QA

Question: How To Determine Senior Authorship

As described in Section 3, some disciplines identify a senior author by listing their name last in the list of authors. A senior author is usually a senior member of the project team who served as the driving force behind the concept, organized the project, and provided guidance throughout execution of the project.

How do you determine order of authorship?

As mentioned above, the most common way authors are listed is by relative contribution. The author who most substantially worked on the draft article and the underlying research becomes the first author. The others are ranked in descending order of contribution.

What is the difference between senior author and corresponding author?

First author is usually the student /researcher who has undertaken the research work. Corresponding author is usually the senior author who provides the intellectual input and designs and approves the protocols to be followed in the study.

Where is the senior author of a paper?

Authorship conventions are based around assumptions that research was done under the umbrella of a research institution. It’s often just fine to assume that the first author did the most work, and the last author is the senior author who is the PI of the lab that enabled the project.

Is it better to be senior author or first author?

Is it better to be first or last author? The first author should be that person who contributed most to the work, including writing of the manuscript. It is common practice to have the senior author appear last, sometimes regardless of his or her contribution.

Can there be 2 first authors?

Shared co-first authorship is defined as two or more authors who have worked together on a publication and contributed equally [8]. For instance, Gastroenterology acknowledges up to two co-first authors by bolding their names in the reference section but not in the body of the manuscript [10].

Who has more value first author or corresponding author?

Corresponding author is the most important author in a research article. First author is the person who makes largest contribution in the research. The most important one. Corresponding author is the person who takes responsibility of answering all queries.

Do second author papers count?

It’s always good to have another paper, even if you are second author. A hiring or review committee may ask you to describe your own contribution to the paper. As long as you can do that honestly and point to some substantive contribution to the paper, it will be to your benefit.

Can a PhD student be corresponding author?

Yes. It is totally proper and ethical, as long as you are one of the main person/people who understand well the work. Indeed, almost all my publications during my graduate student time to obtain a PhD, I am the corresponding author for almost all these papers (around 10+ papers).

Is this author a senior author?

Sometimes, the first author is the main author of a paper or its the corresponding author (or both). The last author might be the senior author, i.e., the project or group leader.

Is senior author first or last?

The sequence of authors should be determined by the relative overall contributions to the manuscript. It is common practice to have the senior author appear last, sometimes regardless of his or her contribution. The senior author, like all other authors, should meet all criteria for authorship.

How do you indicate a shared senior authorship?

Joint first or senior authorship: In the case of joint first authorship, a footnote should be added to the author listing, e.g. ‘X and Y should be considered joint first author’ or ‘X and Y should be considered joint senior author. ‘.

Is last author prestigious?

The convention in many scientific disciplines is for the first author to be the academic who contributed most to completion of the work, while the last author is the senior researcher — the person who made the study possible. Bendels and his colleagues calculated what they called a Prestige Index.

Is being second author on a paper good?

As you say, being first author is like the holy grail, but being second author on “someone else’s paper” is not bad at all, and while it does not scream “amazing” on a CV, it does bulk up your publication record and shows that you are competent researcher, and contribute to work of publishable standard.

Who should be the last author?

The last author is usually the group leader or PI who may have given significant intellectual inputs and supervised the work, but might not have actively conducted the experiments or written the manuscript. The last author is also often the corresponding author.

How do you indicate first author?

Traditionally, co-first authors are indicated by an asterisk and the order of the individuals is the decision of the PI. Once the paper is published, it appears in print as follows: co-Author 1*, co-Author 2*, Author 3, and Author 4.

How do you ask for a first authorship?

Publishing ethics guidelines state that first authorship on a paper should go to the person who provided the biggest contribution. If this person is you, then you should claim your first authorship credit for the great work you’ve done.

How many first authors can be on a paper?

Since only 1 author can be listed first on a publication, the chosen individual among a list of “equally contributing authors” is likely to garner a greater share of citation credit and recognition from readers by virtue of having their name first.

Can postdoc be corresponding author?

Second, and more importantly, after a paper is published, one or more authors are designated “corresponding authors”. Unless students or postdocs have long-term positions, it is typically not appropriate for these authors to be corresponding authors, even if they serve the function of submitting the manuscript.

What is a senior author?

A senior author is usually a senior member of the project team who served as the driving force behind the concept, organized the project, and provided guidance throughout execution of the project.

Does author order matter?

Yes, the author order is important. The author order is based on their contribution to the work.