The first author should be
that person who contributed most to the work
, including writing of the manuscript. The sequence of authors should be determined by the relative overall contributions to the manuscript. It is common practice to have the senior author appear last, sometimes regardless of his or her contribution …
In academic publishing, the lead author, or first author, is
the first named author of a publication such as a research article or audit
. Academic authorship standards vary widely across disciplines.
The most common way authors are listed is by relative contribution.
The author who most substantially worked on the draft article and the underlying research becomes the first author
. The others are ranked in descending order of contribution.
Usually
the first author is also the corresponding author but not always
. Sometimes, if authors are listed alphabetically instead of by contribution, the author who contributed the most will be the corresponding author.
1st Author: Person who did most of the work, like write the manuscript, and do most if not all of the experiment. 2nd Author:
Person who helped out the most
, and/or person who mentored the 1st author (e.g.: if 1st author was grad student) the most.
Shared co-first authorship is defined as
two or more authors who have worked together on a publication and contributed equally
[8]. … Some journals publish articles in which shared coauthorship is described, making it easy to determine author contribution.
The first author should be that person who contributed most to the work
, including writing of the manuscript. The sequence of authors should be determined by the relative overall contributions to the manuscript. It is common practice to have the senior author appear last, sometimes regardless of his or her contribution …
Yes
, the author order is important. The author order is based on their contribution to the work.
Traditionally, co-first authors are indicated by an asterisk and the order of the individuals is
the decision of the PI
. Once the paper is published, it appears in print as follows: co-Author 1*, co-Author 2*, Author 3, and Author 4.
- Relative contribution. As mentioned above, the most common way authors are listed is by relative contribution. …
- Alphabetical list. …
- Multiple “first” authors. …
- Multiple “last” authors. …
- Negotiated order.
Thus, the first name in an author list is the most sought-after position in a scientific publication. … However, sometimes multiple authors may have contributed equally, in which case
the order of author names does not matter
, and you can inform the journal editor of this.
An author is
someone whose written work has been published
. In addition to producing published work, people who write are considered authors when they originate the ideas and content of their written work. For this reason, most authors are writers, but not all writers are considered to be authors.
| cowriter author | composer drafter | ghostwriter writer |
|---|
It depends on the field and on agreement between authors, but from career perspective it
is better
if a person has also sometimes been the first author (and in some fields, also published something alone), it does not matter so much if a person has mostly been a second or a third author.
Even with middle-author publications on the rise, “they count for promotion, but they
don’t count
as much as first- and last-author publications,” Jackson notes. “Just like book chapters and review articles, they count, but not as much as original research articles.”
As you say, being first author is like the holy grail, but being second author on “someone else’s paper
” is not bad at all
, and while it does not scream “amazing” on a CV, it does bulk up your publication record and shows that you are competent researcher, and contribute to work of publishable standard.
