Hi all! I’m a scientist who currently works in academia doing in vivo work (been doing it for 10+ years). I am part of a team that acts as a CRO essentially and I run a lot of studies for people across different labs. I have run whole animal studies from cell growth and implants to doing treatments and data analysis at the end. In many cases I don’t get authorship or even acknowledgment. When I do get acknowledgment it’s usually not me directly but the name of my team as a whole. I wanted to know when is it okay to ask for authorship? And how do you go about it? Especially if I’ve done most, if not all, of the in vivo work for a paper that’s partly in vitro partly in vivo work. TIA!
Comments
My understanding is that contractors don’t get cited.
The “acts as a CRO” probably explains this. The best might be to talk to the team lead, if it is important to you. They would certainly have some leeway to have a more collaborative option (typically with a discount) and would then be able to put your name forward. But that involves acting more like a collaborator and less like a CRO. Many facilities do have dual tracts though…
The recommendation is to discuss authorship/acknowledgement during initial discussions, before the work even starts. I regularly bring it up then and find it makes things less frustrating at the end.
The complication here is that you’re part of a team, and as such I think it would be helpful to bring it up to the team and see if the the contracted work policy should be updated. For example, I find many core facility teams require acknowledgement for their work, and if it is highly personalize/tailored to the project, an authorship. For authorship, I would also expect the person who did the work to write their section of the methods in the manuscript at minimum and review the final manuscript before submission.
You’re essentially a core service. Next time negotiate something but otherwise you’re human infrastructure running a facility.