First Aid authorship

[chronicidal]

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First Aid has authors, contributing authors, associate authors, special acknowledgments, and online contributors. What is a contributing or associate author, and how does one become one? It seems like many of them in FA 2014 are class of 2015 and would have been second → third years during production of this edition. The list of affiliations is skewed towards students at Brown and Yale, but also has random schools including international, Caribbean, state, osteopathic, etc.

 

[madchemist89]

From my understanding, First Aid is edited by students. I think that anyone who bought Rx or a First Aid product was invited to edit the 2014 edition. If your edit was chosen to be included, I think that you would have received some student level authorship and an Amazon gift card ($10?).

 

[brainsurg88]

Agreed with above. My buddy was selected for his edit.

 

[JJMrK]

You get an acknowledgement, not "authorship" if they incorporate your edits made through the online submission/correction system.

 

[manly_man246]

Bumping an old thread. I have spent my time reviewing FA for edits. Is an acknowledgment even something I would be able to list on my CV? Would it look dumb/pointless to list an acknowledgment for helping to edit FA? Would it mean anything?

 

[DermViser]

Bumping an old thread. I have spent my time reviewing FA for edits. Is an acknowledgment even something I would be able to list on my CV? Would it look dumb/pointless to list an acknowledgment for helping to edit FA? Would it mean anything?

I would seriously laugh and see that as desperate, but that's just me.

 

[Psai]

Bumping an old thread. I have spent my time reviewing FA for edits. Is an acknowledgment even something I would be able to list on my CV? Would it look dumb/pointless to list an acknowledgment for helping to edit FA? Would it mean anything?

What did you do exactly

 

[Doctor Bob]

Bumping an old thread. I have spent my time reviewing FA for edits. Is an acknowledgment even something I would be able to list on my CV? Would it look dumb/pointless to list an acknowledgment for helping to edit FA? Would it mean anything?

Discuss it at your interview. But honestly it's just glorified fact checking. Don't list it on your CV. If they ask you to write a chapter de novo, then yes, that goes in the CV.

 

[chronicidal]

It all depends on your formal level of acknowledgment. Are you listed as a contributing or associate author? That seems definitely worth the CV. Are you listed in the acknowledgments section along with hundreds of other students? That's your call, comparable to asking whether you should list your non-author "acknowledgment" in a scientific article. The answer is probably not. You submit a couple edits to First Aid to get money if they're accepted; or you can do a lot more work to get author credits.

Yes, it's glorified fact checking, but that's really par for the course for many reference texts. The residents who edit, for instance, the Washington Manual, or Pocket Medicine are listed as chapter authors for a specific edition even though they assuredly did not write that chapter de novo. They edited the previous version. It takes as much work to edit a concise reference where word economy is paramount as it does to write de novo a prose review on a given topic.

 

[startswithb]

I was a "contributor" to First Aid for Step 1 2014. My name is in the book along with many, many others. I ultimately left it off of my CV/ERAS application. Mostly because I understood it was cool but small and looked dumb compared to my actual publications. I did enjoy the gift cards, however!