Timeline for Should I leave the first authorship of our paper to the student who did the project whereas I solved it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
35 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 12, 2019 at 21:27 | comment | added | Stella Biderman | Several people have mentioned noting in a footnote equal contribution. Should you pursue this route, you ironically need to determine what order to actually write the names in. In CS this would typically be alphabetical or determined randomly. The footnote should mention how the ordering was determined, e.g., Authors contributed equally and are listed in [alphabetical/randomized] order." | |
| Sep 12, 2019 at 20:54 | history | protected | Alexandros | ||
| Sep 12, 2019 at 20:29 | answer | added | Tomas | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 12, 2019 at 12:03 | comment | added | David | It keeps amazing me how researchers keep worrying about things like author order, which should be irrelevant | |
| Sep 12, 2019 at 11:52 | answer | added | Ben Aveling | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 12, 2019 at 9:02 | comment | added | StephenG - Help Ukraine | In five years time when it's referred to in another paper as e.g. "O'Flute and MacNutty 2012" who will know (or care) who did exactly what ? This seems a mountain out of a molehill - you needed each other to complete this. You may also be under-estimating the implementation contribution. Dice throw to decide. | |
| Sep 11, 2019 at 19:12 | comment | added | Kami Kaze | Well to play the bad one here, he should not get first author of the paper nor a Master degree for a problem that was basically pre-solved for him.... I understand that this is not uncommen, but I find it rather puzzeling that this is a thing. From my understanding(and what I expierienced first hand in EE) the advisor layed the problem and it was up the student to get it working, while the advisor may advise if necessary or to guide the project in a useable direction... | |
| Sep 11, 2019 at 19:11 | comment | added | aaaaa says reinstate Monica | what does your professor say? | |
| Sep 11, 2019 at 16:50 | answer | added | S. Burt | timeline score: 3 | |
| S Sep 11, 2019 at 14:42 | history | edited | user68958 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Improve wording and grammar
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| S Sep 11, 2019 at 14:42 | history | suggested | psmears | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Improve wording and grammar
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| Sep 11, 2019 at 13:24 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | @Pinton In my field that's not necessarily true, a PhD student could still benefit from a last authorship. But I'll trust it is for yours. | |
| Sep 11, 2019 at 12:44 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Sep 11, 2019 at 14:42 | |||||
| Sep 11, 2019 at 11:16 | comment | added | Martin Modrák | Please also remember that most people tend to overestimate their own contribution and underestimate the contributions of others - this goes both for you and the student. Code can be a huge contribution and it is easy to overlook when it was not you doing the programming (how many times have I thought "I could have programmed that in a week" to only discover it took me months). Leadership can also be important and easy to overlook ("She just talks to me once in a while and I do all the work - how does she deserve first authorship?"). | |
| Sep 11, 2019 at 10:30 | answer | added | AnoE | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 11, 2019 at 8:38 | comment | added | Pinton | @BryanKrause: I'm not a professor but a Ph.D. student. So, the last authorship does not count for me like it would for a professor. | |
| Sep 11, 2019 at 3:09 | answer | added | Canaryyellow | timeline score: 7 | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 23:37 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | @Pinton What I meant by senior authorship is that, in my field, typically the first author is the person who "did the work", and the last author is the person who supervised the work (typically a professor), which often includes setting the general direction. For more senior people, last authorships "count" as much if not more than first authorships; I was asking in case a compromise where you are last author might be appropriate, especially if this is the main research contribution for the masters student. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 21:25 | comment | added | Pinton | @BryanKrause: If I wanted to get to industry after my Ph.D., I wouldn't hesitate to pass the first-author position to him easily. But, the senior authorship means a lot to me since I will be trying to grab a professorship position in a near future. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 21:18 | comment | added | Pinton | @BryanKrause: It was pretty along with my Ph.D. thesis. In fact, I had already thought about the topic and had obtained its theoretical ground based on which the feasibility of the idea was already analyzed and proved. The student had some nice touch during the implementation, yet he basically followed the steps that I depicted for him. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 20:33 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Sep 10, 2019 at 19:12 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | How central to your PhD work is this project? Is it more of a side project to you, or an integral part of your thesis? It seems like you were very involved, so I am trying to gather whether it is more that you've done too much of the master's students' work, or had them tag along with yours. I'm not very familiar with authorship standards in EE, but is "senior author" a thing for you? | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 19:08 | history | edited | Bryan Krause♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added some clarifications from the comments, and paragraphs
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| Sep 10, 2019 at 18:54 | answer | added | electrique | timeline score: 29 | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 15:22 | comment | added | Pinton | @PatrickSanan: (Electrical) Engineering | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 15:22 | comment | added | Pinton | @Roland: Yes. We talked, and he yielded his intention to be the first author. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 15:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackAcademia/status/1171438313758056448 | ||
| Sep 10, 2019 at 14:13 | comment | added | Patrick Sanan | Which field of S.T.E.M. are you publishing in? As others have pointed out, the answer here might be field-dependent. Different communities conclude very different things from author order. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 14:04 | comment | added | user9482 | "I understand that he would morally expect to be the first author" Has he said so? Have you discussed the issue with him at all? It's best if all authors are in agreement regarding who should be first author. The first step towards agreement is communication. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 13:14 | answer | added | Buffy | timeline score: 38 | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 13:03 | comment | added | Pinton | @BrianH: We unfortunately didn't set any specific set of expectations, particularly regarding papers and authorships. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 13:01 | comment | added | Pinton | @mmeent: I did compose the paper. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 12:51 | comment | added | BrianH | The laying out of initial expectations is a big part of decisions like this, in addition to the actual writing of the paper. If you laid out the problem for them and only advised when they asked for help (and just advise, not considerable "doing"), then it would also be on them to do much of the writing work as well, preferably producing at least a full rough draft - more if this is part of their thesis. On the other side, the initial setup could have been "work with me on this project, I'm here to help and lead, and you can be an author". Hard to tell from only what is written here. | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 12:44 | comment | added | TimRias | Who actually wrote the paper? | |
| Sep 10, 2019 at 12:29 | history | asked | Pinton | CC BY-SA 4.0 |