Establish who's who early on - When authorship disputes arise, young researchers are often in the most precarious situation. Markovitch advises that they push for meetings early in the process of research (long before the paper is written) to establish who will be considered the first author and the last author. If you work in a collaborative setting, this conversation may have to happen a few times. Stephen Kimmel, director of cardiovascular epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, conducts a monthly conference call with all the PIs on a multidiscipline project; the only topic is author issues.
Encourage your group to include a contributions section in the paper - Nature strongly encourages its authors to list their contributions, but only about one-third of published papers have these credits, writes Linda Miller, executive editor of Nature, in an E-mail. A contribution section is "wonderful for interdisciplinary collaborations," says Scott Huettel at ...
