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: