When should someone be a coauthor instead of being in the acknowledgements?

Question

We had a master's student working on our project. He set up a database for us, and wrote some of the initial code with me in a pair programming session. At one point, he had more commits to the repository than any of the other students working on the project. Then he went to do an internship for the summer, and after that my advisor did not want to keep him on the project for some reason, even though I thought he was friendly and easy to work with.

My advisor chose not to list him as a coauthor, and put him in the acknowledgements section instead. However, there was another guy (a professor) who didn't write any code at all, and wasn't there throughout most of the project, but he wrote the introduction and related work sections for us, and he got listed as a coauthor, even though he probably did a day's worth of work on the project (maybe two). In fact, my advisor gave him the coveted last author position, even though my advisor came up with the idea and directed the whole project.

What determines who gets put as a coauthor, and who gets put in the acknowledgement sections?

Answer 1

Usually, the key indicator for co-authorship is the contribution of creative content. Did the student have own ideas that improved the paper? Was the program/database he wrote just a technical thing, or did it contribute scientifically? These are some questions that can help make/understand the decision.

There is a fine line to walk sometimes. Especially between different subject areas, there can be discrepancies who gets to be co-author. Sometimes everybody is counted, sometimes only the first author and his advisor(s) without any students.

Answer 2

It's complicated.

The norms for co-authorship are across the board and highly field dependent. Generally two big ones seem to be pretty consistent though:

1. Wrote or edited the manuscript that is submitted.
2. Made a significant creative contribution as noted by ian_itor.

The idea of if software development is a creative contribution is still hotly contested. One norm that seems to be developing is that developers are typically only credited as a co-author if software development is a significant aspect of the publication. For example, chemistry papers may mention an "internally developed tool" used for analysis and may only credit the developer in the acknowledgements.

Personally I belong to the school of thought that software development is at least in part a creative endeavor. As such, I would suggest the following:

1. If the software is the point of the manuscript, the person should be included as a co-author or as part of a development team.
2. If they software is not the point of the manuscript, but the research is dependent upon the software, they should be included if they were involved in design and architecture.
3. If the research could not have been completed with out the assistance of the person (ex. they optimized an algorithm to run on a distributed cluster) they should be included as a co-author.
4. If the software is incidental to the research (ex. chemistry paper, but a tool was written for analysis) then the development team should be individually recognized in the acknowledgements.

Generally I feel it is also rude of the manuscript authors if developer contributions are not acknowledged at all.

Answer 3

I've worked with people on projects that I thought should've been coauthors, but was told not to include them. Part of the reason was that they were not one of the official collaborators on the project. They helped, but in no way contributed to the actual manuscript.

In general, if someone is a co-author, they will be given the opportunity to make revisions on the manuscript as it goes through the peer-review process. It is advisable to keep this list to a minimum, so that only the core group of contributors are listed as authors. Otherwise, the revision process can take too much time and publishing the manuscript gets difficult.

If someone helped to write the grant proposal that funded the project, they will almost certainly be listed as a co-author. Another thing to keep in mind is that a co-author will be a representative for your manuscript, so it is advisable that they completely understand the scope of the project and research material. And, sometimes its just good to have someone well-respected in the field as a co-author, even if all they did was "write the introduction", because they have experienced insight. So, if they can get involved after most of the research work is done, they can contribute to the manuscript nicely in just a few hours. This is in contrast to a student who did weeks of coding on the project, but may not be able to contribute any real substance to the manuscript.