Authorship conflict scenarios presence/absence and order Tom Little, Dan Nussey, Sue Healy and Neil Metcalfe

Authorship conflict scenarios

presence/absence and order

Tom Little, Dan Nussey, Sue Healy and Neil Metcalfe

Authorship is THE commodity of academia….

• Determines who gets ahead• Common standards are highly desirable

From http://www.hms.harvard.edu/integrity/authorship.html

“When disagreements over authorship arise, they can take a substantial toll on the good will, effectiveness, and reputation of the individuals involved and

their academic community. Many such disagreements result from misunderstanding and failed communication among colleagues and might have

been prevented by a clear, early understanding of standards for authorship that are shared by the academic community as a whole.”

http://www.hms.harvard.edu/integrity/authorship.html

• Any thoughts / experiences?

• Different scenarios… what do you think?

Who should be an author & what order?

• Published guidelines

Supervisor (Snape) thought of the project and got the funding.

Ph.D student (Malfoy) did the work, after discussion with Snape about experimental

design etc.

Malfoy analysed the data (with guidance from Snape) and wrote the first draft of the paper.

Snape read the draft and made various changes and suggestions.

Scenario 1: Nice & Simple?

Co-Supervisors (Snape and Lockhart) thought of the project

and got the funding.

PhD student (Malfoy) did the work, after discussion with (mostly) Snape about experimental design etc. Malfoy analysed the data (with guidance from Snape) and wrote the first draft of the paper.

Scenario 2: Co-supervisors

Snape read the draft and made various changes and suggestions. Lockhart also read the draft, made a few minor suggestions (which were partly ignored)

Malfoy analysed the data (with guidance from Snape) and wrote the first draft of the paper. Snape read the draft and made various changes and suggestions. McGonagall made suggestions on the methods section of the manuscript.


PhD student (Malfoy) did the work, after discussion with Snape about experimental

design etc.

Scenario 3: The borrowed lab

Some of the work was done in Prof. McGonagall’s lab: McGonagall provided guidance on this lab work.




design etc.

Scenario 3½: The borrowed lab

Some of the work was done in Prof. McGonagall’s lab: McGonagall provided guidance on this lab work, in particular on the use of her specialised lab equipment not available elsewhere.




design etc.

Scenario 3¾: The borrowed lab

Some of the work was done in Prof. McGonagall’s lab: McGonagall provided guidance on this lab work, in particular on the use of her specialised lab equipment not available elsewhere.

This very expensive piece of equipment (£1,000,000) was obtained through a special grant that McGonagall spent 6 months writing. McGonagall justified the grant in part by noting how useful it would be as a community resource.



design etc.

Malfoy analysed the data (with guidance from Snape) and wrote the first draft of the paper. Snape read the draft and made various

changes and suggestions.

Scenario 4: The technician

Malfoy received a lot of help from a technician (Dobby) when carrying out the experiments.



design etc.


changes and suggestions. Dobby also read the draft, made a few minor suggestions (which were partly ignored).

Scenario 4½: The technician

Malfoy received a lot of help from a technician (Dobby) when carrying out the experiments.Dobby made a couple of key practical recommendations while the experiment was running, which, as it turned out, ensured that the data was useful.



design etc.


changes and suggestions.

Scenario 4¾: The technician

Malfoy received a lot of help from a technician (Dobby) when carrying out the experiments who has been in the job for decades.

Dobby’s pay is reviewed annually by Hogwarts and the number of publications he has may improve his wage.

Malfoy analysed the data (with guidance from Snape) and wrote the first draft of the paper. Snape read the draft and made various changes and suggestions.



design etc.

Scenario 5: The undergraduate

An undergraduate (Grainger) carried out a related honours project and contributed some of the data.

Malfoy analysed the data (with guidance from Snape) and wrote the first draft of the paper. Snape read the draft and made various changes and suggestions. Grainger also read the draft, made a few minor suggestions (which were partly ignored).



design etc.

Scenario 5½: The undergraduate

An undergraduate (Grainger) carried out a related honours project and contributed some of the data. Grainger was a highly motivated first class student determined to have a career in the highly competitive world of science. She performed extremely well in her honours project, even though the data were a minor part of the final data set used.



design etc.

Malfoy analysed the data (with guidance from Snape) and wrote the first draft of the paper. Snape read the draft and made various changes and

suggestions.

Malfoy then… left science or left to work in a bank / left to start a post-doc in another lab

without writing up the thesis for publication.

Eventually, Snape re-wrote the chapter as a paper, making various changes and re-analysing some of the data.

Scenario 6: The student leaves…



design etc.

Malfoy made key practical and analytical recommendations as the project progressed.

Snape wrote the first draft of the paper (Malfoy had too much on his plate anyway), but ignored Malfoy’s analytical

recommendations.

Malfoy felt that in the absence of his recommendations the paper lacked validity, but he was a young ambitious scientist

in need of publications.

Scenario 7: The supervisor writes

Supervisor (Snape), a collaborator of Voldemort’s, thought of the project and got the funding for student.

Ph.D student (Malfoy) did analysis of data set and writes paper, with support and advice from Snape

Scenario 8: The Full MontyProfessor (Lord Voldemort) set up long-term field project decades ago and has won funding to keep it running ever since

Some of the analysis required genetic data that was collected by others in Prof. McGonagall’s lab

All the key field data over the last 10 years was collected by a highly skilled field technician / assistant (Dobby)

Possible general criteria:

Could not have done the work without them?

Can the person present the paper in a public forum?

Author Contributions from PLoS

• Conceived and designed the experiments• Performed the experiments• Analyzed the data• Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools• Wrote the paper• Other


From the journal Evolution

All authors of a paper are responsible for the contents of their paper.

An author is one who has made a substantial contribution to the paper. This includes writing the text, designing and carrying out experiments, making observations, analyzing the results, and suggesting the problem.

Those who assist in the work, supply strains or reagents, fund the work, and provide general but not specific direction to the work, must be acknowledged but are normally not eligible for authorship.



Authorship is an explicit way of assigning responsibility and giving credit for intellectual work. The two are linked. Authorship practices should be judged by how honestly they reflect actual contributions to the final product. Authorship is important to the reputation, academic promotion, and grant support of the individuals involved as well as to the strength and reputation of their institution.

Standards:

Everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial, direct, intellectual contribution to the work. For example (in the case of a research report) they should have contributed to the conception, design, analysis and/or interpretation of data. Honorary or guest authorship is not acceptable. Acquisition of funding and provision of technical services, patients, or materials, while they may be essential to the work, are not in themselves sufficient contributions to justify authorship.

When research is done by teams whose members are highly specialized, individual's contributions and responsibility may be limited to specific aspects of the work.

All authors should participate in writing the manuscript by reviewing drafts and approving the final version.

One author should take primary responsibility for the work as a whole even if he or she does not have an in-depth understanding of every part of the work.



Failure to meet standards:

Junior investigators may believe that including senior colleagues as authors will improve the credibility of their work and its chances of publication, whether or not those colleagues have made substantial intellectual contributions to the work.

They may not want to offend their chiefs, who hold substantial power over their employment, research opportunities, and recommendations for jobs and promotion.

Senior faculty might wish to be seen as productive researchers even though their other responsibilities prevent them from making direct contributions to their colleagues' work.


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Authorship conflict scenarios presence/absence and order Tom Little, Dan Nussey, Sue Healy and Neil Metcalfe