Authorship issue in collaborative projects

[random_number]

I have been working on a "collaborative" project. However, for more than one year, it was almost only me really working.
Up to now, I have gotten enough results for publishing. It is a bit awkward since there are quite a few people in the collaboration,
but only me working on all the stuff (design research, carry out experiments, write up the draft). Not sure how to address the authorship
issue. It seems unfair to me if I include all the names in the author list. Any suggestions on how to balance "collaborative" and "individual"
contributions? Thanks!

[Ruralguy]

Are you working off someone slses grant? If so, ask that person who would be proper to include and in which order.
If it's just you, then you can do what you think is appropriate for the level of work. Some groups are strict about this...no real work leads to no authorship.

[Puget]

This is awkward, and why it is important to have early and continuing discussions about authorship standards and order in collaborative projects.

What are the standards for authorship in your field? In mine it is supposed to require intellectual contributions -- this could be at the level of the original ideas for the study or at any point after that, but they at some point have to have made a substantial contribution. Many journals require an author statement documenting what each other contributed.

In practice, sometimes these rules are stretched-- for example, when working with previously collected data, who always include the PI(s), even if we are using the data in a different way then proposed by in the grant and they didn't really contribute anything to the current analyses or paper. They did design the original study though, so we take that as counting, even though it might not tick every box for some authorship standards. They also have to at least contribute some revisions to the draft (sometimes quite minor) and sign off on the final submission.

Certainly, it sounds like you should be first or last (whatever the best position is for your field and career stage). As for the others, I'd try to ere on the side of being generous without outright flaunting authorship standards.

[darkstarrynight]

I appreciate your bringing this up. I started a project almost six years ago, and both collaborators left my institution for different roles a few years later. We published one piece together, but then several years went by and I tried to get their help to finish data analysis so we could work on a manuscript. They both were not very interested (even in responding to my emails), so recently, I added a new colleague to the project and we are making progress. I intend to inform the original two colleagues that I will acknowledge them in any future manuscript, but will not list them as authors on the project. Their main role in the project beforehand was collecting the data, but not analyzing it. They were never in researcher positions in their careers, so they do not "need to publish" for their positions.

[Hibush]

I appreciate your bringing this up. I started a project almost six years ago, and both collaborators left my institution for different roles a few years later. We published one piece together, but then several years went by and I tried to get their help to finish data analysis so we could work on a manuscript. They both were not very interested (even in responding to my emails), so recently, I added a new colleague to the project and we are making progress. I intend to inform the original two colleagues that I will acknowledge them in any future manuscript, but will not list them as authors on the project. Their main role in the project beforehand was collecting the data, but not analyzing it. They were never in researcher positions in their careers, so they do not "need to publish" for their positions.

This sounds like an excellent resolution that lets you get the work out without any lingering guilt or reservation.

[random_number]

Are you working off someone slses grant? If so, ask that person who would be proper to include and in which order.
If it's just you, then you can do what you think is appropriate for the level of work. Some groups are strict about this...no real work leads to no authorship.

Thanks for the suggestion!
My supervisor also found this situation a bit difficult and was not sure how to address the issue.
So I have to decide and communicate with the team. I think it's good in principle to keep the rule
"no real work leads to no authorship". But in real life, there are many cases implicitly violating this
rule.

[random_number]

This is awkward, and why it is important to have early and continuing discussions about authorship standards and order in collaborative projects.

What are the standards for authorship in your field? In mine it is supposed to require intellectual contributions -- this could be at the level of the original ideas for the study or at any point after that, but they at some point have to have made a substantial contribution. Many journals require an author statement documenting what each other contributed.

In practice, sometimes these rules are stretched-- for example, when working with previously collected data, who always include the PI(s), even if we are using the data in a different way then proposed by in the grant and they didn't really contribute anything to the current analyses or paper. They did design the original study though, so we take that as counting, even though it might not tick every box for some authorship standards. They also have to at least contribute some revisions to the draft (sometimes quite minor) and sign off on the final submission.

Certainly, it sounds like you should be first or last (whatever the best position is for your field and career stage). As for the others, I'd try to ere on the side of being generous without outright flaunting authorship standards.

Thanks a lot! I totally agree with "it is important to have early and continuing discussions about authorship standards and order in collaborative projects. ". And the current situation even taught me a great lesson on that.

I think the principle of "substantial intellectual contributions" for authorship should apply to every field. It's only that my current situation sits a bit outside of the normal zone. To be honest, the collaboration hasn't been very successful in the sense that other members haven't been able to contribute substantially either because of a lack of time commitment or other issues. And team management also needs to be improved.

As for authorship order, my case would be a bit complicated since, in my field, authors are generally alphabetically ordered. I would like to be generous on authorship for others in the hope of keeping a friendly collaboration environment. But I also don't want to encourage inefficient collaboration due to the lack of a clear credit assignment.

Thanks for all the information you have provided! It helped me from another perspective.

[random_number]

I appreciate your bringing this up. I started a project almost six years ago, and both collaborators left my institution for different roles a few years later. We published one piece together, but then several years went by and I tried to get their help to finish data analysis so we could work on a manuscript. They both were not very interested (even in responding to my emails), so recently, I added a new colleague to the project and we are making progress. I intend to inform the original two colleagues that I will acknowledge them in any future manuscript, but will not list them as authors on the project. Their main role in the project beforehand was collecting the data, but not analyzing it. They were never in researcher positions in their careers, so they do not "need to publish" for their positions.

Elegant!

[Puget]

As for authorship order, my case would be a bit complicated since, in my field, authors are generally alphabetically ordered.

I've heard of this (for physics I think? I'm sure there are others) and been mystified by it-- how do you determine relative contributions from looking at papers in these fields? Are there extensive author statements? Or is it assumed everyone contributes equally (which seems unlikely)?

In my field there are two clear good positions, first and last, with the senior PI generally taking last, and the person (frequently trainee) who took the lead on the study taking first, so order provides you with a lot of information. Of course, depending on the constellation of collaborators it gets complicated (e.g., who takes last when there are multiple PIs involved?). We always try to discuss these things early, though the more senior people get the less they care about such things, and I haven't seen anyone through a fit about it (though I've certainly heard tales).

[Hibush]

I think the principle of "substantial intellectual contributions" for authorship should apply to every field. It's only that my current situation sits a bit outside of the normal zone. To be honest, the collaboration hasn't been very successful in the sense that other members haven't been able to contribute substantially either because of a lack of time commitment or other issues. And team management also needs to be improved.

As for authorship order, my case would be a bit complicated since, in my field, authors are generally alphabetically ordered. I would like to be generous on authorship for others in the hope of keeping a friendly collaboration environment. But I also don't want to encourage inefficient collaboration due to the lack of a clear credit assignment.

In my experience with collaborative teams, being overly generous on authorship on the first paper leads to a poorer collaboration environment in the future. Your collaborators expect to be held to the conventional standard. If you fail to do that they will either exploit you in the future or see you as too weak a collaborator. Those two opposing motivations both lead to the result that they don't to their part in the future.

[polly_mer]

As for authorship order, my case would be a bit complicated since, in my field, authors are generally alphabetically ordered.

I've heard of this (for physics I think? I'm sure there are others) and been mystified by it-- how do you determine relative contributions from looking at papers in these fields? Are there extensive author statements? Or is it assumed everyone contributes equally (which seems unlikely)?

Several years ago, there was a lot of discussion in various places I frequent regarding having multiple "first" authors marked with a symbol, much as one would mark a corresponding author.  I haven't seen too much of that out in the wild because it's still going to be Smith et al. as the citation, not Smith...Jones...et al. as a citation. 

And, in practice for anything except the final published version, that paper will be cited as "That paper out of Bill's group about 5, maybe 10 years ago" where Bill will be the last name on the paper as PI because no one remembers the one paper by that one grad student who left research 3, maybe 7 years ago.

I remember asking about why the grad student went first if the last position was the most prestigious and my advisor explained that a big research group would have 10 or possibly as many as 50 papers per year with the same PI.  Thus, the citation list with many different last names et al. was much easier to grok than a citation list that was Smith et al. 2020k, Smith et al. 2020m.

For the huge collaborations that are literally hundreds of people (like some of the astronomy observations or CERN collaborations), if your name isn't first or last, the rest of the ordering doesn't matter to anyone except you.

[Ruralguy]

Well, sort of Polly.

For astrophysicists who are into reading the big papers coming out of the Event Horizon Telescope  collaborations, we tend to skim the author lists. Its not about trying to keep score, but just getting a rough idea of who, or which subrgoup at least, might be part of a particular project.

And, yeah, I know I'm somewhat giving up anonymity here, as I have sometimes done in the old fora and here. I'm getting older and don't really care, though I respect those who wish to or need to be a bit more careful.

[youllneverwalkalone]

I have been working on a "collaborative" project. However, for more than one year, it was almost only me really working.
Up to now, I have gotten enough results for publishing. It is a bit awkward since there are quite a few people in the collaboration,
but only me working on all the stuff (design research, carry out experiments, write up the draft). Not sure how to address the authorship
issue. It seems unfair to me if I include all the names in the author list. Any suggestions on how to balance "collaborative" and "individual"
contributions? Thanks!

I see author statements being increasingly used to detail contributions in multi-authored papers. I am big fan of the Credit taxonomy so I would definitely encourage you to use that in your paper.

Whether you need to have co-authors in the first place depends on the specifics of the situation - and sometimes on other considerations. Maybe you can elaborate a bit on what the collaboration entails (or was supposed to) in your case?

[polly_mer]

For astrophysicists who are into reading the big papers coming out of the Event Horizon Telescope  collaborations, we tend to skim the author lists. Its not about trying to keep score, but just getting a rough idea of who, or which subrgoup at least, might be part of a particular project.

And you do that via skimming author lists instead of through conferences, working groups, and telecoms regarding specific projects?  The astrophysicists I know seem to focus more on the ongoing research activities and discussions rather than the author list on individual papers, especially when we are talking literal hundreds of coauthors.

Of course, I suppose I could be wrong and should ask whether the people I know are skimming the lists in their offices where I don't see them and only talk about the participatory activities because that's fresher in their minds after specific meetings/telecons.

[Ruralguy]

I can't speak to what other people do, but the activities you list and reading articles (and seeing who authored them) aren't really mutually exclusive. So, I suppose I might have made
the error of over generalizing from my own knowledge.

But you got me, I'm likely not nearly as active in scholarship as the people you know,so I have to make up for that by occasionally  reading an article by someone I don't already know from conference and collaboration interaction. I admit to that.

But even at the height of my activity, I would have never been able to tell you everyone working in some other sub-field---even all the big wigs. Sure, I'd know names, but if I wanted to know more details, I'd have to do more digging, which, in pre-internet days, usually meant reading more papers.

Yes, I have been active post-internet. Gosh, I'm not that old!