<p>Howdy</p>
<p>I know authorship is attributed differently in different fields and among PIs, but I have a question regarding the amount of work that needs to be put in in order to be considered on the authorship list.</p>
<p>Is helping with the literature search and revising the manuscript (for a review paper) enough to warrant inclusion as an author? Or is more contribution necessary? Generally speaking.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>generally authorship on a paper is dependent less on physical work and more on intellectual input. although this does vary, unless you are writing a substantial portion of the review I would expect that the most you would get for editing type work would be an acknowledgment (this is in science, I assume).</p>
<p>I don't know what field you are in, but for biomedical science, authorship means contributing meaningful experimental data to the paper, like mutation said, revisions for papers should go under the acknowledgment section of the paper.</p>
<p>When you submit the paper, the journal will provide you with a checklist that ensures that authors are credited appropriately. For each author, you have to designate what contribution they made to the paper. Data collection, Data analysis, Writing and Editing are all on there. I would bet that if you did a substantial amount of footwork to collect the info for this review article and had a hand in writing/reviewing it, you rightfully deserve a spot. If however, you only found literature because somebody told you to find all the info you could on these set of topics and you were one of many people to review the manuscript, you probably deserve a spot in the acknowledgements.</p>
<p>what if you did experiments and got results which were included on the paper but were only one part of the entire manuscript?? I got an acknowledgement cuz my prof said it wasnt his lab policy to give authorship to rotating masters students.. but he also said he's mention that in his LOR.. what do u think??</p>
<p>bio2009 if your experimental data appeared on a figure, you should definitely have gotten an authorship for it.</p>
<p>well i didnt.. n i had no idea about authorship rules.. i thot it ws ok since the PI thot so.. very naive i know.. but wat shud i do abt it now?? shud i just be happy that he's mentioning it in my LOR.. or is there anything else i can do.. i do intend to write abt it in my SOP.. any advice wud be good.. thanks..</p>
<p>Did your experiment inform the message of the paper or was your experiment performed after the paper was conceived of? Simply contributing a single figure to a paper doesn't automatically mean that you should get authorship. This is always a source of frustration but if possible it would be best for all involved to sit down before a project begins to discuss publication expectations and authorship. I have been in your position where a publication was composed from my work and I wasn't given appropriate credit (not made an author). I left that group as a result.</p>
<p>No the paper was written after i had done the experiments and left the lab for my next rotation. My results are included under one of the subheadings of the Results section but my work has been acknowledged as "assisting with the analysis". My experiments were repeated by my guide as well. So I'm not sure if I should have been given authorship since I did not assist in the writing of the manuscript. I honestly had no idea about the criteria for authorship since it was my first experience working in a lab. What do you suggest I do? Should I remind my supervisor to explicitly state it in the LOR and tell him that I will be mentioning it in my SOP? I'm quite confused.</p>
<p>Also, what is the best way to put across the fact that I worked on a pilot project with 30 something genes for 5-6 different samples?</p>
<p>Thank again!!</p>
<p>Are you asking if you should mention to your old PI that you had done work for a paper that he ended up publishing? If so, then absolutely. Furthermore, I would provide him with a summary of the things that you did while in his lab. I don't think it is a good idea to argue over the specifics of who got credit (since you didn't get the authorship and he had someone else reproduce your work anyway). In terms of your personal statement and your inclusion of this project- I don't think you need to specify the exact number of samples that you tested. This is unnecessary detail. Instead, why don't you discuss the overarching reasons for why you did what you did and what could be learned from your work.</p>
<p>
This is great advice, and everybody should note it well.</p>
<p>There is no universal standard for authorship, and different PIs and different institutions have different policies on including undergraduates, technicians, or rotating graduate students.</p>
<p>My institution's official guideline is that
[quote] The conduct of a scientific experiment or other research project has many components, including formulation of a hypothesis, development or application of methods, collection of data, analysis of results and creation of a public description of the work. To the degree that contributions to any of these components require not only technical skills but also intellectual input, they are appropriately recognized by authorship.
So at my institution, contributing technical work is not enough for authorship. You must contribute to the project in an intellectual way in order to be credited.</p>
<p>thanks mollie n belevitt!! </p>
<p>I did contribute in both the technical and intellectual way.. or so i'd like to believe!! When i said i'd mention it in my SOP i did not mean i would talk abt the unnecessary experiment details but that i would mention the importance of the results i got etc etc and i would mention that i got an acknowledgment because it ws lab policy to not give authorship to rotating masters students. I meant to ask if that is ok to write? My PI is willing to mention it as well in his LOR..</p>
<p>oops sorry belevitt.. I didnt realise the second part of ur reply was in response to my second question.. thanks!! that would be a good way to put it across..</p>
<p>I wouldn't say you were delegated to acknowledgments because of lab policy in the SOP. That sounds like an excuse and a teensy bit whiny. Stick to the importance of the research, what you learned from it, end. Not receiving authorship on this single paper will not break an admission committee's opinion of you--they care about your work (and your potential to work for /them/), not the credit you got for it.</p>
<p>thanks tkm256.. i dont have any experience with this stuff so its good to have advice from ppl who do!! will keep in mind what u said when i write the sop..</p>
<p>Cool, thanks for the responses all!</p>