I think it's a strategic mistake to give up first authorship on a project if you've done most of the work on the experimental side of things just to have someone else write the text. When people browse through your CV in your field, they will likely assume that the author listed first did the work, and that the last author is the primary senior person supervising the work. Any other middle author presumably had some contribution, but it's not clear how much.

It doesn't seem fair to me for someone to take over a first authorship position just by writing in order to get the paper out quicker. The balance might shift a bit if the overall time you put in to this point is not extensive (i.e., collecting data from a repository, running calculations, etc, is all important work, but may be marginal relative to doing a year of bench experiments). I think ultimately this is something you will need to weigh for yourself, as well as weigh against opportunity costs - if you're going to be writing this paper, does that prevent you from doing something else that's more valuable to you than having this first author paper?

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly normal especially in the biomedical area that the person who does the research and is listed as first author need not necessarily be the person who writes up the first draft of all of the paper. You definitely want to get some writing experience as a student, but it sounds like you're already doing your own writing, and this is just an additional project for you. You have to decide for yourself how much value you put on the additional writing experience (and mentorship that comes with revising your writing in consultation with your coauthors).

A reasonable middle ground you could propose is that you keep first authorship and draft the "meat" (methods, results) of the paper while your colleague helps with the "framing" (introduction, discussion). However, if your colleague is just trying to grab a first author paper for themselves and not acting in your best interests, this arrangement would not be suitable. Someone more senior might have a better "big picture" view of the field that is helpful in writing the introduction and discussion sections.

When discussion authorship issues with colleagues, I think it's important that you be prepared to defend your own interests - in your case, it seems those interests are 1) a first author paper is valuable, and 2) you feel it is important (perhaps especially as learning experience) to write your own work. Any negotiation should start there, and you should be careful to consider others priorities without sacrificing your own. If time is really the main concern, then maybe you are willing to sacrifice (2) but not (1).

I think it's a strategic mistake to give up first authorship on a project if you've done most of the work on the experimental side of things just to have someone else write the text. When people browse through your CV in your field, they will likely assume that the author listed first did the work, and that the last author is the primary senior person supervising the work. Any other middle author presumably had some contribution, but it's not clear how much.

It doesn't seem fair to me for someone to take over a first authorship position just by writing in order to get the paper out quicker. The balance might shift a bit if the overall time you put in to this point is not extensive (i.e., collecting data from a repository, running calculations, etc, is all important work, but may be marginal relative to doing a year of bench experiments). I think ultimately this is something you will need to weigh for yourself, as well as weigh against opportunity costs - if you're going to be writing this paper, does that prevent you from doing something else that's more valuable to you than having this first author paper?

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly normal especially in the biomedical area that the person who does the research and is listed as first author need not necessarily be the person who writes up the first draft of all of the paper. You definitely want to get some writing experience as a student, but it sounds like you're already doing your own writing, and this is just an additional project for you. You have to decide for yourself how much value you put on the additional writing experience (and mentorship that comes with revising your writing in consultation with your coauthors).

A reasonable middle ground you could propose is that you keep first authorship and draft the "meat" (methods, results) of the paper while your colleague helps with the "framing" (introduction, discussion). However, if your colleague is just trying to grab a first author paper for themselves and not acting in your best interests, this arrangement would not be suitable. Someone more senior might have a better "big picture" view of the field that is helpful in writing the introduction and discussion sections.

When discussing authorship issues with colleagues, I think it's important that you be prepared to defend your own interests - in your case, it seems those interests are 1) a first author paper is valuable, and 2) you feel it is important (perhaps especially as learning experience) to write your own work. Any negotiation should start there, and you should be careful to consider others priorities without sacrificing your own. If time is really the main concern, then maybe you are willing to sacrifice (2) but not (1).

I think it's probably a strategic mistake to give up first authorship on a project if you've done most of the work on the experimental side of things just to have someone else write the text. However, the balance might shift a bit if the overall time put in to this point is not extensive (i.e., collecting data from a repository, running calculations, etc, is all important work, but may be marginal relative to doing a year of bench experiments). I think ultimately this is something you will need to weigh for yourself.

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly normal especially in the biomedical area that the person who does the research and is listed as first author need not necessarily be the person who writes up the first draft of all of the paper. I would expect the person doing the research to have the most impact on the methods and results sections of the paper (though if your colleague also did some calculations/statistics/etc they should likely also be contributing to the methods and results), but someone more senior might have a better "big picture" view of the field that is helpful in writing the introduction and discussion sections. You might propose something like this as an alternative, asking that you keep first authorship and draft the "meat" of the paper while your colleague helps with the "framing". It is possible, though, that they are just trying to grab a first author paper for themselves and not acting in your best interests, in which case this arrangement would not be suitable to them.

I think it's a strategic mistake to give up first authorship on a project if you've done most of the work on the experimental side of things just to have someone else write the text. When people browse through your CV in your field, they will likely assume that the author listed first did the work, and that the last author is the primary senior person supervising the work. Any other middle author presumably had some contribution, but it's not clear how much.

It doesn't seem fair to me for someone to take over a first authorship position just by writing in order to get the paper out quicker. The balance might shift a bit if the overall time you put in to this point is not extensive (i.e., collecting data from a repository, running calculations, etc, is all important work, but may be marginal relative to doing a year of bench experiments). I think ultimately this is something you will need to weigh for yourself, as well as weigh against opportunity costs - if you're going to be writing this paper, does that prevent you from doing something else that's more valuable to you than having this first author paper?

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly normal especially in the biomedical area that the person who does the research and is listed as first author need not necessarily be the person who writes up the first draft of all of the paper. You definitely want to get some writing experience as a student, but it sounds like you're already doing your own writing, and this is just an additional project for you. You have to decide for yourself how much value you put on the additional writing experience (and mentorship that comes with revising your writing in consultation with your coauthors).

A reasonable middle ground you could propose is that you keep first authorship and draft the "meat" (methods, results) of the paper while your colleague helps with the "framing" (introduction, discussion). However, if your colleague is just trying to grab a first author paper for themselves and not acting in your best interests, this arrangement would not be suitable. Someone more senior might have a better "big picture" view of the field that is helpful in writing the introduction and discussion sections.

When discussion authorship issues with colleagues, I think it's important that you be prepared to defend your own interests - in your case, it seems those interests are 1) a first author paper is valuable, and 2) you feel it is important (perhaps especially as learning experience) to write your own work. Any negotiation should start there, and you should be careful to consider others priorities without sacrificing your own. If time is really the main concern, then maybe you are willing to sacrifice (2) but not (1).