Your opinion - middle authors

[gizzard]

I'm curious to know what other MSTP students think about the effect of middle authors on publications. Given that you are first author, and your mentor is last author, does having middle authors "dilute" the prestige / impact of your publication? For an PI, it seems to be a hard line to draw when considering what is worth an authorship, an acknowledgement, or neither. What policies are in place in your lab? I'm not talking about "gift" authorships, where the additional people in question contributed nothing to the work. Also, does the effect of middle authors vary depending on what the publication is (ie. high tier primary data paper vs. short data letter vs. a review vs. a chapter in a methods book, etc). Just curious to what other peoples' perspectives are...

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[Ottercreek]

In my opinion, only first authors matters. Having a prestigious middle author can lend weight to your work, whether the work is well done or not (unfortunately). Things only seem to be diluted when you work in field like genomics or physics where there are 50 to 100 authors on some papers.

 

[b&ierstiefel]

if you're an undergrad applying to mstp, any publication is a bonus. undergrads shouldn't get too fretful about whether they get 1st or 2nd author or etc. as long as the applicant can thoughtfully and eloquently describe the research background, the data, the conclusions, implications, and future directions, that applicant is money!

it's grad school and postdoc where you really want to try maximizing the # of first author pubs you have.

 

[gizzard]

Having a prestigious middle author can lend weight to your work,

In a somewhat related note, I overheard a PI say the other day that he occasionally asks collaborating authors to leave out his name from a middle author position. He's happy to help in a collaboration but felt the overall science was weak and only wanted an acknowledgement. Also, he is relatively "prestigious" so he didn't want to imply undue support for his collaborators' shaky work.