Hi
I completed my thesis and would like to publish articles based on my thesis studies. For one of my articles, that is based on a study that I conducted during my thesis, only my main supervisor provided feedback on the article draft. However, the two co-supervisors did not provide any feedback on the article draft. Notably, one co-supervisor did not provide much contribution to my thesis. Am I obligated to include the 2 supervisors as co-authors in my article, even though they did not contribute to the writing of the actual article (only to my thesis)? This especially that one supervisor's contribution to my thesis was not even 10%. My understanding is that if they did not contribute to the writing of the article, they should be simply acknowledged for their work in my thesis. Please advise.
Thank you
Please acknowledge them. Authorship is only for those who have satisfied the criteria for the same - contributed by different means for the actual doing of the work.
How did the co-supervisors help you? What were their role in the same?
Thank you. They co-supervised the thesis. One was involved in the methodology of my thesis studies, while the other co-supervisor hardly contributed to my thesis. As for the article, neither co-supervisor provided any comments or reviewed my article.
So would it be right to say that one of them guided you in designing the methodology of the research work?
Absolutely. He did enough work on my thesis. What I am uncertain about is, do I include the co-supervisors that supervised the thesis as co-authors in my article even if they did not contribute to the writing or reviewing of the article? Also, for the one who hardly did work on my thesis and no work on my article, do I have to include her as a co-author in the article? Thanks
Authorship of an article, i.e. the writing part of the article is one among the steps of the purpose of doing a research work. We are doing a research work to study on a hypothesis or a research gap, then to analyse the data collected as part of the work and then to publish it for the benefit of the community at large. Right?
Hence whoever was involved for the work right from the designing of the research proposal are elgibile to be authors of the same work when it is being published/written/penned. This is because if not for those authors who had helped in preparing the research protocol/proposal or for such co-authors for doing any sort of guidance then the paper could not have been written in the first place.
The order of authorship depends on the amount of work that had been contributed for the work at large. The first author who had done the maximum amount of input (quantum can be measured by the active and productive time being spent for the research - from proposal to collecting data to analysing to writing), and the subsequent authors being done lesser and least work.
If someone had done nothing per se, at any of the stages of the research, but had very little role then the same person can be acknowledged towards the end of the paper - for example we thank or acknowledge the administrators or stake holders (sometimes even the participants). All these are as per the discretion of the principal author or the first author or the main person who did the work - but the decisions must be done in an objective manner.
I hope I have tried my best to explain the understanding of authorship for you.
For those who did not see it: There is a related dicussion, https://www.researchgate.net/post/Authorship_policy_question/1.
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