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A paper I worked on with my supervisor previously just got submitted for publication. But I’m not really happy. One of the guys my supervisor brought in during preparation for the submission didn’t really contribute much. He made very little contribution and didn’t add to the writing. During that period, he was also trying to take over decisions and discussions like he was in charge, even though he knew little about the process my supervisor and I had before he was brought in.

He was supposed to be the expert in refining and adding to the data stuff I already did, but during that period he kept asking me questions about stuff he should know. He was only helpful with very minor stuff.

I’m glad our paper got submitted finally, but I’m not that excited that he got listed as part of a project that he didn’t make any difference in. And he would get to add this to his research presentation coming up when he had little impact. It feels unfair.

For people who have published previously: is it normal to have people with little contribution be listed as co-authors?

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    As an expert, called in to help a junior, the very first thing I do is ask the junior questions about their data and analysis, to which I already likely know the answers. That lets me know where to pitch future guidance.
    – Neil_UK
    Commented Jun 28 at 13:33
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    Yes, depending on the field it can be common. But for your own career development, why not discuss this with your advisor next time you meet with him or her?
    – A rural reader
    Commented Jun 29 at 0:20

4 Answers 4

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In your academic career you will have instances where you get less credit than you deserve (according to whatever metric you choose), and times when you get more credit than you deserve.

In this case someone was brought into a project and committed time and effort to it. Perhaps it turns out like in your case that less work (or even less obvious work) was needed from them than initially thought, but their presence and effort on the team helped tidy things up, and perhaps they will be more involved on future derivative works now that they have been onboarded. The fact that they asked you questions shows involvement and a desire to understand exactly what was done. That's what good collaborators do.

Your attitude, which views sharing of success (such as publication) as adversarial is not healthy. Not for you, and not for your career. You need to understand, you have lost NOTHING. All you have done is gained a co-author (and you never know how this will positively impact you years down the road).

Research is becoming increasingly multi and interdisciplinary. Team-based science is very important and you need to learn to share with others. There is a difference between unethical or gift authorship, and as it appears in this case, shared credit with wide-ranging contributions.

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    I share the opinion about adversarial credit sharing not being a useful perspective. Credit is not a zero-sum game.
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Commented Jun 26 at 19:12
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    "You need to understand, you have lost NOTHING"... I don't necessarily disagree with your final conclusion, but this part of the justification just sounds silly. Surely you see a difference between being remembered as THE inventor of something vs. 1 of the N inventors of something?
    – user541686
    Commented Jun 29 at 14:23
  • @user541686 I have served on admissions committees, hired postdocs, and served on numerous faculty search committees. I have served on society awards committees, and numerous federal grant panels. Never in any educated discussion have I or my colleagues diminished the impacts of someones work in any way for the inclusion of co-authors. This is unfortunately an issue of vanity. Sadly in my experience, most issues of difficulty sharing of authorship don't even rise anywhere near the level of "THE inventor" of something... but rather "the person who showed the nth example of a variation of.....".
    – R1NaNo
    Commented Jun 30 at 1:52
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There is too little information here to provide meaningful guidance in your particular case. But don't confuse the "quantity" of participation with the "quality" of it. It is possible for someone to make an essential contribution to a paper or a wider research project in only a few minutes with only a few words if they provide an essential insight that lets things come together.

I can't judge the person you mentioned (the "expert"). It is possible that his questions weren't to get information but to judge your understanding. I won't claim that is the case, but, as I said, there is too little here to judge.

Be happy that you have a publication. Be happy that you are making progress. Be aware that judgement calls on such things can be right or wrong, but your supervisor is probably in a better position to make such judgements than you are.

Gift authorship is wrong, IMO, but this doesn't sound like that.

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Many journals have guidelines for what constitutes authorship. You should see if the journal that you submitted to includes such guidelines.

For example, Nature's guidelines are:

The co-authors of a paper should be all those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work.

Another source is the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, whose guidelines include:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work

They also define some roles that should not be considered, such as funding acquisition, language assistance, and proofreading.

American Chemical Society journals have these guidelines:

Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it

The CRediT project defines roles for contributors. It should be noted that it includes some "Funding acquisition" and "Resources," which alone may not be sufficient for authorship according the guidelines above.

To interpret the guidelines, someone (probably your supervisor) has to decide what the terms "significant/substantial" and "scientific" mean. As suggested in the other answers, there is little reason not to be generous in interpreting these terms.

You say "He was only helpful with very minor stuff." Was this minor stuff scientific in nature? I would guess it was more than making coffee or plugging in keyboards. Even if the contribution was small, it can still be significant.

You ask, "Is it normal to have people with little contribution be listed as co-authors?" The answer is yes. Ethically anyone with a small but scientifically significant contribution should be included as an author.

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Consider the following, hypothetical, two-part possibility:

Your advisor owed this guy a favor, so he brought him in and got his name on your paper.

AND

All the other responses here still have good advice about how to deal with it or put it in perspective. Even though they don't really seem to be admitting this completely plausible explanation.

I'm just saying this because some otherwise good answers seem to be going as far as attacking you, directly or by implication, for your attitude or reaction. But your reaction is completely reasonable, in the hypothetical situation I described above. And none of the people answering this know if that is the situation, or not. (And neither do you, unless the advisor specifically admitted this to you.)

And it doesn't even have to have been that egregious, the intentions may have been more pure. For example:

  • your advisor really thought this person would make a significant contribution, but, when they turned out not to, it would have been extremely awkward to not list them
  • you are bad at writing things up, it would be awkward to try to tell you this at this point, and your advisor knew that this person could help you with that, and brought them in for that reason, and you still haven't realized the value of that contribution
  • your advisor felt that you needed to learn how to work with someone else on a publication, because you have a strong individualist streak and your advisor thought it would be good for you to learn how to put together a paper that is a group effort

All I'm saying is that it's completely possible that you're right, that this person really doesn't deserve to have their name on your paper. But I still think that the various contributions here might have some value for you, even though some aspects of them might come across as being unwarrantedly adversarial to you.

Read through the links in the "related" section on this page for an answer to your actual question:

is it normal to have people with little contribution be listed as co-authors?

I have to think that it's pretty common, just from people's stories on here. Academia is a human endeavor, and humans, in basically every context, are going to do human things, like quid pro quo and pity credits and so on.

Even if my worst-case hypothetical proposition above is true, it is also true that you can't change centuries of academic culture or millennia of human evolution on your own.

  • stewing over this is going to be bad for you both psychologically and mentally, so I would strongly advise against it
  • in order to not feel like this bad thing happened and you are completely helpless to correct the injustice, focus on the fact that, over time, you will be in a position to have more influence over the process, and you will be able to prevent something like this from happening to someone else who is early in their career and at a similarly low level of influence
  • again let me advise you to consider that some of the advice in the other answers is actually potentially of very significant value to you in your career, so try to compartmentalize their apparent or actual dismissal of your concerns and just focus on the true part of what they are saying
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