Image provided by Times Higher Education.
Dear friends,
It’s that spooky time of year when you start to think, “Can I really get all of this done before the holidays?” Don’t worry, you’ve totally got it! Remember that saying no is a wonderful way to shorten your to-do list, and put your tasks on your calendar right away so that you can see how committed your time is already.
Recently, I’ve heard a lot of spontaneous chatter about authorship- both at a faculty retreat and our recent inaugural half-day for a clinical research fellows’ career development curriculum. Friend and colleague Dr. Sei Lee gave the excellent rule of thumb that first authorship and last authorship both = 100% credit, second authorship = 25% credit, and any middle author position represents about 5% credit. He recommended that you keep your effort on a manuscript in line with this rule. My caveat to this excellent advice is that it differs by institution and discipline, and it’s important to know how it works for your collaborators. So, let’s talk authorship dilemmas.
Authorship dilemma #1: who’s an author? We all hate it when someone (usually a senior person) randomly adds people to your author list when you’re circulating draft #57 that’s already formatted for submission. Here’s the formal ICMJE criteria for authorship:
Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Please notice there is nothing in these criteria about whether or not people are paid for their contributions. Some faculty exclude staff from authorship because they are paid to do the work, but this is not consistent with these guidelines.
Authorship dilemma #2: author order. Nothing is worse than slaving over a manuscript only to discover that you are not getting the credit you expect.
These two dilemmas are exceedingly difficult to address after a project has started. You can prevent author inclusion/ order from keeping you up at night by creating an authorship table (example below). I recommend creating an authorship table when you start on a project, especially when it’s a new set of collaborators. This is awkward, and I handle it by saying “this is awkward, but it’s better than misunderstanding roles/ responsibilities throughout the project. Can you please look over this authorship chart and see if it accurately reflects your role on the project? Happy to discuss at our next meeting as well.”
Table: Example Authorship Contributions/ Roles
Table legend: De-identified authorship chart I put together for a multi-institutional project as a junior faculty member. I had a medical student mentee whom I wanted to be first author, but I also knew my own external mentor, “Famous Professor” would expect to be senior author. I sent him the authorship chart, and he told me that in the event the medical student didn’t draft the manuscript, we should change the order to myself first and himself senior. Famous Professor was right. I wrote the paper, and told the medical student that since he didn’t write the paper, I’d be first and he’d be second. Famous Professor was senior. Everyone was happy.
What if you never made an authorship chart and now you’re embroiled in Shakespearean tragedy-level authorship drama? This is a great time to find a trusted, uninvolved career mentor, and make a chart saying what you and the other people did. Bring out those ICMJE guidelines, go over how things unfolded, and rehearse the difficult conversation you’re going to have. Then find your calmest, most objective and rational self and talk to the other parties about it. Assume good intent, and advocate for yourself the way you would advocate for someone else. If it doesn’t work out, chalk it up to experience. It happens to all of us!
Authorship dilemma #3: stakeholder blowback. That feeling when you didn’t loop in a stakeholder and now that person whom you hope to work with going forward hates not only your findings, but also you. Don’t let this happen! On your manuscript planning document, which includes the authorship chart, add a list of:
Stakeholders that need to be looped in, and make a plan for reaching out to them
Funding sources that will be recognized
Other individuals, groups, and resources that will be acknowledged
Authorship is the coin of the realm in academia, and some dissatisfaction is inevitable. Being transparent and using well-respected external standards in advance—and owning your mistakes when you make them— are the best ways I know to get through these challenges.
Here’s a useful addition from Seth Berkowitz to the email version of this post: “Co-first-authorship is fairly underused, I think, in clinical/health services research. Virtually all journals allow it though, and most (I think) universities accept it on CVs (as its very common in basic science/genetics). I’ve found this to be a very useful compromise for the scenario you mentioned where you won’t be the senior author, and you want the mentee to be first author, but know you will be doing a lot of the work. Have also found it useful to smooth over people who want to be higher than expected (either because not pre-specified or because someone wound up doing more work than anticipated). Anyway, won’t be right for all situations but I think it can be a useful option. I believe some journals are now doing co-senior authors as well.”
I am wishing all of you a very prolific fall, and don’t forget to send me news of all of your successes! I love to amplify your work.
Warmly,
Urmimala