Research and Authorship

[benhc911]

I am currently doing data collection, running experiments and doing some basic analysis, by myself on an apparatus set up by a Masters Student for his thesis. The data is going to be used in a publication by our supervisor. Does it seem fair for me to *request* authorship? or it inquire what degree of additional work would be required for it? The project is a very small, but novel, thermodynamics experiment (i'm in chemical engineering), currently there are the following people working on it:

Two professors (one tenured, one not) serving as joint supervisors (the tenured one is basically just lending his opinion, and his lab space to the other)
One master student
Two undergrads (including me)

I have an NSERC USRA to do this work, and have completed maybe about 20-25% of the trials on my own (its really more tedious then difficult)... but have contributed probably less than 5% of the hours into it...

/edit/ NSERC is the National Science and Engineering Research Council, and a USRA is an Undergraduate Summer Research Award... just in case it isn't know,... since I'm Canadian... /edit/
We have regular meetings where I join the discussion with the Prof about figures, comparisons to industry examples of similar technologies, and ways to commercialize our product (our? his? i dunno... the product I guess lol).

Does this seem like enough to merit the request, or would that be offensive? What if I clarify that its for medical school application, and I'm willing to increase my responsibility accordingly?

thoughts?


What is *enough* when it comes to authorship? because I've heard of people doing the dishes and getting a mention... as like a 14th author -___-;;

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[Catalystik]

The best way might be to meet with the PI and ask what it would take to have coauthorship. Every PI will feel differently about the contribution you need to make. You do not want an 'acknowledgement,' if it's offered. They give that to the person typing the manuscript sometimes.

 

[benhc911]

So I went for it... I emailed my supervisor and got a surprising response...

It is totally justifiable for you to put forward the request. Since I
will be very busy until the end of December, a publication would be
possible only if you could come up with a draft that lays out the frame
of the paper. In such a case, you will be the first author. We will be
sending out a paper early next year if you data are good but won't be
able to produce a reasonably well written first draft. In this case, you
will be one of the co-authors of the paper.


I guess that since the master student is just looking to finish his thesis he isn't really involved in the paper writing... And the prof is a very busy prof with other things to do, but who wants to commercialize... This is a crazy chance right? But I have no experience doing this...

 

[sustentacular]

Awesome
Definitely take him up on his first author offer. Work your ass off, he wouldn't have offered if he didn't think you could do it. Don't worry about lack of experience, papers have a somewhat standard layout, abstract, intro, materials methods, results, discussion, conclusion ... just follow the format that's appropriate for the journal you're submitting it to and you should be good.

 

[Catalystik]

Hey, benhc! Good job. See where the forthright approach can get you.

And don't worry about the paper. Read a few of the other papers in the journal and you'll see they are all very similiar. The secretary will proof it for you and so will the journal editor. Just make it as much like the examples you read as possible, like sustentacular said. If there are any graphics, someone will help you make them pretty.

 

[benhc911]

thanks for the support, both of you!

At the risk of becoming over confident, I feel like this will be the last bullet point on my application that I'll need to be a decently competitive applicant at all of the schools I'm interested in... I just hope that the adcoms feel the same way

 

[Catalystik]

this will be the last bullet point on my application that I'll need to be a decently competitive applicant

After a lot of work, it will be the frosting on the cake.