If you survive the cut-throat competition and are lucky enough (I use the word “lucky” quite consciously) to have a stable job in basic research somewhere, you sometimes find that you end up as an author on an abstract that has been submitted to a conference, or even to a journal, without your knowledge. While such fortuitous discoveries usually stem from the best of intentions, let me just state in this public forum that
it is at the very least polite to let all co-authors see such submissions ahead of time. Even better, with enough advance to actually be able to suggest a few tweaks.
I’m of course not the only one who has faced this issue in some form or another.
Then again, you also get to take part in collaborative work where it all runs on oiled ball bearings – where your part of the work is clearly defined, the authorships are not a source of contention, your suggestions incorporated and your expertise respected. And you’re happy when such work gets published. Because you can’t be on top of everything, but it’s gratifying to take part in many things.
In other words, you just published a paper. Congratulations!
Right on! Congrats, Heather.
Congrats, Heather! For teaching, it’s always useful to know about new genes associated with neurodevelopmental disorders and anomalies, too.
thank you, thank you (bows)
I remember thinking how happy and grateful I’d be when I got to be publishing past the first page of Medline and now I am amused at how blase I’ve become.
But what I meant to get at is that when you have a collaboration and everyone’s role is quite clear (mine was fairly minimal in the paper above, but real) it’s a great pleasure for all involved. This is in contrast to a couple of other collaborative efforts in which I’ve participated. So one learns. And communications to conferences are still publications of a sort, so courtesy would dictate keeping your co-authors informed.
Heather – congrats from me too. That new journal is an interesting one I think.
I do agree about the “added author” thing. From the institutional point of view it makes it harder to keep track of what’s published by staff when even they don’t know! And if the lead author gets your address or affiliation wrong (very likely!) that doesn’t help either.
These days, with Open Access mandates around, it is more important than ever to be consulted.
Well…I never received any credit for this one then…
1 Introduction
In recent years, much research has been devoted to the exploration of robots; contrarily, few have studied the deployment of gigabit switches. It at first glance seems unexpected but is buffetted by related work in the field.
[continues here]
….congrats Heather!
_
Decoupling Web Services from Active Networks in Redundancy
H. Etchevers, M. Pinto, H. Gee, M. Fenner and R. Grant_
I think that H. Gee didn’t deserve any more than an acknowledgement for supplying the chicken used in Fig 5.
Yes, congratulations Heather!
I’d forgive unsolicited inclusion in a conference paper or abstract but agree with you that it is a simple matter of courtesy to get the agreement of collaborators on authorship of a peer-reviewed manuscript.
A colleague had his name included on a paper without his knowledge by a postdoc. When the postdoc was not reappointed, he used the existence of the paper at a tribunal to try and claim that he had been unfairly dismissed.
Authors of submissions to Nature on the origins and evolution of vertebrates quite often refer to this esoteric grimoire. I usually ask them to stop trying to butter me up, and recommend the removal of this outdated, secondary source.
Of course, some journals demand the signature of all authors stating their agreement to a paper before they will publish it. It’s a lot of work to chase down all authors (especially in some areas) but it does cut down on nasty surprises post publication.
I don’t think that citing your work appropriately or not is quite as problematic, if it is as transparent, as including you as an author without your knowledge.
My personal reputation has not reached a point where it is a perceived advantage to include me on abstracts and papers. It’s just well-meaning colleagues so far.
Oh yes, Chris, I have direct experience with just-in-time interventions – but they did not earn me the thanks of my would-be co-authors. However, the situation did enable my position on “gift” authorships to be made abundantly clear to my immediate entourage.
Massimo’s link is broken unfortunately. It was intriguing!
And, indeed, congratulations, Heather.
Remembering a previous blog post, I believe that Massimo was referring to this paper.
Martin, I acknowledge your concession on letting me act as first author.
Maxine, perhaps these links only last for a couple of days…sorry. But if you wish, we could publish a paper together, right now.