research situation

[pkr]

---

Members do not see this ad.

-

 

[RxnMan]

Since you state your contribution is a few percent, I'd say it's fair. Probably not the nicest situation, though.
Here's what you can do. If you're still in one of these labs, look around online, find a local conference or maybe an undergrad research day at your school, and ask your PI if you can present your results there. At least you'll get a poster out of the deal.

If you're not still working, then be more up-front about your desire to be in a pub when you apply for a job. Then back up your statement with a contribution. That means doing more than running assays. It means coming up with a question, running it by your PI. Maybe designing the experiments to test your question. Or maybe volunteer to write up one of your PI's papers. Offering to finish up a series of half-done experiments is an easy way to get authorships and do your PI a big favor.

 

[QofQuimica]

so this has happened twice to me:

1) i start out in a new lab and get a guided project
2) i get very good data
3) data is used in published paper (perhaps a 1-3% contribution to paper, not a lot obviously, only a summer)
4) i am not on paper as any type of author

first of all, is this fair?
if not what can i do about it?

Yes, from what you've said about your contribution to the project, it's completely fair. Paper authorship should only be given to those people who made a significant intellectual contribution to the project, NOT for merely collecting a few month's worth of data for someone else's project. In other words, did you help conceive of the idea for the project and/or write the manuscript? Or did you just come in the lab and collect data for a project that someone else thought of and someone else wrote up? If it's the latter scenario, then unfortunately, you really haven't done anything in this case to merit being an author.

I like RxnMan's idea to ask the prof about presenting a poster at a student conference. You might also consider asking the prof if you can do an honors thesis with him/her (assuming you're still an UG and you want to do an honors thesis). If you come up with an idea for your own project (with the prof's help) and write up your own manuscript, THEN you will be doing the level of contribution that merits being an author on a paper.

 

[Davjc2009]

It's not too hard to follow protocols and read data. You could train anyone to do that. The real work behind the research is formulating a hypothesis and designing series of experiments that adequetly test your hypothesis. Then identifying the implications of what you found.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

....be more up-front about your desire to be in a pub when you apply for a job. Then back up your statement with a contribution. That means doing more than running assays. It means coming up with a question, running it by your PI. Maybe designing the experiments to test your question. Or maybe volunteer to write up one of your PI's papers. Offering to finish up a series of half-done experiments is an easy way to get authorships and do your PI a big favor.

Paper authorship should only be given to those people who made a significant intellectual contribution to the project, NOT for merely collecting a few month's worth of data for someone else's project.

I agree with both of these statements. Authorship implies a significant contribution to the work. You can still list your contributions on your CV, but you need to do the heavy lifting to get the acknowledgement.

Many people are willing to provide 3rd or 4th authorship for people willing to take on more responsibilities, you just need to let them know that is what you are looking for, and then you all can work out the specifics.

-t