Academia has a problem: the value, necessity, and practices of collaboration are increasing, but the system of giving credit is inadequate. In most fields, there are only 4 levels of credit:

• None at all
• “Our thanks to Jill for sharing her data.” (a note of thanks)
• First Authorship (This is ambiguous: it may be alphabetical.)
• Listed as another author

In contrast to this paucity, modern empirical paper writing has many roles. Here are a dozen roles. Not all of them are important on a single paper, but each of them is important in some papers.

• Intellectual leadership.
  • Source of the original idea
• Doing the writing
  • Writing various parts, e.g. literature review
  • Doing the grunt work on the stat analysis. (Writing and running the R code)
  • Doing the grunt work of finalizing for publication. (Much easier than it used to be!)
  • Dealing with revisions, exchanges with editors, etc.
• Source of the data.
  • Funder of the data
• Raised the funding;
  • Runs the lab where the authors are employed
  • Source of the money: usually an agency or foundation, but sometimes the contracting author is listed as a coauthor.

Continue reading →