In the medical discipline, the first and the last authors are the most contributed authors and the middle author is the least (in a curve). In contrast, in the Engineering discipline, contribution level goes from the who contributed the most to the least: first (most contribution), second, third, fourth..... last author (least contribution).
If an author is working in both medical and Engineering disciplines, how should he/she fix the author order in publications?
As the scientific community does not follow a uniform standard to express authorship, the readers have no clue about the contributions made by each co-author. Any thoughts?
I used to work in geoscience and biology, and I don't think there are strict (in the sense of formal) rules. In fact, I have seen several times the same authors publish together, with the names appearing in different order in each publication. It may be a way to make readers better aware that there are two or more publications by the same team. It may also be a way to avoid any implications that one of the authors "is better" or "has done more" than the other(s), so the team members take turns in being first author.
As a rule of thumb, I would say that alphabetic order is generally followed, unless one wants to stress by using a different order that the first author has contributed significantly more to the publication than the other(s). No one is going to have second thoughts on an alphabetic list of authors, but a different order may start readers wondering.
I am not aware of any particular significance in placing an author as the last in a list of three or more authors, however. If the list is not alphabetical, I would tend to think that he/she has contributed the least to the study. He/she might have been appended to the list of authors as a form of respect (e.g. for elder scientists, or famous ones) even without actually contributing anything of substance. I strongly dislike both practices. I may even suspect that this was done in order to unfairly gain publicity for the other authors, by trying to associate them with a well-known name.
PS - I seem to recall a few cases where a note was added to the list of authors, saying something like "The list of authors is arranged in random order".
Very often, it is like this:
First author: Professor or leader of the working group;
Following authors: those who did all the work (collecting data, carrying out experiments, writing the paper, raising external funding etc);
Last author: A person who did not contribute anything at all to the paper but is important enough to be honored by a co-authorship.
It is not unusual that the names of those who did the bulk of the work (generally students) do not appear at all in the author list. They must be happy if they are mentioned in the acknowledgements.
Bonjour.
Différents éléments peuvent être pris en compte pour définir l'ordre des auteurs à une contribution :
- Le travail réel fourni par chacun
- La nécessité ou la volonté de valoriser le travail d'un des auteurs particulièrement, par exemple parce qu'il a davantage besoin d'une publication en début de carrière. C'est le cas pour les jeunes docteurs ou les doctorants
- L'inscription des institutions associées aux auteurs. Si la contribution entre dans le cadre d'un projet pluri-écoles ou pluri-laboratoires de recherche, il faut peut-être respecter l'ordre dans lequel ces institutions (et donc les auteurs associés) sont placées dans ce projet.
- Si d'autres articles sur des thèmes voisins sont prévues par les auteurs, il est souhaitable de "faire tourner" les noms des auteurs, pour que ce ne soit pas toujours le même qui sont inscrit en premier (ou en dernier).
Il y'a donc des choix humains, professionnels et institutionnels derrière la décision prise collectivement… En souhaitant qu'il y ait cette réelle collectivité de décision…
In astronomy, where I have served as a managing editor, we are seeing a hybrid approach. The first authors are the ones that contribute the most. The first author is the one who wrote most of the paper. The major contributing authors come next in order of their contributions. Following this are all other authors listed in alphabetical order.
If there is a difference between the two different fields, you might have to decide based on the journal you are publishing in. The first author is usually the most important because of in-text citations, i.e., Author et al. There will always be a "corresponding author", which might be a good way to identify the head of the group or the lead investigator.
In my field (economics) there order of authors doesn't matter, hence in 99% cases the authors are listed in alphabetical order.
In Engineering mostly the first authors are the ones contributed the most, after the second or third author, the order does not really matter. The last author is the project coordinator that did not do any physical contribution but was behind the curtains supporting financially and scientifically the project.
In Engineering fields, the authors are listed based on the contribution effort. The first author is the one that contributed the most on the research and who wrote the paper. The last author is the one who contributed the less or that must be included for internal policies. It's very common that students are first authors, supervisors are second or third authors. The second/third position is very important for supervisors to show that they are capable to help students in research. Financial supports are written in the acknowledgment section.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Methodology
- Research Methodology
- Research Papers