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
m...@nyu.edu
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