Research Authorship

Authors are listed in order of contribution <s>unless the greatest contributor was a female, in which case the first male in line gets the credit no matter how little he contributed; especially true in academic circles</s>.

If two (or more) contributed the same amount of work then an asterisk or some such will appear next to their names.

The last author is the person who sharpens the pencils, licks the stamps, buys the pizza, washes up the cups and saucers after meetings, and whose grant money funded the work.

Not always. In this research project I had the idea in the first place, but I was already established in my final post and had no need to accumulate the credit. So my junior colleagues did the work as I suggested and one of them, who wrote it up, became the lead author. FWIW two of the 4 volunteers on whom the experiments were performed were my junior colleagues and the others were friends of theirs.

Try all three and let us know.

I guess if you are last you have done nothing but still get a credit.

There is people that always want to be first.

First Author, first in line, first in the line of fire . . .

I've done something but haven't got the credit.

Same here, thank goodness.

What exactly have you done you think you have earned credit for on some published research paper or similar?

Was this an actual collaboration or did you have an idea that was later published by someone?

So you are behind the last one and did not get credit. Now what?

I tell you what: Nothing! Too late, published, ask for a correction and earn a smile. There goes your credit.

Bye bye!

The first author in a research paper is the lead investigator. He/she is the person who leads the project in terms of outlining the work to be done and obtaining the funding for the research. Even if he/she does none of the actual experimental work, this person is almost always the first name on the paper. He/she approves the final draft of the paper and decides if it is ready to be published. Typically this is a 'full professor', if the work is done at a university.

The second author is often the person directly overseeing the work, is usually in charge of day-to-day work assignments and tasks, and is often the person who is in charge of the final draft of the paper. Typically an 'assistant' or 'associate' professor if the work is done at a university.

The third person is usually the one who does the actually 'work' of running the experiment, making the observations, recording the data, et cetera, and does the first draft of the paper. If the work is done at a university, this person is often a graduate student.

These are general practices, and this is how things are usually done.

This is the reason that when 'pulsars' were discovered, the person who made the actual discovery - Jocelyn Bell - did NOT get the Nobel Prize, but her advisor who ran the program - Anthony Hewish - DID get the Nobel Prize. (The Nobel was awarded for his work on 'radio aperture synthesis' that allowed the discovery of pulsars to be made.)

..."Aperture synthesis imaging was first developed at radio wavelengths by Martin Ryle and coworkers from the Radio Astronomy Group at Cambridge University. Martin Ryle and Tony Hewish jointly received a Nobel Prize for this and other contributions to the development of radio interferometry."...

She was just a kid at 24 in 1967 when the discovery was made...and she was listed as second author on the paper....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_synthesis