[Scintillation]

Hi!

I am writing a review article about a topic in organic chemistry. I'm disappointed that I'm the 3rd author on the paper, but we all contributed equally to it. I asked my supervisor if he was going to write the sentence we often see in biology articles ("These authors contributed equally to this work"), but he said "this isn't done much in chemistry, so the answer is no".

Have you seen this sentence in chemistry papers? Which ones?

BTW, I wish that you guys will debate about this topic, because there needs to be a change in mentality. Why do biologists write this little extra line in the text if it's not to make it more equal?

Thanks in advance

MB

[discodermolide]

Hi!

I am writing a review article about a topic in organic chemistry. I'm disappointed that I'm the 3rd author on the paper, but we all contributed equally to it. I asked my supervisor if he was going to write the sentence we often see in biology articles ("These authors contributed equally to this work"), but he said "this isn't done much in chemistry, so the answer is no".

Have you seen this sentence in chemistry papers? Which ones?

BTW, I wish that you guys will debate about this topic, because there needs to be a change in mentality. Why do biologists write this little extra line in the text if it's not to make it more equal?

Thanks in advance

MB

Never seen this on chemistry papers. No further comment!

[FreeTheBee]

This actually caught my attention on a paper I read recently (doi:10.1038/nchem.822), but I think it is quite rare.

[DrCMS]

I've never seen that line in a chemistry article.

[movies]

I have definitely seen that in chemistry articles before.  I believe ACS says in their author info that such lines are no longer allowed because they assume that all contributing authors were essentially equal (a little odd, but I get their point).

For one review article that I co-authored with a labmate, my advisor wanted to put the "equal contribution" comment at the end, but the journal editors told us that these statements we not allowed for review articles, just for research articles.  That seems silly to me, but I guess that is their policy.

Some journals are beginning to require that you put a statement at the end of the paper outlining exactly who did what.  I think that is perhaps the best way forward, especially as science becomes more interdisciplinary.  I really kind of abhor the first author convention, but it is hard to escape.  There are a few labs that always put names in alphabetical order regardless of contribution.  That can be good or bad, of course, and it is certainly a rare occurrence.

[Scintillation]

"they assume that all contributing authors were essentially equal (a little odd, but I get their point)."

Well, I don't. Who said everyone had to make an equal contribution to be in a paper? In today's way of doing research, we need to publish results quickly. Summer students/research assistants/collaborators all make it possible. They do their job, but there's generally a graduate student who leads the project. Personally, I'm a Ph.D. student and I would find it quite difficult to write a thesis about a topic that isn't really my own project. It just gives me a headache to think about it that way...

Anyways, let's say everyone works equally for every publication. Then, why is this such a problem to write one line at the end a an article?

I totally agree with the "who did what" idea. I've see this in biology papers too, and I really think we should get there someday in chemistry. Let's stop being so conservative.

[orgopete]

Oh, oh, my age is going to show. I never thought the first author was very significant. If little wheel preceded the big wheel, who would think the little wheel was important?

I was never keen on the who did what. My personal opinion is that when you want to include a, "Johnny didn't do much" in a paper, think what it is like when you are Johnny. I think it is a little mean spirited to have someone contribute to a paper and then denigrate their contribution. Don't ask them in the first place. I prefer the office politics be kept in the office. I think ultimately, the paper will stand for itself (and usually the big wheel). If the review is notable and brings some specific insight to the topic, should that insight become footnoted? Paragraphs 3-8 were written by… I hope that is not the direction science is headed.

Most of my publications are in the patent office. I saw my company change from a conservative to a more liberal interpretation of inventorship. Even though the person actually doing the work, may not technically be an inventor, I liked the idea of including their names on a patent. The person feels their contribution is valued. The only problem that created for myself in reading other peoples publications is that until I was familiar, I could not easily determine who the big wheel was from all the other contributors, no matter the order. As I "matured", I realized that I could learn who had made the largest number of contributions so that enabled me to not be as particular about my own publications.

This is my advice, if recognition is that important, then seek to do good science. Write good papers. You will receive the recognition you deserve. (Also, no, I couldn't get my name redacted from some of my publications where someone else wrote the crappy paper. Ugh, authorship can cut both ways.)

[movies]

I think their point is that the bar for authorship should be a high one and that each person should have made a substantial contribution to warrant their name on the paper.  It should minimize the tag-along or honorary authorships that you see from time to time and also imply a high degree of responsibility for the results among the authors.

Imagine a situation where a publication is found to contain some fabricated or otherwise incorrect data – do you think all of the authors should bear responsibility for the fabrication/error, or should it just be shunted onto one person who is allegedly responsible?  Does a statement at the end of the paper negate the responsibility of the other authors for the results and conclusions?  I think that if you are willing to fight for your place on the author list you should also be able to defend all the conclusions in the paper to some reasonable degree.  It should be especially important for supervisors to take responsibility for all of the content of their publications since in most cases they will have done little, if any, of the actual hands-on research.  It should be a "trust but verify" situation to ensure that you are signing your name to something reputable.

Authorship is a very complex issue and there is certainly not a consensus on the matter.  Interdisciplinary and collaborative projects are even more complicated.

To digress a little further, a lot of grad students get really hung up on primacy in authorship where their research is concerned.  I was there too, once, so I understand the feelings.  In retrospect, it's not really as big a deal as I thought it was at the time.  I know that my advisor is aware of the contributions that I made and that he is explicit about these things when it comes to a letter of recommendation (which is much more important than a list of publications!)  Sure, there is some vanity involved in getting a first-author paper, but it isn't everything so try not to read too much into it.

All that said, I do think it is a little dismissive of your advisor to just say he won't put that statement in your paper because "it's not done in chemistry."  You may as well try if you believe that there is reason to do so, but you might end up in a situation like I did where the journal doesn't allow it.

[Åke]

I never understood the fuzz about the chronology. One way to avoid this being an issue is to do what Corey and Nicolaou do - put PI (e.g. them selves) as first author.

I have seen the phrase a couple times, one example:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.201003759/full

[Honclbrif]

[fledarmus]

My assumption was that the reason for putting in the descriptions of who did what parts of the work was because that was part of the style requirements for the journal. As for where your name is in the list - I work in the pharmaceutical research industry. Our papers usually had tons of authors, and the authorship went pretty much like this:

The person who actually wrote the paper got his/her name first in the list.
The person who was running that research project got his/her name last in the list (unless he/she wrote the paper, in which case he/she is first in the list). By running, I don't mean managing - I mean the primary scientific thought behind that aspect of the project.
If the paper is being written by a chemist and published in a chemistry journal, the next cluster of names is the list of people who actually did the chemistry on the project. After that came a cluster of names of people who did the primary biology on the project. (If this was written by a biologist to be published in a biology journal, that order would be reversed). If there were contributions from scale-up, PK/PD, toxicology, etc. they usually came next, unless that was the general thrust of the paper, or unless their work was peripheral enough to the point of the paper that it was more suitable to list them in the acknowledgements. And if there were any people that actually didn't do any work but insisted on having their name on the paper anyway (managers, directors of research, other team members who were following different leads and actually didn't contribute scientifically to this particular paper), they were in the "next to last" position.

Our chemistry teams were organized as a lab head and one to three bench chemists, and that was usually the way they were listed in the author list as well. (Similar for biology). So unless you actually wrote the paper (first author) or spawned and guided the research that led to the paper (last author), or didn't do anything at all (next-to-last author), any other position in the list was pretty much immaterial. There was no real difference between second, third, fourteenth, or twenty-seventh author.

In response to OrgoPete - we were much more restrictive about patent authorship. If you were not the single lab head who first disclosed material for the patent, it took an Act of God to get your name on the patent. Even though I worked for a huge research division, almost all of our patents only had one or two names listed as inventors. It certainly didn't include everybody who worked on the project, or even the lab heads of all the labs that worked on the project. The only way a person who was not a lab head could get their name on the patent was to demonstrate that the lab head actually had no idea the person was working on the project until it had proven successful. Then you might be listed as second inventor behind the lab head.