Authorship order on papers.

Authorship order on papers is not random - at least not in most fields. Positions come with a lot of meaning and different amounts of kudos, and what is an important position also differs by country. This video explains this (with an implicit focus on ecology).
#phd #phdlife #manuscripts #academia #authorship
0:00 Authorship order is not random; there are specific authorship roles
1:16 Positions can be shared
1:49 Middle authors
2:42 Author contribution statement
3:30 Different kudos; differs between fields and countries
#academia #academicsuccess #phdlife #phd #authorship #author #academic #publishing #manuscript #publication #scientist
Matthias Rillig, professor of ecology at Freie Universität Berlin, chats about life in academia.
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[@satishkumarverma3531]

Thank you Dr. Rilling for making it. Nice to learn it.

[@mrillig]

Thanks for writing; glad you found it useful!

[@GenomicsBootCamp]

I realize this is a grey area, but what is your opinion on the authorship for people, who provided just the data for the analysis (or told other people to provide the data), but did not contribute otherwise? This fact could be listed in the Acknowledgements as well. (Yes, I know the review of the draft already classifies for the authorship, but we know that the extent of the review could be... less intensive... in some cases.)
Also, from my experience from colleagues from Burkina Faso, their universities cared for the first three positions on the author list, so these papers could be listed in materials for an academic promotion. This is also different to us, as we normally don't care about the second and third places in a longer list of authors. So country differences are present indeed.

[@mrillig]

Thanks for writing! Very interesting to hear about this practice in Burkina Faso, I had not heard this before.
Authorship is indeed not quite as clear cut as it is often portrayed. There are mechanisms to deal with this a little bit, like opt-out vs opt-in authorship options (I have another video about this); but also that doesn't solve all issues. It is impossible to give a general answer; if there are already lots of co-authors on a paper it is easier to be more "generous" with adding additional authors, as opposed if there are only few; it depends on how important and crucial to the message the data were, and so on. The most important is to be open about it, and to not make people feel that they have been left out.