4 ms·
My stance is at least one full concept or one data point or else no authorship to that person.
by anticensor 2y ago
My stance is at least one full concept or one data point or else no authorship to that person.
- baxtr 2y agoWhat if you’re the guy who is keeping the lab running, ie the guy who is securing the funding?
- dekhn 2y agoSimply securing funding and being a manager does not qualify for authorship (based on the read on multiple journals submission policy). I don't think this is universally observed or even really policed, so it's fairly common to see people who really did not contribute anything (even sitting in on a weekly progress report and giving feedback) listed as the last/corresponding author.
- sgt101 2y agoWhich should be treated as misconduct. Folks who do this should be shunned by their peers and driven out of academia. It's exploitative and coercive.
- EA-3167 2y agoUnfortunately people like that tend to run academia.
- sieste 2y agoNot as exploitative as the anonymous reviewer report that asked to add 15 additional papers to our lit review ... all by the same author.
- krull10 2y agoI’ve had that happen in notes from an editor telling me that in addition to addressing reviewer comments I should cite a whole bunch of their completely unrelated articles when submitting a revision. But I have also been a reviewer in a situation where a supposed broad review article for a preeminent journal completely ignores citing a massive amount of relevant prior work (except, conveniently, the authors’ own work, which in many cases was cited over more relevant and important earlier work), including a large number of my own articles.
- sgt101 2y agoI doubt it's any comfort but there are so many people who find this story and many like it to be disgraceful. The unfortunate thing is that they clearly aren't the people who run journals or conference committees.
- hyeonwho4 2y agoICMJE guidelines are frequently cited by other publishers, with the caveat that it depends based on the field. (Which makes sense. A "substantial contribution" to the LIGO collaboration might be much less direct than one in ML or field geology.) > Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND > Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND > Final approval of the version to be published; AND > Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. So you are right. The corresponding author who got funding for the postdoc who designed the experiment for the graduate student that supervised undergradutes and wrote the paper would have a pretty tenuous commection to authorship. But good luck to everyone else in that chain publishing without them. Ref: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-respo...
- margalabargala 2y ago> even sitting in on a weekly progress report and giving feedback Depending on the specific nature of the feedback, someone who does something describable as this could be providing anywhere from 0 to 99% of the scientific insight provided by the paper.
- dekhn 2y agoYes. For one of my hosted interns, I was invited to the weekly meeting (the intern was "working for" another team) and asked for insight, before being added to the paper. I had expected to be listed simply for being the intern host but they didn't agree. I have mixed feelings about this. Personally, I think if a PI runs a lab, brings in all the funding for a grad student, and doesn't really get deeply involved, they should still be listed because they provided the environment in which the research could be done, but I've been told this is a controversial opinion.
- margalabargala 2y agoI'm not sure I understand what it means to be the "intern host" in this context or why that matters for authorship, if the intern was working for another team, and that team was the one working on the paper. Regardless, if you showed up to a weekly meeting, and provided insight into the data provided, then it does sound like you deserve authorship.
- dekhn 2y agoAn intern host: I worked in bigtech. i got permission to secure a summer intern (paid by my cost center). I wrote a job description, interviewed candidates, and hired the best one. the intern came to the company, I found a desk for them, I met with them weekly for status reports, and daily to chat about various stuff. In this case, due to my role and its demands, I could not spend time working on interesting research, so instead, I arranged for the intern to work daily with another team that was doing relevant research. I was invited to, and attended, periodic status meetings, occasionally contributing what little knowledge I had (but absolutely no coding or ML engineering). I read the final paper (did not write any of it) and approved and I received authorship credit (as did the intern's PhD advisor, who also did not really contribute much technical stuff, but provided lab space, and a stimulating environment in which to work and learn). I would have been OK with a simple credit in the paper (an acknowledgement) but after the fact I realized I had been invited to meetings specifically to justify my co-authorship.
- godelski 2y agoIn general the last author (in CS) is the one managing. I'm sure many a PhD student can tell you that their advisors, who are on every paper they write, have at times provided little to no input (potentially providing negative value, at least with respect to the research topic at hand).
- jpeloquin 2y agoSecuring the funding often means writing a research plan that is interesting and convincing enough to be selected for funding in a competitive review process (80–97% rejection rate). The plan usually represents a substantial intellectual contribution that serves as the foundation for derived papers. As long as the people who join the project later don't freeze the planner out of the paper writing process, they'll usually meet all authorship criteria.
- soperj 2y agoDoesn't sound like you're doing any actual science there. What about the guy feeding the scientists or housing them, what about the government for providing roads and sewage? That's like putting Steve Jobs' name on all the patents that Apple produced.
- ant6n 2y agoDid they? (Put his name in all of Apples patents?)
- bryanlarsen 2y agoSteve Jobs has 1114 patents. Apple has 16240.
- soperj 2y agoso yes.
- ryandrake 2y agoI've worked at at least one company where the managers would routinely name themselves as "inventors" on patent applications, where their subordinates were the ones actually doing the "inventing."
- Yoric 2y agoI've worked at one, too. That felt... disheartening.
- tough 2y agoBut also the best motivator to stop selling your brain to heartless corps and go build your own stuff
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
- leoc 2y agoYou might as well give Donald Trump coauthorship, then. Actually this could be an excellent idea: if enough scientists kiss his behind in this way Trump might change his mind about supporting large cuts to science funding.
- dylan604 2y agoTrump has that "you want to be the last person to leave the room" type though, as that's as much as he cares to remember if even.
- Etheryte 2y agoIf that's all you do then your work is very valuable, but you have no business being a coauthor on any of the papers. The dean of the university also secures funding for the university, hopefully you can see that that doesn't make them a coauthor.
- Yoric 2y agoI've had a professor who complained he hadn't been made co-author of a paper I wrote, despite the fact that he had not even bothered to read it despite me asking multiple times for his feedback. I asked him to read it and at least give me _some_ feedback before I submitted an extended version of the paper to a journal. I never did. His name never materialized as co-author.
- tough 2y agosounds fair, fuck that guy
- anticensor 2y agoThank them in the acknowledgements.
- kergonath 2y agoAlso, the guy who does the writing gets to be an author. I’ve seen many instances of the new post-doc finishing writing up a former PhD student’s research after the student left and had no interest whatsoever in their former project. It’s a thankless job, with all the pains of doing science without the actual good bits. And yet it is necessary, otherwise some good or valuable research would not get published.
- ysofunny 2y agodisagree. there's no way it's necessary that people do only the shit bits of science as a career. then again, there's such a thing as a career as a janitor, clearning shit for life... all jobs are dignified BUT not all jobs make careers
- bilekas 2y ago> the shit bits of science as a career I think op was referring to the hard work and effort that's involved.
- kergonath 2y ago> there's no way it's necessary that people do only the shit bits of science as a career. Right, they don’t do only that, they also have their own projects. Also, even if it’s not very pleasant, it’s good to have more papers early in a career. It helps landing the next position.