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Post by Hakuna Matata on Sept 10, 2011 14:41:22 GMT -5
Hi, Looking for some advice. From May till now I have worked on the data analysis part of a paper for a professor who has paid me for my work. When we made the arrangement, I agreed that I would not be listed as second author on the paper (basically because I was getting paid). However, in addition to doing all of the data analysis, I ended up writing both the METHODS and the RESULTS section of the paper (which ended up being a good size chunk, 30 to 40%, of the entire paper). I am thinking now that I deserve to be listed as second author (let's let alone first author ). Do I have a case or not? Is there some industry-standard for second authorship? Does it apply if I have been paid for my work? How can I approach this professor? Do I ask another professor to step in for me? This professor who paid me is just someone in my department--not anyone I would rely on for a letter of recommendation or anything like that. Thanks for any advice.
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Post by coauthor on Sept 10, 2011 15:04:37 GMT -5
It's reasonable to approach the professor and ask. You can say that the original agreement was for RA type work only, but you've ended up doing more.
Any time you end up writing actual parts of the paper (not just coding or analyzing data), you deserve to be a coauthor. Any professor that doesn't recognize that is not someone to work with.
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Post by advancedassistant on Sept 11, 2011 23:28:14 GMT -5
Based on this part:
"When we made the arrangement, I agreed that I would not be listed as second author on the paper (basically because I was getting paid)."
I would say that you should chalk this up to a valuable and hard-won lesson on the importance of very clear communication (in writing whenever possible) about project responsibilities and authorship. As a graduate student, I was asked to sign such an agreement by a junior faculty member who was very explicit and clear about the fact that I would not be listed as an author. It sounds like you were clear about that too.
If you felt that you were being asked to complete tasks on the project that went above and beyond the original arrangement you made with the faculty member, it was your responsibility to voice your concerns and, if warranted, request that the agreement be re-negotiated or that your responsibilities shift.
At this point, you will not win any points if you failed to communicate directly (that you felt you were completing more substantive work that that to which you had mutually agreed) or simply changed your mind through the process of completing the analysis and writing up sections of the paper (yet do not mention your shifting feeling at that time but, instead, ask for the original terms of your agreement to be renegotiated to your personal advantage after the fact). This is particularly so if there's any chance that you might call upon this person to write a letter or facilitate social network connections now/in the future or if this person is personally or professionally close with anyone else who may do so.
As "coauthor" writes:
"Any time you end up writing actual parts of the paper (not just coding or analyzing data), you deserve to be a coauthor. Any professor that doesn't recognize that is not someone to work with."
Now that you know this, hopefully you will be more likely to only enter into arrangements that seem equitable or at least advantageous for your professional career. Sometimes you have to learn the hardest lessons while trying to pay the bills.
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Post by ghostwriter on Sept 11, 2011 23:53:33 GMT -5
While I can't argue too much with the response that said you already agreed, so chalk it up to a learning experience, I have to wonder if it's worth a shot. Is this person someone who will be deciding your fate on a committee? You suggest they are just someone in your dept. If you think they are reasonable, you could at least approach them with the issue, or otherwise, I would reach out to a faculty adviser to gauge their take based on your department's politics.
I guess it all comes down to the program, but I was paid to be on multiple projects in grad school and was given authorship on them all. Guessing you must be from a bit more cutthroat program if you don't feel you have a leg to stand on and if the prof is not inclined to give credit. In my program, it would have been frowned upon to have a grad student have such a role and be denied authorship.
On some level, they preyed upon your lack of understanding of the situation. Either chalk it up to experience and move on or stick your neck out a bit and see if you can get some credit for it.
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Post by Associate on Sept 11, 2011 23:55:27 GMT -5
You professor knows better. The failure to acknowledge your authorship is a breach of ethics. Regardless of the conditions of the initial agreement, you became an author the moment your writing was included in the manuscript. Hell, I award authorship to my students even if their analyses and language do not make it into the submitted version.
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Post by Associate on Sept 12, 2011 0:03:50 GMT -5
Btw, the pay thing is irrelevant. I was paid as an ra in my cut-throat program and given authorship if I contributed analyses or writing (usually both). I pay my current student and give authorship. I think you have been manipulated.
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Post by Authorship2 on Sept 12, 2011 7:12:27 GMT -5
Is the professor assistant? If they are not tenured, it may be a hard battle at this point. If they are tenured, this should be a no-brainer for them if you ask. IMO it sounds like you deserve 2nd author credit, no question.
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anon
New Member
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Post by anon on Sept 12, 2011 9:15:31 GMT -5
re: pay--there are different lines of thought on this. While I agree with Associate personally, the chair of our department once told us in a seminar class that any RAs he works with on papers do not get authorship because they are getting paid. His POV was that you get one or the other--pay or authorship. I disagree, but I'm not sure how many faculty support one position versus the other. One thing to do would be to look at your university's guidelines--they may have an official position.
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Post by aaaa on Sept 12, 2011 9:52:39 GMT -5
While RAs do not often get authorship, the issue here is that the poster in question actually wrote part of the paper. In other words, an RA doing RA work might not get authorship. But someone who actually wrote the paper should always get credit.
Failure to give credit in this instance is a grave ethical violation, akin to plagiarism. Hell, it may be a copyright violation.
RA work involves things like transcribing, doing the analysis under guidance by the author, etc. The second someone writes paragraphs that end up on the original publication they are authors, and failure to give credit is a serious issue. If the student in question contacts the publication alleging to write part of the analysis, with proof, the person who submitted the paper could be in trouble.
Now, what to do about the issue is a different matter. Is this person someone who writes letters for you (the original poster)? Someone who is reasonable? Someone who has a history of problems working with others? Those are the sort of things that should inform what you do from now on, and if you have a mentor in your department I suggest you talk to them
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Post by Associate on Sept 12, 2011 11:50:07 GMT -5
I agree with aaaa. If the manuscript incorporates your language, you are an author. Even if there is no writing contribution, an RA who contributes original research ideas or analyses that are incorporated into the manuscript is an author. Authorship includes both the research and writing processes. An RA working under a professor who does not contribute "original" research is not an author.
In terms of picking one's battles, I strong recommend discussing the issue with your ombudsperson. It never hurts to get an opinion with significant experience in these matters who is not a vested interest. Good luck!
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yep
Junior Member
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Post by yep on Sept 12, 2011 12:42:12 GMT -5
OP, do not listen to the conflict seeking advice here. Based on what you said, you maybe should be a coauthor. However, there is NO WAY you should ask for that in some kind of demanding nutso tone. That gets you a bad reputation. You can ask politely, "since I ended up doing more of the writing for this paper, do you think I could get added as a coauthor?" and if not, then that's that. Don't be the nutsy student that complains to high heaven because you think you own a paper just because you added one variable to the regression.
If you ask nicely to be a coauthor and they say yes, great. Even if they say no, while unfortunate, I don't necessarily think you have been severely taken advantage of, because what you agreed to do was work for pay and not be a coauthor. You are getting paid to learn how to write a scientific paper, and that's a lot more than some of the rest of us got, as we have to do that on our own dime. Now, the fact that you went above and beyond to contribute to the writing is great, but I'd say that's the tax that makes you look like an outstanding RA. (No, I don't rip off my own RAs, but this isn't me.) At the very least, you're on track to getting a nice recommend. (Other commentators - this looks like someone who does quant, and did the writeup. That's not the same thing as developing a new qualitative coding scheme and writing up the themes. Quantitative writeup is a lot more straightforward.)
If you do ask to coauthor on the next paper, you have to be ready for the eventuality that they might come back saying that you can coauthor but then can't get paid. So you have to decide for yourself if you prefer to get paid for this work, which won't have your name on it, but gives you a great reference letter and paid work learning how to write a good paper, or if you want to find another RA position, given that it is uncertain whether that professor puts RAs on papers either. I can't answer that for you, but I can say that I know a few people who had RA jobs like this that have ended up being quite well published because they've been able to learn the publication process without any of the anxiety that happens when it's actually your own work.
I don't think it is helpful to add in all of these comments about plagiarism, which is a rather different case. It's not like the professor is taking OP's workshop paper and putting some paragraphs into his or her journal paper. The professor has paid OP to do the work, and is probably thinking about it in the same was as if I hired out to find someone to do additional interviews with my questionnaire. OP thinks, "but wait, I've done so much more on this paper" but that's not a reason to get mad, that's a reason to start negotiating with the professor. You've already shown yourself to be valuable, now encourage them to train you up to be a collaborator, or if this isn't your research area, don't worry about it.
You also have to remember that this is something of a grey area, and that is why you're getting conflicting advice. OP, you gave us an estimate of the work done, but that's not necessarily helpful in terms of how many of the original ideas were yours vs. the professor.
Yes, you're doing a lot of work here, but let's think about what authorship means. If I hire a copy editor to clean up my writing, and they add a few comments, are they an author? Well, probably depends on the extent of the comments. But the ideas are mine, in the end. But if the OP suggested, say, 3 additional analyses, and the professor went with them, and had the RA write them up, then absolutely this is getting towards second author status. But at least starting out, it is hard to know where that boundary lies, and so at this point, I would advise you not to make such a fuss about it unless you are directly contributing specific additional analysis or theoretical framings for the paper. As long as you get along with the professor, if you're early stages I'd say suck it up, because this is better training than you realize at this point. By the time you do your own work, you'll be an old hand at the publication game, which is awesome.
Besides, it could be worse - when I did reports for my old job, I did not get authorship credit, the company did. Of course I was listed on the contributors on the inside cover, but that was under my bosses, even though I did most of the actual writing and analysis. Did I get mad? No, because that was fee for service work. So if that is the type of fee for service that OP signed up for, then there's no point in getting mad.
So if you like working with this person, and you're interested in contributing more, certainly start negotiating on the next paper, because you've shown that you do good work, and start suggesting more things that you would like to contribute as a coauthor. You also need to give some thought to what is paid work and what is theoretical contribution. Draw the box around your work for yourself so that you can decide how much you can contribute as an RA and where the line is that would make you insist on being a coauthor. (Also note that when you are a student, you usually have to do a first-author amount of work to be second author on the first few papers. That's just how it works.)
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Post by Associate on Sept 12, 2011 14:33:16 GMT -5
yep's and other's points about approaching the professor about co-authorship are good. The "no" advice is good too. It may not be worth pursuing any action. The third point is good too. This is a good training opportunity.
I am not keen on the idea that this at all in a gray area. Writing is very simple. You either do it or you don't. If your language ends up in another's paper without authorship credit, you have been plagiarized in the classic sense, are a ghostwriter (in the morally dubious sense), or an exploited graduate student (in the OP sense).
BTW, I'm pretty sure that the NIH is moving towards classifying ghostwriting as a form of plagiarism. Yep's example of the acceptability of his/her ghostwriting would be like saying it is ok to run experiments similar to what reality tv does. We don't do it.
Frankly, the originality of the theorizing and analyses is not the only criteria for authorship. Another is the writing of the sentence itself. That is original, if the OP wrote it. I hope yep reads this. The criterion for originality extends to the writing of the language itself (i.e., authorship contributions are not just about the theorizing and analyses as yep implies). I point this out because you (yep) seem not to be aware of this fact, yet you appear to hold an appointment somewhere (based on your comment). Read up on ASA guidelines as well as your home institution.
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yep
Junior Member
Posts: 64
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Post by yep on Sept 12, 2011 15:51:52 GMT -5
^ I appreciate you pushing back. Depending on the case, though, I just don't think it's as simple as you suggest, from either a practical or moral standpoint. Your example of the NIH case is a nice addition to the discussion, because what was once taken for granted acceptable practice is now being pushed into a different category, and suggesting that perhaps taken for granted practices can change and be reframed over time. One might hope that we're going into new territory for authorship expectations where graduate students will be exploited less and recognized more.
Of course, ideally everyone everywhere would be given credit for what they do. I wanted to point out the practical (and potentially quite negative) consequences that the OP might run into if they raised a big fuss about this.
I would assert that there still are grey areas in authorship. You seem want to make things more black and white, with your reality TV comment, but note that I said copy editor, not ghost writer. I wanted to add nuance by asking the question - when does a copy editor become a ghost writer? When does someone's review comment on your paper make them more of a coauthor than a reviewer? Does it matter that my original workshop paper was good before the process? Or what if it started out terrible? Why is it my own authorship if I get 10 reviewer comments and make those changes, then publish, but this is co-authored if I use one person with 10 rounds of revisions? If I have an RA do one analysis where I specify all the variables, do they still get to be a coauthor? What if they suggested the project, but I did all of the analysis, and then the writing? What if they did the analysis and another RA did all of the write up, but then I had to correct both? What if they did the analysis and I did the write up? How many added words from a reviewer make a sentence "not yours"? 5% 10% 12.325%?
[^Upon review I see you probably meant that I was the ghost writer in my prior job. But that's not an issue with a company-authored report, where no individual had their name on the cover. I was just annoyed that my name was below my bosses on the inside, but so it goes...]
As a practical matter, one does not cite every single piece of literature, nor does one have room to thank every single person who contributed to the finished version of a paragraph. So, some lines have to be drawn and some choices made.
Questions like this should indicate the grey area in terms of "contribution" and "authorship" and bear some thought. I don't think I know all the answers, I just want to suggest that it isn't helpful to immediately get angry about the situation as described above. As sociologists we should know a little more about grey areas.
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Post by Hakuna Matata on Sept 12, 2011 17:25:34 GMT -5
Hi, I am the original poster. I approached the professor (Asst. Prof) about it and I was told that it is not appropriate for me to be listed as second author because (a) I was paid for my work and (b) my portion will only amount to about 20% of the entire paper. The other 80% will include some additional analyses conducted by the professor. I was told that future co-authorship opportunities are available to me if I am willing to work for free. Basically, in this person's view at least, payment negates the possibility of co-authorship, even if one ends up writing a portion of the paper.
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Post by aaaaaa on Sept 12, 2011 18:04:41 GMT -5
Yep, First of all, I don't think anyone advocated open conflict, or being the " nutsy student that complains to high heaven ." People simply advocated asking, and many even suggested talking to a neutral person with more experience. Most people did this by explicitly or implicitly mentioning that there is a power imbalance there, so that the OP shouldn't "piss off" the professor. Most recognized that there may be nothing they can do. As for the distinction between plagiarism and "editing," the area is a lot less ambiguous than you claim. Editing or revising someone's work, or providing comments, is not the same as using several paragraphs worth of someone else's work verbatim. The fact that professors are able to get away with it does not mean that it is right. Of course, given power differentials sometimes there is nothing to do. But payment or not, using someone else's text verbatim without atribution or credit is a serious ethical violation. no two ways about it. It is a completely different issue from your example of your previous work for a company, since as you point out you were given credit (listed as a contributor) and in all likelihood you signed a contract giving up the copyright of the work created and etc. And to be perfectly clear, here are the relevant sections of the ASA code of ethics: www2.asanet.org/members/coe.pdf"14. Plagiarism (a) In publications, presentations, teaching, practice, and service, sociologists explicitly identify, credit, and reference the author when they take data or material verbatim from another person’s written work, whether it is published, unpublished, or electronically available. (b) In their publications, presentations, teaching, practice, and service, sociologists provide acknowledgment of and reference to the use of others’ work, even if the work is not quoted verbatim or paraphrased, and they do not present others’ work as their own whether it is published, unpublished, or electronically vailable." 15. Authorship Credit (b) Sociologists ensure that principal authorship and other publication credits are based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. In claiming or determining the ordering of authorship, sociologists seek to reflect accurately the contributions of main participants in the research and writing process." In an ideal world, 80% of the work=first authorship, not sole authorship. Again, this is not to ignore the reality of the power differential that leads many to accept this as a fact of life.
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