acknowledgement. Do you have a boss? In my field, the boss is always given authorship even if he/she was not involved in the project because their grant money supported the project. Also, said boss might be able to guide you in figuring out authorship.
posted by emd3737 at 1:04 AM on November 26, 2009
posted by emd3737 at 1:04 AM on November 26, 2009
Computer scientist here: in our field, generally, author 1 did the work, then the rest are listed in descending order of contribution.
A recent publication I did was based on a survey study - one of the co-authors couldn't help with the writing at all, or the analysis, and said they "didn't want" to be on the paper. But as they had done a lot of work up-front on survey design, I included them anyway - turns out they were really pleased to get the mention. Costs nothing, they get an extra publication on the CV, and what goes around comes around. Maybe I'll get a mention on someone else's paper some day.
As for conference attendance, usually the first author gives the talk. There are very few presentations with more than one speaker - you only have 20 minutes, there's just not the time. If you can't make it (illness etc.) then a co-author or colleague can step in.
But it's definitely best - on proper collaborative projects, papers, and presentations - to work this sort of thing out in advance. I've done the "I'll write the proposal if you give the talk" thing before. I've also done the "If you want your name on this, do some bloody work" thing.
posted by handee at 4:19 AM on November 26, 2009
A recent publication I did was based on a survey study - one of the co-authors couldn't help with the writing at all, or the analysis, and said they "didn't want" to be on the paper. But as they had done a lot of work up-front on survey design, I included them anyway - turns out they were really pleased to get the mention. Costs nothing, they get an extra publication on the CV, and what goes around comes around. Maybe I'll get a mention on someone else's paper some day.
As for conference attendance, usually the first author gives the talk. There are very few presentations with more than one speaker - you only have 20 minutes, there's just not the time. If you can't make it (illness etc.) then a co-author or colleague can step in.
But it's definitely best - on proper collaborative projects, papers, and presentations - to work this sort of thing out in advance. I've done the "I'll write the proposal if you give the talk" thing before. I've also done the "If you want your name on this, do some bloody work" thing.
posted by handee at 4:19 AM on November 26, 2009
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I believe it's a good idea to at least offer the other team members the opportunity to write/present with you, but that's something that only needs to be done once, not for each and every opportunity you discover to discuss this work. So, you've done that, regardless of whether you "bungled" the first attempt, and you've picked up Sue.
If Bob thinks everyone should write up a part, well, he should find an opportunity where it makes sense for that to happen, and explicitly state that he'll be taking a particular part. Your writing/presenting, unless it's some earth-shattering, world-changing topic in libraries, should have no effect on Bob's ability to publish independently, should he choose to.
It's reasonable, and not uncommon, in my experience for multiple people to write up a paper and develop a presentation for a joint paper/presentation type thing, but only send one person to present. Travel funds aren't always plentiful, and not everyone can afford to send themselves to a big conference. In that case, everyone who helps gets equal billing.
I have more specific advice/examples that would probably be best discussed over email if you're interested or have questions.
posted by donnagirl at 4:26 PM on November 25, 2009