Research Publication Questions

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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>Just ask the people at your lab, and be specific if they’re being vague. If he says “we publish as a group” then ask if that means you’ll be an author. If you’re an author then you’ll be listed as an author under the title of the paper when it’s finally published in a journal. Since you probably won’t be the first author or maybe not even second author, if someone else cites your paper they probably won’t list your name (ie, they’ll say “PI of experiment,” “post doc”, et al, instead of “PI of experiment,” “post doc,” “PhD student,” “undergrads”).</p>

<p>If you’re an author you can say that you published. If you’re an author chance are you’ve done enough work to earn your spot. When writing the citation for your paper, it works to write out all the authors. The most common way I’ve seen this done (on CVs and resumes from various people) would be to write out the entire citation (all authors, title, journal title, volume, issue, page numbers, etc) then make your name bold. </p>

<p>If it turns out you’re not going to be an author, then you could write something like “Lab XYZ. Supervisor: PI of experiment. Dates: now til then. Hours: too many to count. Responsibilities included all of these fabulous things that I did. Results from these experiments contributed to a publication entitled blah blah blah.”</p>

<p>If I’m not an author on a paper I wouldn’t say that I have a paper published. If asked about it I’d say something like “My lab just published a paper in this journal about this topic, and this is what my contribution was.” If they ask you why you’re not an author, you could probably just say something about not listing undergraduates as authors or something. </p>

<p>First step: ask your lab what the authorship status is
Second step: if you’re not an author, ask if you’ll be recognized any other way (acknowledgements, like you thought, is a good place for this)
Third step: update your resume (NB: keeping your resume updated is so much easier than having to think about all the things you did and list them all at once)</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

3

<p>Thanks for the helpful advice! I was not sure how to approach my P.I for this topic (I didn’t want it to for him to see me come across as pushy or wanting fame.) Perhaps I can ask some of the other people in the group to see what they think.</p>

4

<p>Great start. You could ask a PhD student or a postdoc, they’re probably very familiar with this situation. You wouldn’t necessarily have to just randomly bring it up to your PI–chance are he’ll bring it up again anyway (especially if your projects are progressing), so if he brings it up then it would make more sense to ask. I’m sure you’ll figure it out sooner or later!</p>

5

<p>If you’ve just helped a little bit (not really done anything that will actually be published in the paper like figures or pictures), you’ll probably go in the acknowledgements section which goes near the end of the paper. </p>

<p>Also, the list of authors always goes from the person who contributed the most to the person who contributed the least to the project. The principal investigator goes last. And even if you think that only 4 of you are working on that project, there are definitely some weird outside people who have helped out on it that you do not know of… Just look at the publication when it comes out.</p>

<p>So if you’re lucky, you might get your name near the end of the author list.</p>

6

<p>Whether your name goes on the paper or not depends on the generosity of the PI. Some PI’s will include literally everyone who helped at all (that’s why some papers have 20+ authors). Some PI’s will only include the top 3-4 most influential workers in their paper.</p>

<p>You are only considered “published” if your name on the front page of the article as an author. It is not acceptable to say that your project has been published if you are not listed as an author on the paper. That is misleading and pretty much lying. If you worked on a project but did not get listed as an author, you pretty much can only say that you worked on the project. If you made it into the acknowledgements section, you can say that you were acknowledged in the paper.</p>