What constitutes authorship on scientific papers is sometimes unclear for students working in a lab, for example:
- If I (undergraduate student) help a graduate student in research, do I deserve to be in the authors’ list of his/her paper?
- If I mentor another student to learn basics of lab work, will I be a coauthor in his/her papers published in future?
- My friends came a few times to lab to help me run an experiment, can I add them as authors in my paper?
- I trained another student to perform his/her experiments with Instrument X, will I be a coauthor in his/her papers published in future?
- We worked together on this research, who will be the first author?
- …
The following resources provide good explanations for what constitues authorship on scientific papers:
- “Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors” by ICMJE
- “Authorship: why not just toss a coin?” by K. Strange, in Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 2008 Sep; 295(3): C567–C575
- “Policy for Authorship on Scientific and Scholarly Publications” by Washington University in St. Louis
- “Conventions of Scientific Authorship” by V Venkatraman, Science, 2010
