Fifth+ author publication?

[The Law]

yeah this is a pretty touchy issue. It happens a LOT. I know 2 labs that work next door to each other and do similar research. Whenever one of the labs publishes something, names from the other lab goes on the paper and vice versa. All of a sudden it appears that these 2 PI's are more productive than everyone else, yet no more work is actually done.

 

I am strongly against giving people authorship for doing trivial things (such as the case with the OP), but hey, you got what you wanted so all the power to you!

 

It is a touchy subject, but I think it is a very important one nonetheless. The authors on the papers my lab sends out either contributed directly to data analysis, writing, or experimental work OR supervised the work that students did. Nobody else gets tacked on to a paper just for the sake of adding someone to it. I'm with Mikeyo on this, by simply giving away authorship, you undermine all of the hard work that everyone has done for the paper.

 

My lab is a very cooperative lab - we all work together to help each other on our projects. It tremendously boosts our productivity and allows each of us to use our expertise to help each other get our work published. A lot of times we are working on numerous projects at one time and help each other get certain experiments/or help analyze data. I'm submitting a paper today that I'll be a mid-author on (6th author) and I'd really be upset if anyone on the list didn't do any work towards the project. We've all spent so much time doing the experiments, analyzing the data, and writing this thing (my job was data analysis and writing - and my god I've probably spent a billion hours reformatting and reanalyzing things).

 

I don't blame treejuice for taking the authorship. If it's offered, obviously you want to try to get a publication - this is the most advantageous thing to you. I'm just saying the practice should be avoided by PIs. Also, get ready for potential inquiry by future interviews and what not, on what exactly your role was in this project.

[hastin11]

Thanks for the replies everyone. The only thing I can think of is that I was an assistant to the previous PhD student whose project this was (he abandoned his degree halfway through) and helped him with his experiments last summer, but I think those experiments failed to generate any usable data

 

It isn't my intention to misrepresent myself in my application. If it reflects poorly on me that my name was included without contributing data, then perhaps it'd be best not to mention it at all. My time here has been an invaluably positive experience nonetheless and there is still plenty I can talk about

 

This is a silly concern. Write on your application that you were 6th author or whatever, and there will be space for you to write what you contributed. There is no need to lie, and considering this to be any sort of a "moral dilemma" is sort of absurdly overthinking things

[benhc911]

I am currently doing data collection, running experiments and doing some basic analysis, by myself on an apparatus set up by a Masters Student for his thesis. The data is going to be used in a publication by our supervisor. Does it seem fair for me to *request* authorship? or it inquire what degree of additional work would be required for it? The project is a very small, but novel, thermodynamics experiment (i'm in chemical engineering), currently there are the following people working on it:

 

Two professors (one tenured, one not) serving as joint supervisors (the tenured one is basically just lending his opinion, and his lab space to the other)

One master student

Two undergrads (including me)

 

I have an NSERC USRA to do this work, and have completed maybe about 20-25% of the trials on my own (its really more tedious then difficult)... but have contributed probably less than 5% of the hours into it...

 

We have regular meetings where I join the discussion with the Prof about figures, comparisons to industry examples of similar technologies, and ways to commercialize our product (our? his? i dunno... the product I guess lol).

 

Does this seem like enough to merit the request, or would that be offensive? What if I clarify that its for medical school application, and I'm willing to increase my responsibility accordingly?

 

thoughts?

[shannn]

^

 

Really depends on the supervisor.

 

I would personally say no, because "anyone" could do your job, and you didn't really play a role in the development of the project or do something truly significant (although data collection is big, again, anyone could do it)

 

But some supervisors are nice enough and may give you some authorship if it does get published, or at least an acknowledgement

 

It never hurts to try, but don't expect much (but hey, if you do, it'll be great for you)

[Starling]

^ I agree with Shann. The work you're doing doesn't necessarily warrant authorship, but depending on how your PI does things, it may be enough.

 

I'd suggest you talk to your PI and say that you're really hoping to get on a publication, and ask it there might be an opportunity to do that by doing more work etc. I think that's better than outright requesting authorship.

 

I wouldn't say it's for your med school application, because then it looks like you're only doing it to put it on your application. Just the fact that you're asking about getting on a paper shows that it's important to you.