Calling Academics - Any Advice on Publishing/Joint Authorship?

[karloviusthecat]

Hello academics.

Not sure if this is the best thread to reach you on but thought I'd give it a try. Can anyone help with conventions on joint authorship? I'll try to make this brief. I am a lecturer, in the social sciences. During my postdoc I was within a centre run by an influential professor in my field. We didn't work together as such - in other words, I ran my own projects, collected my own data, etc. However, we did start co-authoring. What this meant was that I collect and analyse the data, write the paper, etc, etc. Her role is limited to providing comments on drafts, for which she gets second authorship. A bit like a Phd supervisor. 'We' have now had several papers published, another on the way, and a book chapter. These papers comprise the bulk of her publication record over the last few years.

She presents her inolvement to me on the basis that she is helping to get me published but in fact her comments are often, I think, wide of the mark. She is not well versed in the theoretical perspective I use, doesn't attempt to become more so, and never even looks at my data.

She now wants to 'co-author' on another paper I am writing which is very close to my heart but quite frankly I can't see why she should - in fact she is pressurising me to get this paper together for a conference before it is ready as she "needs a reason to go." I am starting to feel increasingly used by this relationship since she offers me very little in return.

Am I being over sensitive? Do I just grin and bear it? Or would I be within my rights to say that if she wants her name on the paper she needs to actually do some analysis, write part of it, for example - or offer me a chance to co-author something she is doing? She is powerful and unpredictable and honestly, I am a little scared of her.

Sorry this is long!

I'm not an academic, but a medical writer - my professional job is to assist with the writing of articles for publication in medical journals. I work with the researchers to do the wordsmithing of their ideas to write the paper - typically I am funded by the pharma company that has sponsored their study, and my contribution is acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section.

Medical journals almost all require authors to meet the authorship criteria laid out by the ICMJE - namely that authors must:
•Make substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
•Draft the work or revise it critically for important intellectual content; AND
•Have final approval of the version to be published; AND
•Agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

I've had a look and it seems that social sciences journals don't have any similar guidelines to work within, otherwise you could quote that. In this case, I think it is up to you to work out what you're comfortable with. Academia is a small world, and you don't want to turn a good relationship into a poor one - especially if your colleague might one day be asked to peer review a manuscript you submit for publication!

You don't describe your project, but is it something for which you can see a clear schedule? If it isn't going to be ready in time to be published before the conference (and the pubs process typically takes many weeks), then you probably need to just bite the bullet and say so.

Moving forward, what do you want to do? Do you want to publish alone, publish with other people, or continue publishing with this colleague but on a more 'equal' footing? The latter two might be easiest to achieve initially without upsetting your colleague.

Who do you work with currently - can you engineer a research project with someone else, that could become a joint article with him/her? It would be easy to explain that you have a joint authorship elsewhere - and you might soften it by asking if your colleague would be willing to critically review it in exchange for an Acknowledgement statement (and perhaps that request could be emailed jointly by yourself and your co-author). It sounds as though this might be a more realistic assessment of the contribution your colleague normally makes, and you could continue in that vein on future projects.

If you're looking for a more equal contribution from your colleague, that might also be engineered. How do you currently work it? Do you prepare a first draft and then send it over for your colleague to read and comment on? If so, can you include specific questions, asking for your colleague's input? If your colleague is keen to get this paper submitted quickly, can you say that your current workload doesn't allow that, but it might if he/she were to draft portions of the paper - you could start with the Introduction section, as that doesn't need detailed knowledge of the data, or formatting tables or figures.

Forgive me if this is way off the mark for social sciences, but does any of this have parallels for your work?

Hi JennyWren. That is really useful, thank you. It does have parallels with my work, and has really helped me to think through this issue. The problem is I guess that I am feeling emotional about it, when I need to think with a more rational head. There is no real harm to her remaining involved, only that I feel very resentful that she is claiming joint authorship when in fact her input is so very limited. My sense is that many academics would think anything other than an acknowledgement would be too much unless they have had some substantial input in formulating the ideas and actually writing the paper. Anyway, I really like your suggestions above. This will be our last paper together and after that I will co-author with others and write on my own. If she suggests that she would like to co-author, I will ask her to make it very clear what she expects her contribution to be before committing.

I have made extensive comments on several drafts of all my PhD students' publications. I wouldn't dream of being a co-author though (unless I had done some of the actual writing and analysis). I am a social scientist too.