I’m an Early career researcher and have managed the entire study, from design, training, delivery, collection, analysis and now writing up the findings and planning dissemination. The PI has only contributed at a high level through monthly meetings.
I have now been told that I am too junior to lead on the publication and would need support so have been ‘offered’ second or third authorship, with the justification that all my contributions will be reflected in the contributor matrix. The PI will be listed as the lead author, rather than last author. However, since they have been largely hands off, I will still need to closely plan and coordinate the publication with them.
Is this normal and should I accept it?
Comments
You should specify your field, as authorship conventions vary wildly between fields. It’d definitely be inappropriate in Astronomy, and I don’t know any field which has a “senior authors first” convention.
But I don’t know every field.
“too junior” isn’t a good reason to not get 1st author. My first 1st author was during my masters education. They need to tell you why specifically.
FYI, out of all the parts of a study, I think the initial study design is the most critical of them all. If your PI came up with this whole study idea, then they deserve the 1st author probably. In contrast, executing a plan that someone else made, like data collection, has a low weight in terms of contribution to authorship. “Making decisions” has a high weight, “executing decisions” has a low weight.
But my initial inclination is that you deserve the 1st authorship
You’re in the wrong field — because you’re not in mine.
I’d take last author any day all day!