Questions about Research/Publications

Graduate School
1

<p>I am new to research/publications, so I have a few fundamental questions I would like to ask, so I do not get confused and have people thinking I'm lying about my research. </p>

<p>I have been fortunate to be a part of a research project conducted in a lab @ a university. I work in a group of 4. I heard my research professor say that whenever my group publishes, we publish as a group of 4 (along with the mentor). However, my group leader has not really asked me to do much, but just do basic tasks and help out with the other experienced members. </p>

<p>1) My question is, when our group publishes a meaningful article, will the paper only include the influential names of the people who contributed with original ideals, and not students like me, who are just helping out? </p>

<p>1) When there is enough information for the publication, are the names on the top of the articles representing the 1st author/co-authors only? Or do they represent whoever contributed in the whole group? I've noticed that most of the articles are published by Ph.D students and rarely undergrads, however, a lot of undergrads participate in the project. </p>

<p>Don't get me wrong, I am thankful for the experience, and would like to build it up further. However, I just do not want to make a misconception and have people think that I 'lied' on my resume, if I mentioned, a work/project of mine has been published, even though my name may not be in it.</p>

<p>In an interview or resume, would it be right if I said: "I have a research paper published, but just not as a co-author"? Would it be better to say: "Have a research paper published" instead of "Published a research paper." Please suggest a better way if possible. </p>

<p>Also, one last note - do the students working on the project get acknowledged anywhere on the research paper? (I noticed there is an acknowledgment section, but I was not sure if that was where it went.)</p>

2

<p>First of, this question is heavily discipline specific and depends in which field you are.</p>

<p>At least in the life sciences, usually the first author is the guy that wrote the paper and often did most of the research, and the last author is the PI that often had the idea (or money) for the project. All further collaborators are in between, often in decreasing order of the work they had done. In other fields this will be different, for instance in statistics the authors are listed alphabetically.</p>

<p>That said, who gets included on the paper is a decision made by the research group, I’d suggest you ask your mentor what he thinks about it. Also, who is acknowledged is decided solely by the authors. If you happen to appear on the author list, it is save to say “I worked on/we published the paper on XXX”. If you are not, however, I would not suggest you define yourself as an author of the paper (since you are not), and I’d definitely not list it on my resume. Instead, you might formulate it like this: The results of my undergrad research where included in the paper XXX by “grad student” and put something like “01/10-07/10:Undergrad research with Prof. BigBoss on really awesome topic” onto your resume.</p>

3

<p>My department is in engineering, so I believe your example should be valid in the case of authorship. </p>

<p>A question - Would the authors on the papers be considered: “1st author, 2nd author, 3rd author, 4th author, prof. Bigboss?” Or would the authors on the papers just be considered: “1st author, co author 1, co author 2, co author 3, co author 4, prof. BigBoss”?</p>

4

<p>The first option is right (First author, second, etc) if it’s a paper with one main guy/gal that did the bulk of the work/writing/etc. (aka the leader) with other collaborators helping/assisting at a lesser extent than the main guy/gal. If two people worked equally on the project (so that neither can claim “first authorship” then the two people are called “co-authors” and get equal credit for the work. Usually co-authorship is noted with an asterisk) So, a 5th person listed on a paper (if lets say if there’s 7 authors) would NOT be called a co-author!</p>