2 undergraduate researchers were tasked with doing data collection for a paper that was recently published. The data collection took months to complete. However, in the paper, there is no mention or acknowledgement of their names as the ones who collected the data.
There is a “Data Availability“ section that says that the data can be obtained by other researchers now using the same method and that the data set and analysis can be obtained via the undergraduate researchers’s professor (who is also first author). There is also an “Acknowledgements” section that says the undergraduate researchers’s professor/first author was funded by the university for completing the research (Yes, the undergraduate researchers were also granted a small amount).
Should the 2 undergraduate researchers be acknowledged in the paper for doing the data collection that was used for the paper?
In my opinion, all those who have contributed to the publication with any help should always be thanked.
Hi,
Undergraduate students should be acknowledged for their contribution to a paper. Data collation is an important part of the research procedure, and without it one cannot arrive at reliable research results, so the work of the students who collated the data, should be acknowledged.
In my opinion, every contribution should be acknowledeged. The paper would not have been possible without tha data collection process.
Hello Megan Donnelly
I thoroughly agree they should be acknowledged and often they and their supervisors - or both - are under the impression that this may entitle them to authorship and that is totally wrong if they have not also contributed to conceiving the idea and writing/editing.
- When we ask a question, we may be in doubt or don't know the answer (among others). Here I think "questioner" had been in doubt.
Reality of science dictates us that although the men/women of science generally seek to solve problems via specified methods but the path can not be the same.
All because science is decentralized, it is autonomous.
In a part of world, country, university, department one researcher, faculty member may accept a method (for example in data collection), but another in the same department does not.
So regarding the question here, my experience is this. We have undergraduate researchers that earn money for what they do (like the case of here). They have learnt how to do it fast (and may be well) and do it as a job, or part time job.
Even for many of those undergraduate researchers it is not important, they do it because they know how to do it, because they look at it as a job, in many cases for small money (as the case here again).
But the other issue is that, those undergraduate researchers are asked to help data collection by a researcher/faculty member/department/professor, or the undergraduate researchers, themselves ask (for example) their professors to help them, to learn and their names be added, for their would be future CV. Yes in cases like this, it is unethical, and even they can complain (when they have proof).
- There is no universal answer for this question.
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