Ask the Lab Rat

Dear Lab Rat,

I’m about to write my first research paper, and I’m not sure whom to include in the list of authors and in what order. Of course, I’ll include my adviser, but what about some of the other students who contributed ideas or reagents? I’ve noticed some papers have two or three authors and then acknowledge other contributors, while other papers seem to list everyone in their labs. And whose name goes first, mine or my adviser’s? Can you offer any ethical guidelines?

—Etta L. Liia

This is one of those gray areas that have baffled scientists for almost as long as they’ve been publishing their research, but it is also one that can lead to big trouble if not done correctly. I know of one graduate student who, on his own, developed a new technique for conducting high-throughput assays on mammalian cells. When it came time to write the paper, his professor—call him Big Ego—not only put his student’s name second to his own, but added the name of someone in his lab who hadn’t contributed to the project. As a result, the technique became know as that of Big Ego, et al., rather than that of the graduate student and his boss. How petty.

But such egregious shenanigans aside, the general rule of thumb is that you should credit as an author anyone who makes a significant contribution to the work that you are reporting. According to the ACS Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research, the list of coauthors should only include those willing to share responsibility and accountability for the results, which likely does not include the person who takes care of your animal facility or chemical storeroom. However, it should include that post-doc in your lab whose interpretation of an NMR experiment pointed you toward a followup experiment that proved significant in your overall research effort.

As a matter of common courtesy, you should note those who make peripheral contributions to your work in a footnote or “Acknowledgments” section, according to the ACS guidelines. The glassblower who made a key piece of equipment deserves this type of recognition, as does the person who copyedited your manuscript and the colleagues who reviewed your paper prior to submission.

The Royal Society of Chemistry notes in its ethical guidelines that authors should take responsibility for a particular section of the paper being published, offering this concise piece of advice: “If there is no task that can reasonably be attributed to a particular individual, then that individual should not be credited with authorship.”

The National Academy of Sciences, which publishes the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), qualifies this advice with the proviso that “while not all coauthors may be familiar with all aspects of the research presented in their paper, all collaborators should have in place an appropriate process for reviewing the accuracy of the reported results.” In other words, each of your prospective coauthors has to read the paper and agree to be named as a coauthor. The ACS, in fact, requires consent from each coauthor before publishing a paper.

The decision about whose name goes first on a paper probably rests with your adviser. Tradition holds that the primary researcher—the person who did the most important piece of work—goes first, while the name of the group leader or professor goes last. Today, you’ll often see footnotes stating that two or three authors contributed equally to the published work, an acknowledgment that many projects today are beyond the scope of any one individual’s abilities, and that each of the denoted authors performed significant pieces of the research being reported. And some journals, such as PNAS, now require that each paper include in a footnote designations as to who designed the published research, who performed it, who contributed new reagents or analytical tools, who analyzed the data, and who wrote the paper.

But lest you get lost in the important intricacies of authorship, remember that your central obligation is to provide an accurate report of the results of your research and an objective discussion of its significance. If you fail to keep that in mind, little else about your paper will matter.

—A. K. A. Muridae