Dear Jonathan,

Many thanks for your thoughtful comments.

I fully agree that, when in doubt, it's better to err on the side of generosity.

However, to automatically award authorship to all BSc/MSc whose 4-month/8-month research projects were part of a study that leads to a publication, does not (yet?) feel right to me. In that scenario, I'd be concerned about inflation of authorship.

Personally, I would not want to be author of a paper if I have not made some significant conceptual contribution to the design, execution or interpretation of the research (i really hope my co-authors agree!!). I hope my question and your reaction will attract some further input from colleagues in whose groups guidelines on authorship, especially of BSc/MSc students have been formulated.

Jack

I feel the student status is irrelevant to the question of authorship. There are cases where their contribution is comparable to a lab assistant executing someone else's research set-up. This usually does not qualify for authorship. In other cases they are substantially contributing to the work, thus justifying authorship.

As we are from the same university, I can tell you that I know of groups in Delft where they see a publishable piece of research as consisting of 4 parts (research design, data collection, analysis, writing). All who contribute significantly to two of these are authors. Only 1 means acknowledgements. Although this leaves the question of what is 'significantly', it is a clear rule of thumb.

I see two related questions:

1. After granting a student authorship, how to determine the appropriate author sequence?

2. If a student work (for instance a MSc graduation project) leads to a journal paper, do all supervisors of the student count as authors?

It is relatively easy if there is a one-to-one relation between a project (e.g. MSc thesis) and a publication. Here my experience is, student is always an author. With the first author being the one (student or supervisor) that does the actual paper writing.

It becomes complicated if a publication is going to be based on multiple student projects. credit should always be given (be it authorship, acknowledgement or reference to thesis), the extend of which can differ from case to case. Something which is best communicated to students as early as possible.

Thanks Renee!

I agree that, in principle, criteria for including BSc/MSc students in the author list should not differ from those applied to other contributors.

However, I am specifically looking for objective criteria that can be applied in the difficult scenarios described in the final sentences of your answer, i.e., projects to which many students have contributed. That situation occurs more frequently with BSc/MSc students than with other researchers.

I am not sure I'd feel comfortable with the 'two out of four' rule that you describe - much in the same way that I would not feel comfortable with a two out of four set of criteria for parenthood:)

1. Can/should one be a co-author without actively contributing to the writing process (and be given the opportunity/be required to do so)?

2. Should not it be an additional requirement for authorship of a paper that each author is willing and able to take full responsibility for its scientific contents (and has the opportunity/obligation to contribute to data analysis)?

Thanks again for your input,

Jack

This is a super-interesting topic to me, as I have personally occupied just about every position mentioned so far in this thread. Each research group will obviously have to decide for themselves the authorship criteria they want to operate with, but if I were to make a more general statement I think there needs to be a discussion about what the expectations are before each person becomes involved (or not) in the project. On the one hand I'm grateful that the labs I worked in as a BSc student opted for the generous approach (and I see it in hindsight as a way of spreading risk/risk management) as had they not done so I would have very little to show for all the hours I dedicated to research in those 4 years and the sacrifices I made to make research a priority. On the other hand I am frustrated at the lack of transparent discussion about who got included in what publication or conference paper, since clearly there were political and personal factors at play as well. I now try to have this discussion at the outset with each student that comes under my supervision, because I want them to be able to choose to do something else/spend the time elsewhere if they feel that would be in their better interest. Writing this post is making me realize that I should probably have a similarly transparent discussion with my non-student co-authors as well!

All, this is a slight digression but I'm guessing most who have participated on this thread would find these articles interesting and/or helpful:

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.asbmt.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/Detsky_mentor_2007-Aug_2013.pdf

http://www.med.upenn.edu/mentee/documents/mentor_guide.pdf

http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/31/6/811.short

Thanks Rachel! I enjoyed reading these articles and will share them with colleagues and students.