General rant - group research project, I've done ALL the work, others want credit!?!

[DinnerDate]

I work in a relatively middle range university. I secured a small research grant of 5k to carry out a bit of evaluative work. My manager asked I include two other people (one of them herself) on the bid as a 'development opportunity' for other member of staff and it was something she had expertise in. Role forwards 6 months and I have completed all the work on my own, all the analysis and written the report. There is not a word from either of them in this work and they did not give one minute to it - we never even had an inception meeting despite my many invites and suggestions to discuss it. Now manager wants her name and colleagues on the final report and outputs. I've flatly refused - (they've not even read the bloomin thing!) what would you do?

Let it go and concentrate on the contribution made to the discipline. Is it a good contribution?

Why didn't they contribute?

Well, it won't do you any harm in the long run providing you're the primary author. It may well harm them though if they're ever expected to discuss the paper or their contribution to it (google the Sheffield Actonel affair). Academics have been stripped of all credibility for this.

Actually, on that basis alone, I'd let them

It is a good contribution I feel, and a potential journal publication to come out of it. I'm not even so annoyed about colleague (some reasons for her stepping back) but this is the second time manager has pulled this stunt.... just irks me beyond belief, I ended up doing double the hours I was meant to, or scheduled to work wise (credit hour system for workload) so this was on top of an already bursting workload - they both had hours allocated from this but neither contributed.

Would you have been able to secure the grant without their names on the bid?

You're both probably right.... I'm being stubborn as wasn't desperate to do it in the first place (not my primary research area), and I'm annoyed so being grumpy about it!

guitargirl - yes, the grant was following another much bigger project I'd done previously with philanthropic trust funder. Though wasn't my central area, did overlap and I'm very confident I would have got it as sole author. I was asked to go for it, but was reluctant due to other commitments, encouraged/ pushed by manager then left to it! Lesson for me in this I think!

In that case take it as an opportunity to be named as lead researcher - big it up on the cv!

There was recently a post from someone who'd been in a similar position and allowed her colleague's name to go on the paper.

They were posting because, some months down the line, the non-contributing colleague was now being headlined as sole author of the paper and getting invited to conferences on the back of it.

And I think in that case, the cheeky one had at least contributed a very small amount to the paper.

But the MNer who'd done the lion's share of the work and writing wasn't even invited to the conferences, while her cheeky colleague was advancing her career on the strength of the paper.

Surely you have a authoring convention?

In my field, it is well established. It's very rare to find single author papers, as at the very least you will be working in a research group, even if a particular project is your own work.

Primary researcher (you) gets first author. First author is very prestigious. Last author is the head of the research group, or the person who has overseen the project. In between is anyone else who may have contributed, in order of how much work they did.

That is rigidly respected, and nobody who is second or third author would ever get more credit than the primary.

So if you were first author, your manager last, it's clear you've done the work, your manager has managed. If you put colleague second, she'd be "second author"'so everyone would think she has had something to do with the project, but would still know the work was yours.

Isn't it the same in all fields? I don't get how someone could not be first author, then down the line claim they were, certainly no one would invite a second author to conferences over a first.

It's not the same in all fields.

Some fields (in physics etc) put authors in alphabetical order, but in such fields people are only included as authors if they have contributed significantly to the work. In some fields it is not easy to decide the order of the authors - if one person has an innovative idea for a proof in pure mathematics and the second person works out each step in detail, it would be subjective and dependent on the proof which author comes first. Some would argue that it is the idea for the proof that is more important; others would argue that the details take a long time to work out so that author should be placed first. Simple solution: put authors alphabetically.

You should do what they now do in my DH's field (biomedical). You'd be the lead author, therefore first. But each author has a star or symbol by their name, and underneath, next to the star or symbol, what they ACTUALLY contributed to the work!

This way you could actually highlight, even being generous, how little they actually contributed.

I agree on all authorship now before even beginning a project, I wouldn't be prepared to work on anything where this wasn't decided for precisely this reason. It's easy to think that merit and ethics wins- they'll see you did all the work, but really, as the grant 'leader' you should have insisted on a meeting, as in 'we must have a meeting to coordinate the project, decide on outputs and publication authorship should it arise' in an email, that would have got a response...

You live and learn. I think it will be hard to refuse authorship to those named on the grant now, as would that not be expected by the funder? (i.e. the funder is funding all of you, presumably as the 'best team' for the project so your outputs carry weight and combine experience).

In the future, as you say, the way to go is definitely not to include the manager if you don't need her to secure the grant.

There are several competing conventions in Medicine, although everyone is supposed to have made a genuine substantial contribution. One rule I try to follow now is the last author is the guarantor, who vouches that it's legit research, so typically they are the grant-holder (PI) & may also be corresponding author.

There's a rumour at my Uni that Prof discretionary pay is dependent on # pubs as first author or corresponding.

There's a rumour at my Uni that Prof discretionary pay is dependent on # pubs as first author or corresponding.

Isn't all professorial pay discretionary, as there are no national scales?

Not sure how they could apply this as a strict rule for all professors throughout the university - number of publications is more or less irrelevant for a mathematician, for example, while scientists working on big projects in CERN are on many, many publications, all in alphabetical order.

Certainly no such rule is applied at my university - professorial pay is more about how attractive you are to other places (i.e. competing bids) than anything else.

Hmm, I'm getting increasingly grumpy about freeriding authors. The clincher for me is that OP tried to get Co-Is to pull their weight (tried to set up meeting times, etc.) and was ignored or rebuffed. If they didn't contribute intellectually to the bid, and can't be arsed to talk about the project once funding is secured, then they don't get authorship. I'd thank them in the acknowledgements in a vague way, and that's it.

(And I'm a PI who happily chucks authorship at anyone who makes any kind of real contribution to a piece of work, but it doesn't seem to be the case here).

As pp have said, it's essential to lay down authorship rules/order at the start of a project. But if your Co-Is don't engage at all, then I'd send an email when the work has started to say that you have things up and running, blah blah, and then give a nonaggressive ultimatum. Something like: you're now starting to document the work, so you'll assume that they don't want to contribute to the writeup unless they tell you now how they'd like to contribute to the research. Then proceed solo.