PhD Student : Publish Paper with Wife?

Question

I am a PhD student, working on Applied Math while my wife is a software engineer. I plan on going to academia after PhD and will start to job hunt soon.

A few weeks ago, I thought of an idea that hadn't been done before. I wrote a crude C++ code to implement the idea and it worked well. I believed that with my theoretical understanding of the problem and an expert coder, we could make something really impactful and incidentally, my wife knew how to. So, we spent some evenings together writing the code (she didn't know math, but I abstracted each step so she could help implement). The resulting code is fairly sophisticated and does an excellent job. I was wondering, now that I write a paper about it, would it look weird if my wife was listed as a co-author? Her contributions were definitely sufficient to warrant co-authorship by any definition.

Let's step aside the legalese of it (my advisor doesn't care and her company might but let's leave that aside). I am asking more from the standpoint of how it looks on one's CV, job application and possibly, tenure.

Answer 1

Nobody will notice or care, unless you share a last name with your wife, in which case the strongest reaction is likely to be, "aw how cute, a husband and wife published a paper together."

Answer 2

I know several instances where spouses/couples are co-authors, though often it is not obvious to an outsider if the co-authors are spouses. (There are also many examples of parent-child and sibling co-authors, so it is not obvious even if the spouses have the same last name.) Thus it is not a strange thing to happen, particular if non-academic co-authors are common in your field.

There is only one case where I even thought one spouse may possibly be going out of their way to bring up the research profile of the other (academic) spouse, but that is due to some specifics of the situation, and I don't regard them poorly because of this (which may not be true anyway), just am unclear on one of the spouse's contributions. In your case, presumably your wife has little to gain career-wise from coauthorship, so there is not even reason for people to think this.

If you personally feel weird about it, you can always explain in the paper what each author's role was. (And, of course, you should never deny a deserving person co-authorship, especially someone you (hopefully) like.)

Answer 3

In terms of relationship with the external world, it need not be any problem. If you begin collaborating scientifically on a regular basis, however, it is likely to affect your relationship, by making you colleagues as well as spouses.

For some couples, this can be a good thing, as the shared interest and partnership can add a new dimension to the relationship.

For other couples, the stresses of scientific collaboration outweigh the benefits. Some people also find that they lose a place of refuge from work, as their work life and home life become more entangled.

Bottom line: have fun and publish together if you want, but make sure to have an explicit discussion about how you want to relate to collaboration as a couple, and revisit it from time to time if necessary.

Answer 4

Do you know that one of the most significant papers in Computer Science (nearly 6000 citations) was written by the couple Patrick and Radhia Cousot, and they continued to co-author more than 50 papers.

Answer 5

Goodman, et al wrote a paper on this very topic.

The first and most common type of such coauthorship is by married economists with the same surname. Prominent examples of this include Romer and Romer (2013) on monetary policy, Reinhart and Reinhart (2010) on macroeconomic crises, Summers and Summers (1989) on financial markets, Ostrom and Ostrom (1999) on public goods, Ramey and Ramey (2010) on parental time allocation, Ellison and Ellison (2009) on internet-based price elasticities and Friedman and Friedman (1990) on personal choice

Answer 6

To add to the other answers, I think the fact that your wife does not work in academia makes it even less questionable (from my point of view this does not raise any ethical concerns since you say co-authorship is warranted by her contribution). Since she does not have an academic career, and this paper seems to be a "once-off" thing, I do not think anybody would think you are spuriously including her or, more importantly, she is spuriously including you as a coauthor to enhance your career.

Now, if this becomes a recurrent thing then it will raise suspicion (academia is a competitive world). I know of at least a couple of cases of spouses systematically coauthoring all of their papers. And I know that at least in one of these cases one of the spouses is not doing enough.

Answer 7

The 2014 Nobel prize winners are husband and wife, so it really doesn't sound strange

Answer 8

I made a special appointment with a professor once to ask his advice about whether a proposed action would be ethical. He gave me an easy test: imagine a headline in a newspaper, reporting your action. Is there anything about that headline and story that would look questionable? If not, it's safe to go ahead with the proposed action.

In this case, we'd have "Woodward names wife as co-author of scientific paper." Sounds okay to me! If it were "Woodward pays wife to ghost-write scientific paper," for example, that would be a problem. But there's no money changing hands in your case, so your co-authored paper is fine!

Answer 9

In addition to other good answers, I'd advise:

• If you're a PhD candidate with very few papers - which is usually the case - try not to present this one as your most significant contribution, since that brings up the level of scrutiny/potential suspicion. Let it be another one of your publications.
• if there is a third guy/gal, that makes it look even less questionable; don't just add someone for this reason only, but if you add, say, your advisor, that wouldn't hurt I suppose.

Of course, I could just be over-fearful and it's fine regardless.

Answer 10

I'll go against the grain in this specific instance and say your wife should not be a co-author. You had the idea. You wrote a working prototype. You provided your wife with step-by-step, high level instructions on what needed to be implemented to flesh out the prototype. Your wife essentially played the role of scientific programmer. This type of role / contribution is generally mentioned / thanked in the Acknowledgements but is not a co-author.

Those who actually read such a paper may think that your wife is only listed as a co-author because she is your wife. This may raise some eyebrows and may have some negative impact on your job search.