On authorship — Always seek your co-authors approval before submission
Authorship is the principal currency of academia. Authorship issues should be treated with responsibility and transparency.
Cite as Kamoun, S. 2021. On authorship — Always seek your co-authors approval before submission. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5776759
Early in my Ph.D., I submitted an abstract to a minor conference without bothering to alert my supervisor Cal Kado. When he found out, he gave me a well-deserved dressing-down. “You do not submit anything with my name on it without first running it by me,” he said. He was right of course. Nobody should have their name appended to an abstract, a poster, a preprint, a journal article or any other scholarly output without their prior approval. And when I say nobody, that means every single scientist listed on the author list from the Principal Investigators to early career stage co-authors.
Cal’s stern warning stuck with me over the years. In retrospect, it seems like an obvious rule. But then again, may be not. I’m occasionally reminded of it when colleagues approach authorship and author’s approval in a somewhat cavalier fashion. Three cases happened just these last months. First, one author consulted only with the senior authors prior to submission. A second author circulated the abstract without an author list. And finally, a third author submitted the abstract with an incomplete author list and without consulting first with the other authors. And I’m not listing the way too frequent cases of abstracts circulated at the last minute, which barely gives any time for the authors to comment.
Would you like to have an abstract submitted with your name on it before first checking it yourself? If no, then why would you subject others to this? “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you” — otherwise known as Confucius golden rule — stands out as a reliable guide to civilized interactions with colleagues and frankly everyone else on this planet. It’s just a modest abstract some would say. Well, just like Cal, I learned to very much dislike this breach in deontology. Let’s explore why,
To start with, I’d like to check anything submitted with my name on it. I may not agree with the content or I may spot a typo here and there. Either way, it’s my responsibility as a scholar to ensure some degree of coherence in my work. I like being consistent and I don’t want to confuse readers by flip-flopping with every paper. If I disagree with the work or conclude that I haven’t contributed enough, I will gladly withdraw my name. I have done this dozens of times, so please don’t be offended. Nothing personal.
Authorship is the principal currency of academia, and just like money, talking about authorship is almost taboo. Many academics seem reluctant to bring up the topic even (especially?) with their co-authors. Sometimes, they bring up authorship in an awkward fashion. James Watson felt the need to explain at a seminar I attended a few years ago why a certain female scientist was omitted from the otherwise short author list of the (in)famous 1953 Watson & Crick paper on the structure of DNA. That’s over sixty years after the paper was published! Avoid boring talks was my reaction. But it was revealing in itself, and a testimony to the sensitivities associated with the process. Maybe Watson should have had that discussion before submitting the paper, while the missing co-author in question was still alive.
Authorship can indeed be a major source of tension among scientific research teams and between collaborators, both in the form of unspoken tension and open conflict. There are no strict rules and standards vary between labs and scientific fields, fueling further anxiety about the process. The Sainsbury Laboratory Policy on Scientific Integrity attempts to bring some order by devoting a section to “Authorship and Publication”. The document reminds us that authorship is important in the context of good research practice and scientific integrity. Assigning authorship is one of the most sensitive decisions a senior author will make. There are duties that come with leading a publication as a senior or corresponding author, and there are responsibilities that come with being listed as an author no matter the position. This paragraph is worth reprinting:
“It is critical that Group Leaders appreciate the importance of authorship to their team members and coauthors. Authorship is the primary currency of productivity in science and it can dramatically impact a researcher’s career. Therefore, senior/corresponding authors should ensure that authorship and author ranking is distributed in a fair and transparent manner. Pre-arranged authorship deals, e.g. when a team member is promised first authorship prior to the completion of the experiments, should not be made. Conversely, team members should appreciate the importance of authorship to their peers and should not aggressively and unfairly lobby their Group Leader for a position that doesn’t reflect their contribution relative to their colleagues.”
Many scientists are oversensitive about authorship issues, expecting drama at some stage in the process. This makes some sense given the impact that a publication record can have on a career. And this is yet another reason for all of us to address authorship issues responsibly. We need less drama and more transparency. If you’re a senior or leading author, it’s your duty to share the abstract or paper with all authors in a timely enough fashion so that they can offer their feedback. It’s also your responsibility to explain the rationale for listing authors and ordering them the way you did. You can also highlight any difficult decisions and invite debate. It’s always easier to have a difficult discussion before submission than after.
Easily said than done, some would say. Not really. Showing that you actually took the time to think about the process and have seriously considered everyone’s case is one way to demonstrate that you care, that you are a responsible leader who takes this process seriously and aims at a fair outcome. In my grand view of management, openness and transparency go a long way in building trust within a team and among collaborators. Please do not assume that authors will be “happy to be listed”, “too busy to reply” or that “it’s just a conference abstract.” These are unprofessional and indefensible arguments that I have heard wispered over the years. Also, keep in mind that misrepresenting involvement in a project, honorary authorship, unfair lobbying for authorship etc. are practices that can be classed as research misconduct.
Besides deontology, there are practical reasons why one should tread carefully when building the author list of any scientific product, notably conference abstracts. First of all, the leading author could easily miss some contributors especially in this era where projects often involve large teams of collaborators. The leading authors should always query their collaborators for anyone else who may have contributed to the project. I was surprised more than once, for example when reminded that a summer student is the one who actually ran an experiment.
A second reason is that submitting a conference abstract or a preliminary paper without running it through the authors will send a strong signal that the senior author doesn’t take the process seriously enough to warrant trust in future cases. Here again, it’s worth keeping in mind the value of transparency in building trust and confidence mong teammates and collaborators.
The author list of an abstract can also give a false impression of things to come. Authors may assume that the abstract listing will be recapitualted in the final publication and may, therefore, develop misguided expectations that can develop into toxic situations. This is one more reason to take the abstract authorship list as seriously as any other publication.
And who knows what would happen after the abstract or poster is presented? Contributions to the project may vary over time and this needs to be recognized. This is why pre-arranged authorship deals, e.g. “when a team member is promised first authorship prior to the completion of the experiments,” are not acceptable. See The Sainsbury Lab guidelines.
It all can get tricky without transparency and a coherent framework. The approach I have taken all these years is to categorically reject any deals or discussions of authorship until an advanced draft of the paper is available. Once an advanced draft of the paper is ready, then I will consult with the key co-authors and make a decision based on our evaluation of the overall contributions of the participants, taking into account not just the execution of the work but also intellectual and conceptual contributions to the study. We will justify our decision on the authorship order to all other authors.
In terms of who should be an author, my philosophy has been to be widely inclusive, but there has to be a documented contribution of some sort. Honorary authorship or worse the gift of authorship are unethical and untenable.
In essence, the team will have to trust that I will make a fair and honest decision at that late stage in the production of the paper. Over the years, we have had minimal issues with unhappy authors despite the number of papers we have published and I stand proud of pretty much all the decisions. I made mistakes, but I hope that I have learned from them. I think the key point is that at the end of the day, when lab members move on to greener pastures, they have had a fair deal and a publication package that reflects their contributions. This is hopefully more important than the specifics of a particular position of an author on a given paper.
I suspect what I wrote above sounds obvious and trivial to many readers. But I continue to regularly experience what I view as unorthodox behavior around the authorship issue. My gut feeling is that we don’t discuss and compare notes enough on this topic of authorship. I’m not a psychologist who can assess whether or not this results from any anxiety that authorship causes among scientists. But either way, do me, do yourself and your co-authors a favor, never ever submit a conference abstract or any other publication without seeking prior approval from your co-authors.
Disclaimers
No co-authors were harmed in the making of this article. Any resemblance to real co-authors, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Comments
Lindsay Triplett @triplettlr commented on Twitter “In addition to all of these reasons, government researchers can get in a lot of trouble if they are on submitted papers that haven’t passed their agency’s approval process!””
An interesting comment by Catherine Satzke @CSatzke on discussing authorship intentions ‘early & often.’ Note that I don’t do that as explained here.
@SKBLab likes The Sainsbury Lab policy of not making pre-deals, and thinks they are not really scientific. I agree.
