There are different guidelines for what qualifies a researcher to be an author on publications. I've just seen a case on Twitter where the PhD student was puzzled that the supervisor was going to publish an article from his/her data collection without including him/her.
For PhD students: do you think this is fair? have you discussed it with your supervisor?
For PhD supervisors: What criteria do you use for establishing the authorship policy in your lab/research group?
I see this a huge gray zone in research, and clarity/transparency would help everybody :)
Thanks!
Authorship is one of the most difficult questions of cooperation in science, and it has been discussed very often here at ResearchGate. First of all, see this discussion: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Papers_from_research_work
See also:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_action_can_you_take_against_someone_who_has_published_an_article_in_a_journal_but_did_not_give_you_a_rightful_authorship
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_any_one_to_defend_Honorary_forced_authorship_if_not_why_we_practice_it
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_order_of_authors_in_multi-author_scientific_publications
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Opinions_on_coauthoring
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_Choose_a_Co-author_for_your_scientific_article
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Address_the_ethics_in_authorship_claims_of_research_publications
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Ethics_in_scientific_collaboration
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Adding_scientists_to_a_paper_because_the_added_author_will_pay_APC_charges
In this example, supervisor's conduct is not acceptable at all.
There must be a proper agreement (Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research) among the members of research group/lab for the management and retention of research records, including data and primary materials.
Agreement must ensure Effective management and utilisation of data to prevent compromises to unethical use of data as well integrity too.
Regards,
Collecting data alone should not earn a person a right to be a coauthor especially when the data is easy to collect.
The supervisor should have stated in the "Acknowledgement section" of the paper that the student helped in collecting the data. Or, the supervisor can ask for consent from the student before using the data.
Making a claim to authorship in a paper that used your data especially when the data was collected some years ago is not appropriate and could make the student appear inexperienced before the ethics committee he/she is reporting the matter to
Of course, you can make a claim to be acknowledged as the data collector in the "Acknowledgement section" of the paper. But making a claim to be included as an author in the paper can be easily contested. Here is the reason.
Data analysis, data presentation and data interpretation are much more difficult and require advanced expertise to do than data collection. For this reason, people who contributed to data analysis and data interpretation deserve to be a coauthor. In contrast, data collection is not difficult these days. Many data (except experimental data) can now be downloaded from the Internet by the click of a button these days which makes data collection an insignificant task in research writing in some discipline.
I wish the student good luck in reporting the matter to an ethics committee.
Hello Anderson Souza Oliveira
Some journals clearly state that data collection (and doing nothing else) does not qualify a person to be an author.
Some journals are not so strict.
So different journals have different standards. The more high ranking ones usually say this very clearly but the rules are obviously very hard to regulate.
I would have thought that if the data collection was done as part of the doctoral study then the student would also have been instrumental in the design and conceptualisation of the process. That's more than just sending off a research assistant to go off and do a pre-determined data collection process.
Hi all, thanks for the answers. I think the core issue is the fact that the work comes from a PhD thesis... where the student for sure had to work on - at least - designing the experiment in addition to data recording.
I understand the guidelines, but it seems that the rights of students may not be 100% protected while using them...
Sadly, you are right, Robert: authorship rules in a research group is a huge "gray zone" which lies outside the legal field. Usually, one person decides who and with whom to publish. In fact, the Good Scientific Practice are just recommendations and cannot be prosecuted. This means: whatever happens, it can be not nice at all but not against law... Another important issue is, it is impossible to prove that someone's name was "forgotten" on purpose. Of course, as long as the society sticks to the presumption of innocence. The classical excuse can be like: "my student edited the manuscript and forgot your name (or was innocently unaware), and, by the way, he does not work in my group anymore ...
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