Hi Mike - I think (?) we're saying the same thing. Last authorships are viewed with skepticism in many academic quarters because, as you note, they can mean a number of different things depending on the situation, tradition in the lab, etc. That is, if someone is a last author on a paper, it's often hard to decipher what it means unless one has a better handle on the lab tradition, implicit authorship model, and so on. Best....Scott
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D. Professor Editor, Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice Department of Psychology, Room 473 Psychology and Interdisciplinary Sciences (PAIS) Emory University 36 Eagle Row Atlanta, Georgia 30322 [email protected] (404) 727-1125 Psychology Today Blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-psychologist 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-140513111X.html Scientific American Mind: Facts and Fictions in Mental Health Column: http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciammind/ The Master in the Art of Living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his intellectual passions. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him - he is always doing both. - Zen Buddhist text (slightly modified) -----Original Message----- From: Mike Palij [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 2:43 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: RE: [tips] An outsider's view of authorship On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:33:08 -0700, Scott O. Lilienfeld wrote: >In my experience, it's a marked minority in academic psychology >departments. I know some tenure and promotion committees >that either don't count (or count only minimally) articles that aren't >first-authored by the candidate in question. Although this has been my experience as well I would point out that there are different expectations for publications in psychology and psychiatry. In traditional areas of psychology, the number of authors is expected to be limited to only a few authors, with significant publications usually have just one or two authors because these individuals did most of the work (think of outstanding publications in psychology and how many authors were listed). Order of authorship would be taken to imply importance of contribution. In psychiatry and other areas of medicine, there is typically a division of labor that involves different people providing services in different roles (e.g., nurses drawing blood, person running the neuroimaging equipment, the statistician/data analyst, the project director, the pincipal investigator, etc.) and so everyone who provided significant input to the research is listed on the publication with the first author representing the person who was in charge of writing the manuscript as well as the project followed by supporting personnel and finally the person who was either the principal investigatior and/or head of the lab/unit/department in which the research was conducted. In reflecting on this early in my career, I was struck by the "rugged individualism" of academic psychology versus the "team effort" in academic psychiatry (this does happen in psychology and seems to be increasing in frequency but in some areas may seem like an anomaly, e.g., psychophysics, cognitive psychology). I presume someone has done research on these differences. > Part of the problem, I suspect, stems from the fact that last >authorships in both psychology and psychiatry (and perhaps other >areas of medicine, although I'm far less knowledgeable on that score) >are sometimes "ceremonial" - they are given to the lab advisor, regardless >of whether he/she had anything to do with the article. This does occur but I think it depends upon situational factors. On a couple of articles that I'm co-author on I was always puzzled why a particular person's name was listed at the end even though they had never attended any research meetings and I had never met them. It was explained that since our projects were using facilities at a particular place, the person in charge of the facility (an M.D.) would be listed as a co-author as a "courtesy". How much input was actually provided by this person is unclear but, as the person in charge of the facilities we were using, I'm pretty sure he had to read the manuscript because he would want to make sure that nothing bad was said about the facility. >When I published some articles in psychiatry journals >early in my career, a few folks whom I'm quite certain never even read the >paper took last authorships - on the grounds that they started the labs, >launched the overarching research topics in question, and the like. So last >("senior") authorships are often justifiably viewed with some skepticism. I think that this is situation-dependent. A world famous researcher as last author is likely to be viewed as overall supervisor of the research and the writing and take that role seriously (I know that in the cases where I was involved, this person was a real pain in the ass in requiring all sorts of revisions on manuscripts). But it is possible that such a person may simply have the policy "if you do it in my lab/department/facility, my name goes on paper" and, if not interested in the research, provide no substantive material to the manuscript. I don't think one knows which of these characterizations holds without additional information about the research style of "senior" last author. I would also admit that I know of instances where a "courtesy" authorship was provided to someone who had little/nothing to do with the manuscript but that person's name was in the middle of a list of six or seven authors. When I asked why was this guy listed as an author I was told it was in recognition of his previous contributions and ongoing support. Also to keep in his good graces. This non-contributor was not a major researcher or all that critical as far as I could tell but perhaps some senior researchers make long-term plans which may include certain people which they can only give an authorship now but a more substantial role and reward in the future. > So, for Ubel's suggestion (which I do think has some merit) to come >to fruition, one would need a massive change in not only institutional culture >but institutional practices. ..Scott I don't know. If one follows the "rugged individualist" research model with few authors, the simple rule for interpreting the sequence in authorship is that it represents decreasing contribution to the manuscript/research. In a team approach, often with a large number of people making contributions, then one needs a more complex set of rules for interpreting what did the first author do, what did the last author do, and what does the sequence of intermediate co-authors tell us about their contributions. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected]) This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited. 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