Negotiating authorship and authorship order

The importance of collaboration in research projects cannot be overrated. In the social and periodical demands of interdisciplinary research, collaboration is prone to provide broader views on a research problem and different approaches. Social skills in collaboration are considered a prominent competence to be a productive scholar. Specifically, graduate students and early career researchers are recommended to work with others. That being said, collaboration gives rise to a sensitive issue, negotiating authorship ordering. Academic conventions have expectations that the first author has the highest contribution to the paper such as conceptualizing research ideas, interpreting data, and writing a draft. Just as a research process could be unexpected and face unplanned situations, an authorship order can be less clear to determine. The worst scenario is "the boss will decide at the last minute" given that this confusion could negatively impact not only the results but also the processes. Authors could have different expectations of their commitments and authorship ordering. One might put in less effort while others commit more than expected. In light of possible usages of the author order in performance assessment, negotiating authorship ordering could be sensitive.

Fortunately, the American Psychology Association (APA) has provided tips to explain and determine authorship order. Authorship refers to "a public acknowledgment of the scientific and academic contribution of the disseminated piece of information", which explains the responsibilities and credits of the published paper. APA recommended discussing the authorship at the beginning of a project purposefully and thoughtfully. The discussion and determination would also be helpful to get all the contributors on the same page for the following process. The captured images are from the attached files on the APA with my learning points.

 

1. Consider having a written contract regarding an agreement of the authors' responsibilities and roles.

2. Conceptualizing and writing are the most important parts (practical parts such as collecting or organizing data are less considered).

3. This process is to "pick your battles” and advocate for greater leadership on projects that are most important to you.

 

Another useful paper for authorship negotiation is from Dr. Richards in JTPE (link below). He and his colleagues provided their thoughts on 1) ongoing discussion of authorship, 2) identifying a target journal, and 3) submitting a manuscript for review. One thing that resonated with me was the inequitable distribution of power when graduate students work with advisors and other faculty. Grounded on Richards & Fletcher (2018), they explained "given that graduate students are in many ways dependent on their faculty advisors' approval as part of degree completion, they may not feel comfortable exercising their voice or raising concerns relative to equal and fair treatment" (Richards et al., 2023, p.768). In addition to the imbalanced power relationship, my cultural background having a strict relationship with advisors makes it uncomfortable advocating my contribution to the papers. I remember that being cautious cannot be bad, but being too humble is also not an expected attitude in this field.

 

Richards, K. A., Hemphill, M. A., & Flory, S. B. (2023). A Practical Approach to Negotiating Authorship and Preparing Manuscripts for Publication. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 42(4), 767–771. https://doi.org/10.1123/jtpe.2022-0146

A Practical Approach to Negotiating Authorship and Preparing Manuscripts for Publication