I am conducting a systematic review with a group of ten people. The problem is that I don't know who to add as an author and who to come first as an author.
How should I define the first author and second one and so on?
For example, if each one of us has read and evaluated 10 articles (I mean, lets assume each one of us has contributed to the manuscript, the same as others), how should I prioritize the sequence of names as authorship?
In my limited experience of co-authoring with more than 5 people, I think that Zip's law applies roughly. The most prolific author creates half of the content, the second most prolific creates one third etc. (Does this add up to one?!) Place the names in the order of their contribution. Leave out the name of anybody who does not contribute intellectually. If they all contribute the same word count, then arrange the names alphabetically according to surname!
If you are a young, innovative researcher driving the whole intellectual process, then add your name first. If you are a senior supervisor, then put your name last to encourage the young guys and gals.
This all supposes that you did not draw up an contract with your co-authors before you started.
To which journal are you submitting your paper? The "Instructions to Authors" for the journal may dictate the order of the authors.
As an example, you may wish to look at the instructions to authors in the journal, "Systematic Reviews"
http://www.systematicreviewsjournal.com/authors/instructions/systematicreviewupdate
There is also a Committee on Publication Ethics, with a web site: publicationethics.org
Of particular interest, see:
How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers
http://publicationethics.org/files/u2/2003pdf12.pdf
http://publicationethics.org/files/u2/2003pdf12.pdf
could anyone send me materials on the role of sports in youth development.
Try http://authorder.com/ which gives a comprehensive coverage of order of authorship
Deciding on authorship is tricky (and some say it is better to discuss this before the work starts); guidance exists on COPE website mentioned by Marina and also in ICMJE new guidelines (which most journals follow) http://www.icmje.org/.
Using a group name as a collective author and listing names has problems with indexing articles in databases such as pubmed. Many journals now move towards specifying contributions of all authors (and of those who also contributed but do not qualify as authors).
In general in clinical research, the first and last author are most valued. Sometimes you see a note in the article saying that first 2 authors contributed equally.
Decisions on authorship are always difficult, especially when there are many contributors. I usually suggest people to decide about authorship in advance, when planning the study. Then, the roles can be described for each contributor to accommodate the expectations of the collaborators. Good luck, I suggest you take a look in CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy): https://casrai.org/credit/
Up to now, there is no official rule that defines the order of the authors' names. Moreover, the most important evaluation indexes of researchers, i.e., the h (Hirsch) an i10 (Google Scholar) do not take this order into account at all.
Considering the "unofficial rules" (which are simply implicitly accepted conventions) we can say that:
a) There are disciplines where the order of the names is done alphabetically.
b) There are other disciplines where the order of the names of authors is that of their contribution.
c) There are disciplines where the name of the supervisor is placed last.
In any case, in this kind of work, the authors must agree among themselves because this problem can only be solved by them, there are no other solutions.
PS: There are some journals that ask you about the specific tasks performed by each author. But this type of information is intended to enrich their databases, nothing else. They thus collect the maximum of information on the authors, without saying what use they will make of it. These journals are not interested in the ethics of the order of the authors.
In such case of uncertainty, better to take pieces of paper and write numbers serially from 1 to 10. Fold these pieces and mix them. Ask each author to pick up a piece of paper and you get the serial numbers of authors.
The sequence of authorship is not at a problem , if the team members have proper understanding amongst themselves
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