There are a couple explanations:
1. I have three poster presentations
2. They’re longitudinal multi year interventions - it takes a really long time to publish.
3. I didn’t realize the importance of being named on a paper until recently (bad advice from a premed advisor who told me pubs aren’t important as long as I’m doing research I care about. Was foolish of me to believe without doing further research on my own but you live and you learn) so there have been papers that I made significant contributions to but was not named on. I’ve since learned to advocate for myself - the work I’m doing right now I will be named on but this won’t be published for a while.
This is a bummer, but I'm glad you've learned to advocate for yourself. A few points:
1) Your PI can highlight the fact that you've presented 3 posters. Not the same as pubs, but going through the process of putting a poster together and being able to present it is notable.
2) Your PI can cite the papers that you contributed to but were not named as an author in, and highlight "
@fdwy13 specifically contributed to experiments depicted in figures 1 and 2 (or whatever)."
3) PI can name the contributions you've made to current projects and say what you've said here, that these are multi-year projects that will be impactful but will take a long time to be published.
Above all, your PI needs to be
specific. Make it clear that you were an active contributor, not just along for the ride. That sort of material is worth much more than flowery language like "he's wonderful, driven, hard-working," etc.
Many professors just don't publish undergrads. Some projects also take more than 2500 hours to reach a publication.
There is a reason that less than 5% of applicants have a publication.
I've seen this posted a few times, and just want to highlight that this is bad publishing ethics. People who contribute at the level to deserve authorship should get authorship, period. Doesn't mean that things like this don't happen, but undergrads should absolutely feel comfortable advocating for authorship for themselves. Specifically, have a conversation early on with your PI and ask what you can do to make an author-worthy contribution to an ongoing project. Doesn't guarantee you will get authorship, but it will at least let you know the bar you need to clear if you want to make it onto the paper. These conversations can be daunting as a trainee and especially as an undergrad since you're at the bottom of the totem pole, but you can glean much more meaningful information from an early conversation when you can still set a goal to contribute and get authorship rather than discussing at the end when the project is basically wrapped up.
