On writing
Co-authoring an academic paper is very stressful and the rules for authorship order are never clear. Different advisers have different rules for their graduate students. Sometimes advisers, especially if they are on the tenure track, will assume first authorship by default. And questioning the adviser on this is not desirable for a grad student. I've witnessed very senior faculty members fight like kids with grad students over authorship order. Things can get pretty ugly. Other advisers are very fair and go by contribution of ideas and writing effort.
It is harder to decide authorship order between fellow graduate students working on the same project. Who is the judge of how much has been contributed by whom? Is contribution simply writing or is it also data collection and analysis? While who has written how much of the final paper can be tracked (thanks to 'track changes' option on word processors), how does one determine contribution of individuals towards data analysis? How do you say "Oh but I was the one who contributed the main idea of the paper" when several students of almost equal caliber are working together on a project and ideas evolve through discussions among them.
And yet when people look at your resume, they always count how many papers you have been first author on. Why does it matter so much, when everyone knows that authorship ordering involves many political issues which have nothing to do with ability or brilliance of the author?
I have been working on a paper based on our focus groups last semester and due to the involvement of multiple authors, it has been a very stressful experience. And how do several people 'write together' anyway? Different people have different styles of writing, different thought processes, and different levels of mastery of the English language. Besides a paper put together in parts by different authors tends to have little coherence in logical flow. I would rather work alone and have some papers rejected by the targeted venues than collaborate with others and have every paper accepted. Enough said.
It is harder to decide authorship order between fellow graduate students working on the same project. Who is the judge of how much has been contributed by whom? Is contribution simply writing or is it also data collection and analysis? While who has written how much of the final paper can be tracked (thanks to 'track changes' option on word processors), how does one determine contribution of individuals towards data analysis? How do you say "Oh but I was the one who contributed the main idea of the paper" when several students of almost equal caliber are working together on a project and ideas evolve through discussions among them.
And yet when people look at your resume, they always count how many papers you have been first author on. Why does it matter so much, when everyone knows that authorship ordering involves many political issues which have nothing to do with ability or brilliance of the author?
I have been working on a paper based on our focus groups last semester and due to the involvement of multiple authors, it has been a very stressful experience. And how do several people 'write together' anyway? Different people have different styles of writing, different thought processes, and different levels of mastery of the English language. Besides a paper put together in parts by different authors tends to have little coherence in logical flow. I would rather work alone and have some papers rejected by the targeted venues than collaborate with others and have every paper accepted. Enough said.
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