Middle author dilemma: how to recognize critical contributions of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Middle author dilemma: how to recognize critical contributions of multidisciplinary teams

Melissa Gymrek

University of California San Diego COASP 2016

Outline

• Why is authorship order so important?
• The sandwich model of authorship
• It get’s complicated: case studies
• Potential improvements

Authorship is the currency of academia

• Job applications
• Grants
• Promotions
• Recognition

Overheard on the job market

Anonymous on applying for an assistant professorship at their institution

If you don’t have three first-author Nature, Science, or Cell papers, they’ll just throw your application in the trash

“ ”

Anonymous on how their search committee ranks candidates

We do consider co-first author papers, but only count them as half when counting publications.

“ ”

Anonymous on how their search committee ranks candidates

Middle author papers don’t really count much.

“ ”

The sandwich approach to authorship

First author, ………, Middle authors, ......, Collaborator, Senior author

(e.g. ¡Post-­‑doc) ¡ (e.g. ¡Staff, ¡graduate ¡student) ¡ (Principal ¡Inves:gators) ¡ Did ¡most ¡of ¡the ¡work ¡ Led ¡the ¡project ¡

* ¡

*Corresponding ¡author ¡

Co-senior author1, Senior author1

1These authors supervised this work equally

Author 2, Author 3, Author 4, …….. Author 100 First author+, Co-first author+

+These authors contributed equally

Lab ¡technician, ¡doctor, ¡soFware ¡engineer, ¡sta:s:cian, ¡applied ¡mathema:cian ¡

An objective approach to author order? Example: Stephen Kosslyn’s “points” system

• The idea (250 points)
• The design (100 points)
• The implementation (100 points)
• Conducting the experiment (100 points)
• Data analysis (200 points)
• Writing (250 points)

Minimum 10% required for authorship Order determined by points

hGp://kosslynlab.fas.harvard.edu/files/kosslynlab/files/authorship_criteria_nov02.pdf ¡

But it’s not always that easy…

Papers can have tens or hundreds of authors

• Experimental biologist
• Medical doctors
• Statistician
• Applied mathematician
• Software engineer
• Data scientist
• And more…

A single paper may involve: Authorship policies should encourage this kind of collaboration! But they often don’t…

Case Study1: Co-authorship

Pros: ¡

• Accommodates ¡mul:disciplinary ¡studies ¡
• Technically ¡gives ¡equal ¡credit ¡to ¡both ¡authors ¡

¡ Cons: ¡

• Usually ¡cited ¡as ¡“FirstAuthor ¡et ¡al.” ¡
• In ¡print ¡one ¡name ¡must ¡be ¡listed ¡first ¡

Co-first author 1*, Co-first author 2*, ………

*These authors contributed equally to this work Co-first author 1: Post-doc, designed and performed experiments Co-first author 2: PhD student, led data analysis

Case Study1I: Consortia

1000 Genomes Project – author list

Pros: ¡

• Allow ¡for ¡huge ¡mul:-­‑ins:tu:on ¡collabora:ons ¡

Cons: ¡

• Hard ¡to ¡discern ¡contribu:ons ¡of ¡any ¡one ¡author ¡

Case Study III: “Gift authorship”

Cons: ¡

• Dishonest ¡portrayal ¡of ¡who ¡was ¡involved ¡
• Gives ¡a ¡false ¡impression ¡of ¡whose ¡lab ¡led ¡the ¡project ¡

First author, ……, Co-senior author 2*, Co-senior author 1*

*To whom correspondence should be addressed Co-senior author 1: Led and funded the study Co-senior author 2: First author’s advisor, not involved in this study

Idea 1: Explicitly describe author contributions

Example: ¡

Idea 2: Smaller citable units

Example: Supplemental “chapters”

Idea 3: Cite things that aren’t publications

• Cite source code
• JOSS (The Journal of Open Source

Software) http://joss.theoj.org/ - a developer friendly journal for research software packages

• Zenodo http://zenodo.org/ - get a DOI for a

github repo

• Cite data, presentations, posters, etc.
• DataCite – assigns DOIs to datasets
• Figshare – share research outputs, e.g. data,

figures, videos. DOI from DataCite

Summary

• Authorship order is a tricky issue, especially in

large, multidisciplinary studies

• Authorship is the primary criterion by which

scientists are evaluated

• Authorship policies should promote

collaboration and reward diverse types of contributions

• Existing solutions aren’t perfect

Acknowledgements

Broad Institute Sci Pub Working Group Journal of Open Source Science Alon Goren Yossi Farjoun Shai Fuchs