Page 46 - How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 8th Edition 8th Edition

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listed in order of importance to the experiments, the first author being acknowledged as the senior author, the second
author being the primary associate, the third author possibly being equivalent to the second but more likely having a
lesser involvement with the work reported. Colleagues or supervisors should neither ask to have their names on
manuscripts nor allow their names to be put on manuscripts reporting research with which they themselves have not
been intimately involved. An author of a paper should be defined as one

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who takes intellectual responsibility for the research results being reported. However, this definition must be tempered
by realizing that modern science in many fields is collaborative and multidisciplinary. It may be unrealistic to assume
that all authors can defend all aspects of a paper written by contributors from a variety of disciplines. Even so, each
author should be held fully responsible for his or her choice of colleagues.

Admittedly, resolution of this question is not always easy. It is often incredibly difficult to analyze the intellectual
input to a paper. Certainly, those who have worked together intensively for months or years on a research problem
might have difficulty in remembering who had the original research concept or whose brilliant idea was the key to the
success of the experiments. And what do these colleagues do when everything suddenly falls into place as a result of a
searching question by the traditional "guy in the next lab" who had nothing whatever to do with the research?

Each listed author should have made an important contribution to the study being reported, "important" referring to
those aspects of the study which produced new information, the concept that defines an original scientific paper.

The sequence of authors on a published paper should be decided, unanimously, before the research is started. A
change may be required later, depending on which turn the research takes, but it is foolish to leave this important
question of authorship to the very end of the research process.

On occasion, I have seen 10 or more authors listed at the head of a paper (sometimes only a Note). For example, a
paper by F. Bulos et al. (Phys. Rev. Letters 13:486, 1964) had 27 authors and only 12 paragraphs. Such papers
frequently come from laboratories that are so small that 10 people couldn't fit into the lab, let alone make a meaningful
contribution to the experiment.

What accounts for the tendency to list a host of authors? There may be several reasons, but the primary one no doubt
relates to the publish-or-perish syndrome. Some workers wheedle or cajole their colleagues so effectively that they
become authors of most or all of the papers coming out of their laboratory. Their research productivity might in fact
be meager, yet at year's end their publication lists might indeed be exten-

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sive. In some institutions, such padded lists might result in promotion. Nonetheless, the practice is not recommended.
Perhaps a few administrators are fooled, and momentary advantages are sometimes gained by these easy riders. But I
suspect that good scientists do not allow dilution of their own work by adding other people's names for their minuscule
contributions, nor do they want their own names sullied by addition of the names of a whole herd of lightweights.

In short, the scientific paper should list as authors only those who contributed substantially to the work. The dilution
effect of the multiauthor approach adversely affects the real investigators. (And, as a former managing editor, I can't
help adding that this reprehensible practice leads to bibliographic nightmares for all of us involved with use and
control of the scientific literature.) A thorough discussion on "Guidelines on Authorship of Medical Papers" has been
published by Huth (1986).

Defining the Order: an Example

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