Questions tagged [authorship]
Queries related to academic authorship, i.e., who should be an author, the order of authors, or special roles such as corresponding authorship.
1,271
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Can I add a baby as a co-author of a scientific paper, to protest against co-authors who haven't made any contribution?
Can I put the name of my baby as one of the co-authors of a scientific paper?
I know it sounds disturbing, but it's a way of mine to protest against co-authors that haven't made any contribution (...
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167
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18
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What does first authorship really mean in field X?
In my field (theoretical computer science), authors of any paper are always listed alphabetically; our papers don't have "first authors". (Well... hardly ever.) In most other disciplines, ...
154
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4
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Is Obama's JAMA paper OK?
As some of you may have heard, Barack Obama recently published a paper in JAMA describing the US health care reforms (link). First of all, I am not trying to start a discussion on the validity of the ...
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11
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I (independently) solved a fellow student's research problem. I want to publish it. What should I do?
A fellow student and I are part of the same graduate student research group (in applied mathematics), under the same PhD supervisor. The (relatively new) student came to the group with an idea for a ...
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148
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Is it ethical to submit a paper with the name of a co-author who cannot be contacted?
The paper in question is based on research my collaborator X and I did together some months ago. Our respective contributions to the research were around 2/3 for X and 1/3 for me. In terms of the ...
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114
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6
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What is the point of listing 1000 authors for a single scientific paper?
I arrived at the printer room this afternoon to collect my printing and I happened to notice that someone was yet to collect a printout of the gravitational waves paper that has been all over the ...
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E-mail address to use in publications
It is customary to use one's academic e-mail address as contact address in publications; I have seen once or twice an @gmail.com address being used instead, but it simply looked unprofessional.
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When should a supervisor be an author?
I understand that in a lot of big-lab fields it is common for the principal investigator to append their name to a paper even if they did not write the paper, design the experiment, or collect data ...
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How to be a co-author anonymously?
I am from country A and am studying in country B. A researcher from country C would like to collaborate with me. However, my home country (country A) has poor (hostile) relations with the researcher'...
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How to avoid a hostile takeover of first authorship during medical leave?
A colleague has approached me with a tough situation. I'm unsure how to advise her.
She is a postdoc, and will soon take a month-long planned medical leave. Her adviser, a senior research scientist, ...
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My first authorship is being turned into co-first authorship, what can I do?
I am currently submitting a paper for Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. I worked on this project for the last four years and was the only one working on this project. I had everything going ...
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4
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Is someone who solely contributes negative feedback to a paper considered an author?
Say person A and person B are collaborating on a mathematics paper. It goes like this: person A repeatedly suggests proofs, and person B repeatedly finds flaws in them. Over time, this process ...
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Is it ethical for advisors to automatically coauthor papers?
I work in a field (Philosophy) where co-authorship is uncommon and advisors and grad students very seldomly co-author a paper. I've seen a lot of posts on Academia.se though about the ethics of co-...
user10636
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How to deal with an author who worked on an analysis that never made it into the paper?
I have come across the following situation a couple of times:
After an experiment has been designed and data collected, the first author of the paper wants to ascertain whether a special analysis ...
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6
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Cannot present paper at conference. Instructor wants to move me to second author
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I am not able to present my paper at a Computer Science conference. Without the presentation the paper will not be published. My instructor has said that she will ...
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My advisor submitted a paper with my work without including me as an author
As you might see from my history I don't have a good relationship with my advisor. Recently we wrote a journal paper together based on my thesis. I wrote the introduction, analysis and the description ...
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Is it common practice to remove an author's name from a paper?
I work as an instructor at a university. I am not a graduate student there and my responsibilities end at teaching. Recently, a supervisor from another department asked me to prepare an article for ...
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74
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6
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Co-authoring a paper with a persona non grata
Suppose Researcher A did some joint work with Researcher B. While the work was still in progress, or the manuscript was in preparation, researcher B became persona non grata in Academia, due to ...
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Is uncredited use of grad students' unpublished research by professors accepted/common practice in academia?
I'm a master's student, and over the course of my studies I've conducted a few independent studies in which I investigate specific research questions that I formulate on my own. Those independent ...
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71
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6
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Should all authors on a paper be comfortable explaining every aspect of the paper?
Say I am person A who has built up some degree of expertise in mathematical topic X. Person B works on mathematical topic Y and realizes she needs a result from topic X. She asks me if I know how to ...
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67
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My student published a preprint of our published paper without me as an author
One of my former students uploaded a paper we just published in a top physics journal without my name. The fraudulent paper is now appearing on the Google Scholar search results below the original ...
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64
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Colleague stole my work and is publishing it as his own; my PhD supervisor supports him; I got the paper to review. How to proceed?
By chance, I am reviewing now the paper which I recognised as a paper of my colleague. We are from the same institution and I am surprised that I got this paper to review, but, on the other hand, I am ...
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64
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How to acknowledge a deceased advisor’s contributions to a paper?
One of my advisors suddenly passed away while I was in graduate school. We had some discussions and ideas about future publications, but he passed away before any of the work was completed. When the ...
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Advisor threatening to pull his name from accepted paper that I submitted without his knowledge
Recently, I submitted a research article in the journal "Applied Mathematics and Computations" and fortunately my work got accepted with a very good response from reviewers.
However, I made the ...
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61
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12
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Co-author uses ChatGPT for academic writing - is it ethical?
I am writing a paper with a co-author. I spent a considerable amount of time (several months) writing a first draft of the paper. I then sent it to co-author asking them to revise the draft and add ...
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61
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11
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My advisor demands second authorship, but my collaborator contributed much more than him. I don't want to be unethical, what should I do?
My PhD supervisor has contributed 0% to my research and he even does not know the basics of my research. On the other hand, I have a collaborator from another university who has contributed ...
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59
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4
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How to offer a reviewer to be co-author?
I currently have a paper submitted to PNAS. We had two rounds of revisions, and following detailed suggestions from one reviewer, we have improved our proposed algorithm a lot: its complexity is now ...
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58
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11
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Share prize money from conference presentation award with co-authors?
I am a PhD student and I recently won a young scientist award and prize money (~500 USD) at a conference for the "best presentation". I did the majority of the work for the presentation, and I was the ...
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PI asked me to remove a student from author's list, but I disagree
I am a postdoc at the lab of, say, Prof. Johnson. Together with a few students and external collaborators, we performed a research study and sent a manuscript for publication, where I am the leading ...
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8
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Co-author keeps rewriting the article in poor English
I am writing an article with a senior colleague. Although English is not their first language, they keep re-writing the entire article in their own words.
I would not normally care, but the way he re-...
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7
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Can two PhD students publish without involving their supervisors?
I am a theoretical computer science PhD student. My childhood friend (my present roommate) is in the 3rd year of his pure mathematics PhD program. Very recently we both worked on a problem on ...
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57
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6
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Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper?
In most (or at least many) fields of academia, peer-reviewed publications are essential. For a compilation thesis, no papers means no PhD. For tenure, you need papers. To get grants, you need ...
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How can I oppose my advisor granting gift authorship to a collaborator?
I am a masters' student. I have written an article, which was part of my thesis. This was my first article. After I handed it over to my professor, it was highly commended. My professor was not the ...
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Does "corresponding author" carry an implied meaning?
After reading the question Mentor trying to be first author?, I got the impression that (at least in the writers' field) the "corresponding author" flag could carry an implied meaning, such as "did ...
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I solved their problem. Should I involve them?
I have dedicated time and effort to solve a theoretical problem posed by two other people.
Now I think I have resolved it, and I have material for a publication.
Should I involve them as co-authors?
...
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54
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4
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How to get rid of unwanted and annoying co-author?
I'm a 2nd year PhD student in a computational field. I'm about to submit my first paper on a new optimization algorithm. I've been working intensively on the problem for the last 2 years and finally ...
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If a reviewer makes significant contributions to improving a paper, may he/she suggest becoming a coauthor?
I was asked by the editor of a mathematical journal to review a submission by an author (unknown to me) which heavily relies upon some of my earlier work. I do not have much experience with writing ...
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53
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3
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My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent
My research paper was stolen by the co-author and published as his own. What do I do? All the data the paper is based on is my own work. I got it accepted in another journal but now I cannot get it ...
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52
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3
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What does author order indicate?
When you look at a paper, what order to you assume the authors are in? Most important/most work done first or alphabetical? In my group we usually use alphabetic order, but I've been wondering if that ...
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Should I share the prize money from a paper award for my graduate work with my former PhD advisor?
I am a postdoc, and with my former Ph.D. adviser have won a paper award which includes a sizable prize (10k+). I am the first author on the paper, and he is the second. The work is entirely mine, but ...
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Author of public dataset requesting co-authorship: usual?
I have come across a published dataset which comes with a note saying that: (1) the authors of the dataset would like to be informed of any papers that use it (2) they might request co-authorship ...
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Listing a Stack Overflow user as co-author for having provided substantial programming support
I received a lot of help from an active Stack Overflow user in my undergrad summer research project, which was based on statistical physics. Now, I'm writing a paper on it under my professor's ...
user96200
49
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7
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Mentor says I cannot be first author of my paper because I am an undergraduate
I performed some research and submitted it to a congress of biomedical sciences. Many professors told me that my research is very advanced compared to student work and that it could easily be my ...
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49
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5
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When does a statistical consultant become a co-author or collaborator?
I am a graduate student in a small department and have become the go-to person for statistics advice among the other students. I enjoy this but am wondering at what point I should expect, or request, ...
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47
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3
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How to deal with abusive professor?
I am a fresh medical graduate. I worked with a professor who harassed me sexually. Unfortunately, I was afraid to talk and also a little bit confused because I was an international visiting student at ...
user82440
47
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4
answers
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Simplest way to jointly write a manuscript?
As with many papers in the sciences, there are multiple authors who aren't physically close to each other. I was curious about the most efficient and simplest way to technically share the writing. On ...
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46
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8
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Co-authors decided to remove most of my contributions from a Nature paper without my consent
I am a postdoc and have dedicated the past five years to working on a big project spanning several groups and countries.
My and my supervisor’s contribution was to interpret their results in light of ...
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11
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Should I be an author on another PhD student's paper if I went to their meetings and gave advice?
My PhD supervisor (in the field of artificial intelligence) invited me to several meetings with another PhD student. Since I have more knowledge than my supervisor in some topics, I made many ...
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10
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Promised authorship was not given; am I supposed to get an automatic acknowledgement?
TLDR: I spent a long time helping with a paper from a group at another university. The first author, who was at the same institute as me, promised multiple times I would be one of the coauthors. But, ...
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44
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8
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Co-authorship in exchange for paying conference fee
My BSc dissertation has recently been accepted for publication in the proceedings of a small conference. My supervisor has co-author credit as his assistance was naturally instrumental.
While I'm been ...
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