Question about Authorship

[tucktuckfry]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Hi, hoping there are seasoned residents/attendings who would know how to approach this.

Short story: A resident and I wrote a review paper. Was meant to be equal-I did half and the resident did half. However, the resident is international and I had to rewrite the entire portion that was the resident's responsibility (it was completely unreadable). I don't mind, it happens, I've had to extensively edit foreign medical grads' work before. However, at this point I'm writing the entire paper by myself....and it brings up the question of authorship.

I've been involved in research for 10 years and have always let someone else take authorship over me. For a Nature paper that I did ALL the work for 4 years and wrote the entire paper, I was slowly bumped down to 10th author in front of my eyes (I was promised 2nd because it was my project but the post doc overseeing it was to get 1st...made sense) and didn't say anything because I didn't know how to approach it. Just as recently as last month I took 3rd author to a younger med student who didn't do nearly as much work as me. I'm sick of being an academic push over and it's past time I learn how to stand up for myself and my work.

I want to break out of this pattern where I do a lot of work and don't get the appropriate credit. How should I address this with my PI? Have others successfully navigated situations like this? How can I phrase this in a professional manner to my PI? Any thoughts?

 

[OrthoTraumaMD]

Just tell the PI you want to be first author because you are doing the majority of the work.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[Goro]

Just tell the PI you want to be first author because you are doing the majority of the work.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

End thread

 

[tucktuckfry]

Just tell the PI you want to be first author because you are doing the majority of the work.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

ok that sounds easy but I don't want to come across as a jerk. Should I talk to the resident first or just email the PI? I literally just want someone to tell me exactly what to say...I feel uncomfortable just sending an email saying, "hey i'm doing most of the work on this I want to be first author"..

 

[Lya]

ok that sounds easy but I don't want to come across as a jerk. Should I talk to the resident first or just email the PI? I literally just want someone to tell me exactly what to say...I feel uncomfortable just sending an email saying, "hey i'm doing most of the work on this I want to be first author"..

I usually talk to the resident first and try to resolve the issue. I would ask, “I was just wondering if I could be the first author for this project/paper. Would that be okay?” If the resident knows that you contributed more to the project, he/she is usually okay with it.

 

[OrthoTraumaMD]

ok that sounds easy but I don't want to come across as a jerk. Should I talk to the resident first or just email the PI? I literally just want someone to tell me exactly what to say...I feel uncomfortable just sending an email saying, "hey i'm doing most of the work on this I want to be first author"..

I did tell you exactly what to say. Being blunt is not the same as being a jerk. If what you’re saying is true, and you’re doing the majority of the work, you deserve to be first author. Life is full of difficult conversations. Man up.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[mavric1298]

One reason why it's super important at the start of any project to get something down in writing on what criteria authorship is going to be decided on. It can be something as simple as a google doc with (authorship order will go by relative contribution with PI/corresponding/supervisor author last). While there are no hard and fast rules, most people understand this order if it's not alphabetical, so I would just say "I just to want discuss authorship order and relative contribution and where I feel I belong".... that's it, and hopefully it doesn't turn into something. If it does, it most likely wasn't going to matter what you said in the first place...

 

[tucktuckfry]

One reason why it's super important at the start of any project to get something down in writing on what criteria authorship is going to be decided on. It can be something as simple as a google doc with (authorship order will go by relative contribution with PI/corresponding/supervisor author last). While there are no hard and fast rules, most people understand this order if it's not alphabetical, so I would just say "I just to want discuss authorship order and relative contribution and where I feel I belong".... that's it, and hopefully it doesn't turn into something. If it does, it most likely wasn't going to matter what you said in the first place...

Thanks this is very helpful!

 

[treebeardette]

Being blunt is not the same as being a jerk. [...] Life is full of difficult conversations. Man up.

Such a surgeon response. I love it.

 

[FutureDoc1088]

One thing to consider is whether the resident is at a program you would like to attend. In my experience, it’s good to not rock the ship. Residents often play a role in the match process to some degree - whether the residents have a vote or have the ear of someone who does have a vote, keep the big picture in mind. LORs are also a consideration. If you have a 10th author in Nature, you’re clearly doing something right and that’s impressive as a medical student (or even an attending). I agree that setting some precedent on authorship from the beginning of a project is important. All my papers in medical school were me doing all the work and being 2nd or 3rd author behind some resident that needed it for heir graduation. I didn’t care becuse it got me the residency and career I wanted. Now, I have more say in authorship as a resident. It all works out!

 

[operaman]

I’m going to second the above advice that authorship discussions be a central part of the initial discussions about a project. These are not awkward conversations at all to people in academia because we all know that papers are academic currency and authorship is key.

Even if you had a discussion ahead of time, if your role and contribution to the project have changed significantly from the outset, then it’s time to revisit authorship order. I would not approach the resident about this since it will ultimately be the decision of the senior author/PI. Schedule a meeting, present your case that the project evolved and your contribution has increased substantially and say that you would like to be considered for first authorship since you have essentially done most of the project yourself. Again, this isn’t awkward or unusual. This is abolsutely expected and part of the day to day of an academic career. If you go into academics, you will have trainees and students coming to you with similar concerns.

There are many ways for your PI to address this. If it were me, i would probably do a shared first authorship thing unless the contributions were so wildly different. But that is not for you or the resident to decide. If authorship changes, the PI should inform the resident as such.

I doubt the resident will care that much. I’ve been on both sides of this and honestly I’ve never minded when students or another resident basically takes on a project I wasn’t advancing and pushes it to the finish line. I still wind up with a paper, usually with second or shared first authorship, and I am well aware that if the new first author didn’t do a ton of work, the whole thing would still be a Word document on my laptop. I’ve never found anyone bothered when I took over a project and pushed it to publication. If anything, the residents were very appreciative that I’d done all the work and they still got a nice publication out of it.

Talk to the PI, move forward, and get the sucker submitted!