It can be argued that the main goal of graduate school is to co-author on as many papers as possible in the most seminal way as possible. For some, this may take six full years of research, while others can graduate in under four. I consider those in the last category, extremely lucky, and the former chose the wrong area of science. Just kidding. Regardless of how long the entire PhD process lasts for a graduate student, the key contribution to the end result is quantity and quality of publications. This Ethics in Research discussion will consider the pathway to authorship, what constitutes authorship, and some of the unethical issues that can arise when considering who to place as an author to a paper. I will forewarn you, much of my examples that I will provide during this discussion have actually happened to colleagues, including myself. They are not fictional, but quite the opposite, very true.

To begin with, you see a paper with the Title in large font and directly below that a list of names in some kind of order with their affiliations demarcated. Which name is the most important and who made the decision to 1.) include all of these individuals and 2.) in what order to include them?

In my opinion, it is the latter question that is less prone to ethical dilemmas. Usually, how the process goes is that the main contributor to the article (usually the person who does most of the work and/or the person who authors the article) is first author. The last name on the list is usually saved for the Primary Investigator (so the faculty advisor) or the person who used the most funds to support the project. When co-PIs author an article, the names at the end tend to be in order of percentage of work being done in their lab (last did the most work, second to last did major work, and third to last did minor work, and so on). There are the players in between the first author and the last which provide a good inkling as to how much of their work was contributed into the paper. A second author contributed a lot more man hours than the third author, and so on. Who places the authors in that order? This tends to fall on the PI in distinguishing in what position to list people. Now, it’s not an issue when a paper has three authors, but becomes a major problem in papers that have 12+ authors. Then, beyond the third author the PIs group authors into groups and by affiliation (or at least I’ve seen that). Obviously, some projects are really long and have a huge scope so groups all participate together and then write the paper with another group so it makes sense to group their names with each other. As I said, there isn’t too much ethical dilemmas that arise with authorship ordering, but I can speak to some extent on when an author deserved a higher placement than what was given. Moreover, there are some problems when a student needs a first authorship to graduate, so the PI places their name as first, when in reality they did not contribute to the extent as what a first authorship deserves. Otherwise, much of the ethical issues are who is placed on a paper.

Authorship is defined by many as a reasonable level of intellectual thought provided by an author on a project. However, this definition can be a bit misleading. Does it take intellect to deliver a sample into an instrument? Does it take intellect to prepare samples? Does it take intellect to analyze the data that has already been run via instrumentation and draw conclusions from the results? What if a student didn’t run any of the samples, or analyze any of the data, but wrote the article; would that constitute first authorship over someone who ran and analyzed every aspect of the study but did not write it? These are the types of questions that must be answered by individuals prior to a publication’s submission. I know of a situation where a colleague contributed a figure to a paper, but no intellectual analysis other than the figure and received authorship for the paper. He wasn’t a part of the review process of the article, nor did he contribute to the section written about his figure. But, because he generated the figure he got onto the author list. Some may argue that this is acceptable. Some may argue that his contribution deserved an acknowledgement and not an actual authorship. Additionally, what if a paper was discussed during group meeting and some colleagues provided good insight into next steps or data interpretation. Would this kind of sparse intellectual contribution translate into authorship? A past PI drew the line at: if a student didn’t analyze data (even calculating averages) they did not deserve authorship. My current mentor is more gray when it comes to authorship, in that an individual really has to contribute in a tangible way in order to get onto a paper. These are very different ways of gauging authorship, I do understand that, and sometimes have caused some whiplash for me mentally because I see both sides, but I don’t know myself who to believe.

So, in considering these issues, how does the scientific world remedy these circumstances? Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer, moreover is one that is heavily dependent on quite a broad range of people and circumstances that there really isn’t a “great” remedy. In my personal opinion, and for what it’s worth, I think the ultimate onus lies on the journals for publication. Papers may be the intellectual children of their authors, but the end rights are held by the journal for publishing material that could have a potential for ethical issues. Perhaps journals should require authors to stipulate the contribution of each author for the publication? From there, the agreement would be that if the submitting authors provide false claims as the intellectual capability of each author (and what they in turn contributed to the article) they (the authors/submitting parties) would be held accountable and NOT the journal. This would also inhibit PIs from placing undeserving parties on papers, as well as give credit where deserved for respecting authors. This method potentially does not take an obsessive amount of time and would really add a sort of validity to the publishing process. But, on the flip side, maybe journals enjoy having 20+ authors on papers? Maybe Science thinks that their publications which usually have a ton of names attached to a piece of work is under the impression that the more the merrier? I’m not sure, but I am sure that the publishing world needs to take a step in the right direction for this authorship battle is getting out of hand.