Generally, the convention in my experience is that the supervisor or manager of the project is last author, unless he/she writes the article him/herself, in which case they would be first author, or second author, if they co-write. In some institutions, the principal investigator or supervisor is obliged to be last author in order to have their work recognised internally by management as part of their assessment.

Generally, the convention in my experience is that the supervisor or manager of the project is last author, unless he/she writes the article him/herself, in which case they would be first author, or second author, if they co-write. In some institutions, the principal investigator or supervisor is obliged to be last author in order to have their work recognised internally by management as part of their assessment.

The problem of ordering principles is that there is no way in which you can tell people which principle you are using. :-) Therefore I think one should not complicate things too much.

My favorite principle is the strictly alphabetical one - since it's the only neutral - and information-free and therefore error-free - one. There is always the choice of who should be the "corresponding author", which is usually marked on the first page by an asterisk (by the journal). That should always be the one who has done most of the important work on the paper. 

Once you have more than two authors, let's say, deciding upon the ordering can create enemies, which is why I think that a principle based on NO ordering is the best (that is, the neutral, alphabetical one). There is no way that anyone can ever convince me that there is a better rule than this.

Dear Satyabrata,

From my experience,  professor always put his name at the end of the authors list and he is a corresponding author. And this is the way suggested also by all people who gave me advices about drafting the manuscript (see e.g. Stanford On-line courses about writing the manuscript). It is hard to get ma own opinion in this matter, what should professor does. However, for me, the possibility to be the first author of the paper with my professor at the end is great honor and I fully appreciate that.

Best regards

Michał W.

Yes, if they already are senior professors, they should and can sacrifice. However, if they also need to publish in order to get promoted, the rank should be based upon the amount of contribution by all authors. If you can publish more than one paper, once the first author can be the student and in the next, the professor can be the first one. :) I do not think that there are established rules for that. Talk to him or her, first. I had a bad experince on a case that I wrote the abstract which summarized the work plan, but my co-author (she was not my supervisor) objected it and demanded to be th first author. I was young and inexperienced then, just a year after my doctoral degree, I could have managed the situation much better. So, act rational not emotinal.

In my view it depends on the expectations in the culture and institution where people are. In Scandinavia it can be OK to have an alphabetical order. However in many institutions the order of the authors is *expected* to be related to their engagement in the paper. So any author would be expected to be named in the order of the level of their contribution. So the student would be first if the student is *the driving force* in the writing process, and the prof would be first if it is the prof who is *significantly* leading the writing process. So the lead author would be the lead author. Also if people have similar engagement it can be appropriate to switch the order between papers. Obviously sometimes significance of contribution is not the same thing as *amount* of text written. Who is contributing to the actual ideas published may also be relevant to take into consideration, without these there would be no paper. It is always good to talk about these points with your co-authors as part of the paper creation process.

Dear Dr. Edward, 

Do you think that the person who writes the paper, should be the first author? I disagree with it. In my point of view, the person who formulates a problem statement and carries out most of the work, he/she should be the first author and even second or last author may write your paper.

Dear Michal, That's correct. The profs. I have worked with they have always asked us to put their name in the last. That gives you a great feeling too. Dr. Akin, true. there are no such rules. Yes, that's the time when this thing becomes critical and I think you should ask your supervisor/ prof. for their suggestions at that time when any conflict of interest happens like that. Dear Dr. Peter, I think alphabetical order shouldn't be followed. Why, usually whenever anybody asks for your publication and if they see your name as first author they think that you have contributed the most to that work. Yes, it shouldn't be based on the amount of text, but the amount of work and thinking.