• Careers
• Experimental Error

• 28 Oct 2021•
• By Adam Ruben

Experimental Error is a column about the quirky, comical, and sometimes bizarre world of scientific training and careers, written by scientist and comedian Adam Ruben. Barmaleeva/Shutterstock, adapted by C. Aycock/Science

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Just like most aspects of academia, the order of authorship for a scientific paper is a bizarre combination of essential and arbitrary. If you’re new to science, you may be wondering what the big deal is. After all, when you read an article in a normal magazine—the kind of magazine that doesn’t have tiny, crammed-together figures and 30-word titles—you see the name of a single author, or maybe two, and that’s who wrote the article. Full stop. There is absolutely nothing controversial to discuss.

But scientific papers are different. Scientific papers place a lot of stock in the sometimes-voluminous author section. In fact, a paper may gloss over laboratory procedures or aberrant results—but mess up the pecking order of attribution, and man, just watch the snubbed scientist lose their mind.

Much of this is because of the value scientists place on credit. To a casual observer, it might appear that scientists are all egotists, demanding recognition and adulation for their discoveries. But credit is not just a feel-good, like-comment-subscribe kind of commodity; it’s the currency of advancement in our field. It leads scientists to say things like, "She hasn’t gotten a postdoc yet? She has four first-author papers in top-tier journals!" or "I got bumped from third author to fifth author on a six-author paper! I shall now commit heinous deeds."

Those unfamiliar with scientific journals may be saying, "Six authors on one paper? How do six people even write a paper together? What, do you alternate paragraphs?" The answer is it’s a bit of a lopsided affair: One person probably wrote the paper, and the other five barely saw it. The secondary authors may have contributed intellectually, analytically, or via nepotism. The important thing is that the paper exists, and six people are responsible in some way for its existence.

Here are some of the terms you may encounter when debating authorship:

First author: Secure yourself a first authorship, and for all posterity, the world will associate your name with the work. "It’s from the Miller paper," they’ll say, assuming your name is Miller. The prevailing assumption is that the first author did most of the physical labor to produce the results, so when you’re reading a paper, you can feel pretty well-assured that the first author is not in a position to offer you a job.

Last author: One of science’s greatest secrets that outsiders don’t understand is that the first author is the biggest contributor, but the last author is the true winner. The last author is the wealthiest and most powerful. In fact, you don’t even need to perform any work at all to be named last author—you simply have to outrank and employ everyone else. Congratulations, last author! Your colleagues have toiled to uncover scientific truths, and you pointed your gilded finger to instruct them where to toil!

Co–first authors: Only one name can come first because that’s just how formatting works. However, when two authors contributed equally, it’s possible to add a footnote, typically phrased as follows: "*Author A and author B both contributed equally to this work. Equally. Is that clear? So, author B, can you please stop with the late-night emails? I do not care to see your lab notebook from 2017. I do not care that author A once said your cat was ugly. Send me one more whiny plea to be first-co-first-author and you will be second author."

Second author: Second author is the first non–first author. Shame, shame, shame.

Honorary middle author: Because there are so many authors, it’s easy to, you know, slip an extra one in there as a favor. In fact, several researchers in South Korea were caught bolstering their children’s resumes by naming them as co-authors. The middle of the author list is basically international waters, where "contribution" has no meaning, anything goes, and the authors might be … shall we say … wink wink … "authors."

Corresponding author: Sometimes one author is specifically called out as the corresponding author, which is short for "corresponding author to whom correspondence should be addressed; first of his name; king of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men; protector of the Seven Kingdoms." It sounds all well and good, but agreeing to be the corresponding author is a bold choice, because you’re signing up to receive emails from colleagues around the world who (a) find a typo in the 17th paragraph, (b) want to ensure you know that your findings conflict with their own lab’s accepted dogma, or (c) want a free reprint to dodge the paywall. You didn’t hear this from me, but this is what dummy Hotmail accounts are for.

Et al.: The original version of this Latin phrase that sounds like an Israeli airline is "et alia," which means "and others." The strangeness of abbreviating a four-letter word to a two-letter word aside, "et al." is useful for relegating unimportant contributors to the dustbin of history when a paper gets cited. Remember co–first author B in the Miller et al. paper? Yeah, me neither.

Acknowledgements: There’s a tier of credit below authorship, and it’s the jam-packed acknowledgements section at the end of the article. There are no clear-cut rules for who ends up here, but it’s clear that being acknowledged is the scientific journal equivalent of a lovely parting gift. Yay: You can’t list this article on your CV, but enjoy this Rice-a-Roni. Oh, and because there’s so little room, your full name might not even appear here; only your initials. Good job, little buddy, enjoy your participant ribbon!

Ghost author: This is technically less of an "authorship category" and more of a "crime." Sometimes a researcher who legitimately contributed to a body of work will simply be omitted from the author list. Vanished, without a trace. If this happens to you, tactfully approach the paper’s corresponding author, calmly explain your professional disagreement with their choice, and imply that you know where their family sleeps.

Hopefully by now I’ve established that authorship on scientific papers is capricious, inconsistent, and subjective—which is, ironically, the opposite of what science is supposed to be. I was once given an authorship on a paper simply because of my facility with English. The paper’s last author offered me a deal: Edit the grammar in the paper, and I could join the list of authors. I am now fifth author on a chemistry paper that I don’t even really understand.

On the flipside, I’ve been ghosted as well. My name has been removed from paper drafts simply because I stopped working in the lab publishing the paper. It’s always fun to spot a paper without your name and say, "Aw, I remember making those graphs!"

I’m not sure how we can fix this system, but for now, let’s at least stop giving it so much power. Let’s all admit that someone may have a stellar publication record because they work in a lab that gives out authorship like Halloween candy—and someone else may publish less because they work with ungenerous collaborators. When assessing a scientist, the right question is not, "What have you published?" It’s "What have you done?"

Acknowledgements: AJR contributed solely to this monthly column. CR and MR are cats who partially deleted an early draft by walking across a laptop keyboard. We thank ER, age 1, for useful conversations, e.g., "Hi Da-dee." Ennui and cynicism contributed equally to this work.