If everyone made an equal contribution in effort to write the paper, but no on the team but myself decided to post the paper on arXiv and no one opposed my decision to arXiv post, should I myself, the poster, or the corresponding author be the first author, or should the authors be listed alphabetically? At this point there's not yet any monetary or power incentive to be first or last and I don't expect there to be any in the future.
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4arXiv isn't relevant here. Just ask yourself "in which order should the authors be in this paper". It doesn't matter whether you are posting it on arXiv, or putting a manuscript on your own home page, or submitting it for publication to a journal.– Jukka SuomelaCommented Nov 11, 2019 at 13:36
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@JukkaSuomela, your comment might be better as a formal answer.– BuffyCommented Nov 11, 2019 at 13:52
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What is the subject area of the paper?– academicCommented Nov 11, 2019 at 14:01
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Why does it matter?– user115896Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 17:59
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@Heutl The subject area matters because different subject areas use different conventions for determining the order of authors. For instance, most of math uses alphabetical order (irrespective of the contribution), and in some disciplines, the last position carries a special significance.– UweCommented Nov 12, 2019 at 11:14
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2 Answers
If everyone made an equal contribution, you can put that information in the footnote. In a very famous (in the AI-related research) paper ADAM: a method for stochastic optimisation you can encounter the following line:
∗Equal contribution. Author ordering determined by coin flip over a Google Hangout.
I'd say randomisation is a fair way to go. If you want to be more specific, here you can check examples for contribution statements. There's a whole taxonomy for that: CRediT author contribution statements. You can place these contributions e.g. just before the references section in the paper.
As Jukka already mentioned in the comment, arXiv does not matter in this case. I think the order should always reflect the real contribution (if possible). All in all, it's good that you care about such things - good luck with your research.
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I would advise to avoid Google Hangout (if possible) so that you do not have to mention it. In a scientific paper, there should not be advertisments for for-profit-companies unless mentioning them is really necessary.– user115896Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 22:29
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1My impression is that randomization, while it has some benefits, is not very common; alphabetical is still the more common practice when authors contributed equally. So if you randomize the ordering, people who just see the citation are likely to think "it's not alphabetical, therefore the ordering must be significant, and the first-named author must have made the most important contributions". They would only see your note if they actually started to read the paper. Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 11:04
Presumably the authors will have all agreed to an author list, and this should be the one used on arXiv, irrespective of who is posting on arXiv or who is the corresponding author.
answered Nov 12, 2019 at 2:47
