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publications 2nd author?
Started by user123456
Yes. I doubt you'll find anyone that would contend that it will not have any impact on your application.
While it's obvious that it will have a positive impact, it's difficult to quantify what that means. If you're weak in other areas, will that make up for it?
I can't say to be honest since a lot of that will depend on the school, where your other weaknesses are, etc. However, if the rest of your app is pretty solid, and you're applying to a school that values research a lot, this should really help you stand out from your peers provided your involvement in the project was deep, somewhat independent, and you are able to talk and articulate what you did to an adcom member.
While it's obvious that it will have a positive impact, it's difficult to quantify what that means. If you're weak in other areas, will that make up for it?
I can't say to be honest since a lot of that will depend on the school, where your other weaknesses are, etc. However, if the rest of your app is pretty solid, and you're applying to a school that values research a lot, this should really help you stand out from your peers provided your involvement in the project was deep, somewhat independent, and you are able to talk and articulate what you did to an adcom member.
Any PI who'd give a premed second authorship in nature/science would be off their rocker.
True...but you have to give credit where credit is due. If the OP actually helped plan the project (unlikely), did the experiments (likely), and helped with the manuscript (likely)...then the PI just may put OP as 2nd author.
Yes, it will be a good for your application.
Duh.
The only circumstance I can see that being the case is a review where the student did all of the groundwork, even then, i doubt they'd get 2nd author, it's just not responsible lab stewardship. A PI needs to advance the career of their postdocs and grad students. Another exception would be a brand new PI who only has one grad student and no other staff.
uh yeah i honestly don't know why i am. i guess it's true that for two months i was the only one working on the project while my post-doc was doing other stuff, but i didn't contribute intellectually to the project. i thought i would be like last author. not complaining 👍
it hasn't been accepted yet so we'll see.
thanks for ur input. i am not familiar with the world of publications at all and didn't know if this would even help me stand out at all.
hmm but i think i disagree with this statement on "responsible lab stewardship." my post-doc and i did all of the experiments. and people from other labs contributed here and there on minor parts of the project. doesn't make sense that they should be listed higher than 3rd author, no? the lab is pretty big and the PI very distinguished, but we were the only two working on this project from our lab.
Damn! I want to be in your lab. Two months of experiments to be second author on a high IF journal. Must be nice! lol But yes, if you and the post-doc were the two from your lab working on the project, yes, you should be second author.
BTW-Your PI will be last author, because he/she is the senior author.
oh of course i meant next-to-last haha
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IF just means impact factor. Publications like Nature, Science, Cell, etc are high impact factor journals. It's a number representing the average number of citations of articles.
a 2nd authorship in a nature-level paper for two months of work is precisely why a lot of adcoms don't pay too much attention to author position
You sure about that?
They would be interested in interviewing him to ask about it at least.
Although it would mean 10X more to have this to get MD PhD interviews....😉
The point is that most adcoms likely don't think, believe, or expect that an undergraduate student directed, or even partially directed, a research study.
my school has been having seminars with the PIs and telling them that unless an undergraduate contributes intellectually somehow (project concept, mathmatical models, or review process), then they shouldn't get any authorship at all. Sucks to be me.
Not really. Some students research for 3 years without a publication. Not having one doesn't say anything about your quality of effort/understanding.
Also, as in my case, the one thing you can usually do is get yourself involved in some conferences and present.
yeah that would be me. Honestly, I wouldn't care except that I was competing against kids from other places where the authorship standards weren't nearly as strict. I know there are certainly many, many kids out there who are much more brilliant researchers than me and have impressive pubs that were well-deserved, but at the same time, there are definitely some kids out there who are just as ordinary in the lab as me...except with publications, because their PIs aren't as strict. Doing tedious gruntwork for years is much more depressing when you know that if you were doing it at another school, your name could also be getting on the resulting papers, just like those kids. But oh well...in a few months, I'm officially done with bench research forever 👍
