Hi,

I work in a facility and many, many times I spend a lot more time/effort that is required doing an analysis.

If the person in the facility is involved in the sample prep, method set up or adaptation (usually asked to give a description of the methodology for the write up). Work done is also usually subsidised by the university or institution that hosts equipment and pays staff...so it benefits from having an author linked to the facility (nobody reads acknowledgements) on the list and you could potentially get more input if it's seen as a collaboration. If it's a straight analysis (already set up) and you only give samples and get results with minimum interaction then an acknowledgement to the technician/facility is enough.

Do what is fair..

Hi,

I work in a facility and many, many times I spend a lot more time/effort that is required doing an analysis.

If the person in the facility is involved in the sample prep, method set up or adaptation (usually asked to give a description of the methodology for the write up). Work done is also usually subsidised by the university or institution that hosts equipment and pays staff...so it benefits from having an author linked to the facility (nobody reads acknowledgements) on the list and you could potentially get more input if it's seen as a collaboration. If it's a straight analysis (already set up) and you only give samples and get results with minimum interaction then an acknowledgement to the technician/facility is enough.

Do what is fair..

Usually these kind of facilities have a well defined terms and conditions and it should talk about authorship too. For example, we used a core facility whose terms and conditions said to acknowledge the use of the facility in publications. Most of them even provide the wordings for the acknowledgement!. However, if the techs involvement  helped your publication substantially beyond the mere data collection (some techs are dam good! for example I have noticed tech suggestions many times helped me to considerably reduced the trials so we could finish the desired expts faster) role of the facility, I would be willing to give authorship even if the terms and conditions did not ask for it. Good luck!

Authorship is one of the most "itchy" (if you allow me the expression) topics around scientists. "Who deserves authorship... the lab-tech guy who did all the hands-on work... the student that followed the advisers idea and did the background, analyzed the data and wrote the paper... the senior researcher who "signs" it... the distant collaborator that provided the samples...??????" Although there has been a good recent discussion about it (http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7417-591a), the topic is still fresh and each journal has its own policies at best, but the general rule is that most research groups make their own criteria. As long as AUTHORSHIP remains the "gold standard" for scientific activity impact/measurement for academic development, I don't expect to have a universal answer to your question...  Even when in the future things might change (http://www.nature.com/news/it-is-time-for-full-disclosure-of-author-contributions-1.11475)... I think that at this moment, the best you can do is to determine YOUR own criteria, and be consistent with it. Open the discussion to others in order to improve this authorship criteria. So... IN MY OWN PERSONAL OPINION... No, they should not be credited with authorship... But they deserve the credit in acknowledgements and methodological references if applicable. Good luck with this, and please, let me know what you decided.

 (Sorry for the NATURE-only references, but it was the ones that I remember at this moment).

B.

Nothing should be done without pay and/or credit for scientific work. Because you got paid is does not mean that you cannot be a coauthor.

Whether it s paid or free if a person makes a significant contribution in terms of science, technology or interpretation results then that person deserves to be a coauthor. However that never happens exactly, instead the corresponding author decides the coauthors as per his discretion.  Sometimes for technical reasons the person that never made any contribution to the work can be a coauthor or even a corresponding author. Therefore it is better to leave the issue to PI or Corresponding author instead of making it a controversial one. 

This is a controversial issue. For example I'm asked if I can do an analysis that is not set up in my lab. Let's say I use a method for plasma analysis but the sample is a cell culture supernatant or a few cells extracted (atomol/cell..minituarisation required). I read 5 papers minimum and adapt the method to what I have available (most clients do not provide columns, a reference method or even a clean sample). I have to do recoveries, check for interferences or sources of pre-analytical errors (sampling or usually other metabolites from literature, so you have to get informed about the biological aspects so to avoid false results or artifacts). After I have made sure everything is fine from an analytical point because the fingers point to the analyst if results are not as expected...so a lot of time asking and answering questions before running samples which is the easy part of the job. Do I deserve authorship? Do I want it? depends...some experiments are flawed in concept and I better keep away from being an author...most of the time based on your observations the direction of the experiment changes, maybe you deserve the authorship but there are already too many names on the list..or you are promised one and in the end they decide to use your method (after they ask you to write all deteails) in the supplementary section and they "acknowledge" you after you gave sweat and tears. NOT NICE!

Now, I discuss this at the very beginning...if they want straight fee for service, that's what they get no extras and I charge for every minute I spend..after all I have to answer to my direct employer.

People that use Mass spec equipment for example (proteomics/metabolomics) are highly skilled professionals and with many years experience so calling them technicians is not right. In my case I have 25 years experience and I hold a Masters degree in analytical chemistry...but I'm still considered a technician by most.

In our facility we train people to do their own analysis and we do fee for service when "expertise" is required...we provide this promptly only because we are experts...still we can't demand authorship, this is only at the discretion of the researchers involved.

Think about this when you make the decision..

Too much CSI, chemistry is an art...

I find it important that all contributors are credited for their contribution - including core facility employees. Authorships are not telling anything about the real contribution, but often authorships are the only way to give due credit, so I recommend giving all contributors authorship. Moreover, since authors are indexed in databases, the inclusion of all contributors as authors will allow future systems to include all contributors and hopefully specify the contribution more. Already today, it is possible to specify ones own contribution to a paper using a feature in ResearchGate and I think much more like this will come. So to prepare for the future - I suggest to include all contributors.

According to me its "No". If you paying for analysis you can acknowledge them. But giving authorship is not necessary unless they did more contribution in your research.

I share the view that data, which are obtained via paid services (i.e. from a company, service provider, CRO, ...) do not deserve co-authorship. It has to be mentioned in the method section (or, if you want, in the acknowledgement section), that data were delivered by the named service providers. My view is different for the 'techs'. I have almost always given co-authorship to my lab technicians since they have done a lot of the practical work, without which the paper would have never been published (see attached paper as an example). If you don't want to put them as co-authors, the techs shoud at least be mentioned in the acknowledgement section.

Article Severe Wound Infection with Photobacterium damselae ssp. dam...

I agree with Vidyasagar Sriramoju 100%.

No. To this urgent question you can find many guidelines. Very general, they say: "authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant scientific contribution to the concept, design, execution, or interpretation of the research study".

Just doing lab work or providing the resources is not enough for an authorship.

If you want them on paper to honor the work, let them at least read the manusskript and add comments.

It´s not the question whether the service is paid or not but the question whether the facility contributed to the scientific content of the publication. I am working in a central laboratory and we provide measurement for several studies but we would never expect an authorship for this service because we are paid for the analysis.This is our daily job.

It´s something different when we take a more prominent part in a study, developing new methods, analyze and discuss the data... Then it is a collaboration and in this case we talk within this collaboration about a co-authorship.

No

Hi Subhash ,

I don't know whether or not some journal editors have seen our discussion here, the Editor from BioTechniques has just published an article asking for the acknowledgement to the paid Core facilities. The article just came out and entitled "A lack of attribution". The Editor noted at the end of the article: "To this end, starting in November we will ask authors during final acceptance if they worked with a core laboratory."  Please read the attached article.

Thanks, Yuan-Yeu Yau,

This is interesting note and opens it up in details,

Subhash

Let's put it this way, authorship constitute significant intellectual contribution to the project. Technical contribution usually doesn't warrant an authorship. Real life is not that simple of caurse and there are many different situation. But if your qestion is like "Technician in core facility helped with the project experiment, shuld I include him as co-author?" the answer is probably "no".

Thanks, Anton, for your views.

Best wishes,

Subhash