3 ms·

I'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,

I'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 ago
An 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.
- margalabargala 2y ago
  Gotcha. I would agree that you were invited specifically to justify giving you co-authorship. As evidenced by the existence of our conversation right now, exactly what level of involvement justifies co-authorship is fuzzy at the margins; whatever their personal views, they were probably doing you a favor by moving your involvement from the fuzzy zone into the hard-to-argue-with zone. Even if everyone directly involved in the paper thinks "being an intern host justifies authorship" the presence of some senior institutional figure who disagrees could cause problems for you.

dekhn 2y ago

An 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.

margalabargala 2y ago
Gotcha. I would agree that you were invited specifically to justify giving you co-authorship. As evidenced by the existence of our conversation right now, exactly what level of involvement justifies co-authorship is fuzzy at the margins; whatever their personal views, they were probably doing you a favor by moving your involvement from the fuzzy zone into the hard-to-argue-with zone. Even if everyone directly involved in the paper thinks "being an intern host justifies authorship" the presence of some senior institutional figure who disagrees could cause problems for you.