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    But you say that your colleague is also a PhD student. So you seem to be running out of authors to designate as corresponding. Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 20:50
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    (a) No, it's not unethical to list a PhD student as a corresponding author (b) definitely not, and if that draws the ire of your university, well, that's not a university you want to study in (c) likely not. Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 20:56
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    What makes you believe that a PhD student should not be corresponding author? Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 23:27
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    @dentist_inedible Be careful with just handing out authorship like that. While some fields are fairly lax in what suffices to constitute authorship, in some "gift" authorship (or authorship that's solely used to make the paper look more important) like you're essentially proposing is considered unethical. You should make yourself aware of field and journal standards for authorship. In principle, no one should ever care who the (corresponding) author of a paper is. If it passes the initial muster test by the editor, reviewers should consider it in good faith. Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 1:30
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    Corresponding author is a technical role. The only requirements are that you are an author of the manuscript and available for correspondence. In my field that role is typically handled by the first author, who usually is a PhD student. However, (in my field) nobody cares who is the corresponding author. Authorship order is more important.
    – user9482
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 7:49