Speaker 1: Nothing in the academic world, and I mean absolutely nothing, is more hotly contested than this. Author order. And the strange thing is, is that outside of academia, it means almost nothing. But to academics, this is the holy source of grants. It is the source and the power behind getting prestige so you can publish more papers, get more collaborations, and make your career better. But what does it really mean? So in this video, we're going to go through first and last author, guest authorship, people stealing authorship, and also what people are doing to trick the system, so stay around. So this is a paper that I wrote in 2013, and it is this list of names that causes so much controversy and arguments and tension between supervisors, PhD students, collaborators, and just academics in general. But the most important positions that you need to know about are the first position, so the first name, and in a lot of cases, the last name. Why are these so important? Well, let's go through them one at a time. The first author position quite often in academic circles means that this person was in charge of all of the research, did the majority of the actual lab work, and also wrote up the majority of the paper and was kind of in control of everything. So that is certainly true for this one here. I was in control of all of the results that was here. I made sure that I did most of the experiments. That was my figure, that's my figure, that's my figure, that's my figure, that's my figure, and that's it. Those were all my figures, and I certainly had help from people in here. But let's go through the names, and I'll be honest with you about what they actually contributed. So Andrew Stapleton, that's me. I did all of that. Rakesh Afri, he was on the project with me, and he certainly had input in this. But I was putting his name here because he certainly helped me sort of come up with ideas and navigate this sort of like early stage of this project. Amanda Ellis was one of my co-supervisors, Joe was one of my co-supervisors, Gunter was one of my co-supervisors, Jamie was one of my co-supervisors, and David A. Lewis was the principal investigator. So these people in the middle certainly had input, but I would argue that they all didn't have equal input here. They were just on this series of papers that I produced because they were part of the group that managed to get the money initially for this project. So that is sort of like a quick breakdown of why you put people in certain orders. But here's the thing is, why can't we just put it in alphabetical order? The problem is, is that it's not very common to do that in a majority of research fields, and we end up with crazy situations. Like this paper, it was a Nature paper from 2015 that had over 5,000 names on it. That's just so crazy. Here it is, here's all of the names, all of these people. And like that's how it keeps going. Like this is just so insane. And the thing about this is everyone wants a Nature paper. So there was no one that was willing to say, you know what, don't put me on this. Look at that nightmare. There are so many names on this. And that's only just one side of the collaboration. If I click on this, there's just as many people. Look at that. Oh no, not as many people, I lied. There's so, so many names. And I think that this is going a little bit too far, but everyone wants their name on a Nature paper. And another thing about First Author Papership is that you are the name of that paper. When they cite you, they say Stapleton, Ed Owen. That's my name, obviously. They'll say yours for yours. But there's a nice little bubbly feeling that pops up and you go, that's my name. No one else is important, just me. And so that feeling certainly really sort of gets deep into the academics. And the strange thing is, is that outside of academia, this seems so trivial and petty and childish, but it's so important. That's First Author. What about Last Author or Corresponding Author, as it's known? All right, so there's another really important part of this order list, and that is the Corresponding Author, which is quite often the last person on that name list. In this case, it was David A. Lewis. He was the principal investigator. He was the one driving all of this, and he was the one who got the money. That's really the most important thing in my experience, is that this person at the end is mainly in control of all of the research, not on a day-to-day level, but in an overarching kind of like, this is the project we're doing. I've got the money. Now go. So I've had regular meetings with David, and the Corresponding Author sometimes gets a little star next to their name, but you can see that they're Corresponding Author here because email is this, and Corresponding Author just means that if anyone's got any questions or amendments or things they want to say about this paper to this research group, they contact this person directly. And so this is where their email is quite often cited. So here you can see David Lewis. You've got a little star here, which means that they are down here. Where are they? David Lewis, the Corresponding Author. That's his email here. And also here, he's Corresponding Author. Another one, Paul Dastoor. He's Corresponding Author from my PhD. And then this one, Paul Dastoor, again, Corresponding Author. And these two people were the head of the research group. So you either want to be first or last, or you could be both by being First Author and Corresponding Author with that little, bing, star next to your name and your email down below. That's what is like the ultimate goal for most people. But quite often, you need to kind of negotiate what that looks like. And you can say, you know what, I'll be First Author because I did the majority of the work, but you brought in the money, and you're the most prestigious here, so you get to go to the end and you're Corresponding Author. It also works out, I think, in a practical sense as well, because it means that these people likely are going to be around the longest with the same email because they're going to be at the institution forever, until they die, unless they move on somewhere else. So it does make sense on a practicality side, but you will see people fighting for First Author and Last Author until the death. This author order can be so hotly contested that, in fact, papers do not get published because they do not agree on the author order. That is the sad reality of this seemingly unimportant list of names in academia, which means that some research is not getting out there. I've seen long-term collaborations broke up just because someone's name isn't in front of another person's name. Terrible. What about middle position? Let's talk about middle position. This is my middle position paper, and my friends and I like to call it the cheese in the academic sandwich. It's important, but you never talk about the cheese in a sandwich. You talk about the bread, the meat, the filling, but the cheese is just kind of there, and this is cheesing on an academic paper. There I am, right smack bang in the middle here. What does that mean? That means that I didn't really do much for this paper. I may have helped Cameron sort of come up with ideas. I certainly didn't contribute much to the experimental sort of this. I did some peak force. Oh, no, actually, I know what I did for this one is I had a grant where I had some money that produced a certain type of tip that Cameron used to make some of these measurements. Anyway, that's unnecessary detail, but all you need to know is that I got a little bit of money, and I allowed Cameron to use a little bit of that money to do something. That was it. That was all, and I'm right in the middle, so I barely contributed to this paper, but I am on it right in the middle, and interestingly, it is now one of my most cited papers up here, so by far, so thanks very much, Cameron. One thing you'll see about this paper is there are two corresponding authors, so that's the thing. You can't negotiate with people and be like, if you put your name on there, I'll put my name on there. We both contributed equally, so let's put our name both as corresponding author, and so that's what they've got here. Email Cameron Shearer, who's the first author, and Christopher Gibson, who's the last author. Oh, get rid of that, but these two people have just talked like normal human beings, and they're both okay with being corresponding author. Absolutely brilliant, and there are ways you can game the system. Because being first author is so important to people, people steal it. Essentially, you get people in power that steal it from people with less power. In this case, it's supervisors and PhD students, and I've heard this over and over again. It is so common where a PhD supervisor goes, you know what, no, I'll put my name first just because I want to, even though you've done all of the work, and this is very common. If you go to places like Stack Exchange, the academic version, you can see here that I've got, after finishing my masters, I did all the lab research, writing the manuscript. My professor was only involved to guide me through the research and read my writing and give his comments, and he wants to be first author, which shouldn't be allowed, but it happens. So people are stealing it right from their PhD students because it is such a prestigious position on a paper. It really helps your grants. It really helps you as an early career researcher in particular because they ask, how many first author papers do you have when you're applying for jobs, applying for grants, and that's what they really mark your academic prowess on, which is crazy. Another thing you can do is gift authorship. Gift authorship is just where you essentially just say, look, I'll put you on my paper if you put me on your paper. I think that made sense, but ultimately, you just do a little bit of a paper exchange, but I used to do that in a not so sinister way where essentially I said to someone, hey, can you do this little experimental thing, which I could do on my own, but then you'll get your name on my paper, and then also, when they said to me, oh, Andy, can you just do a little bit of SEM, which they could do on their own, but they invited me to do it, there was this little collaboration going on where we were all just helping each other out because we knew the importance of publishing papers and getting your name on papers. Therefore, even if you were cheese, it went to your paper count, which is so important later on in your career, so that can help happen in gift authorship where you just give someone it for no reason and you hope they give you one back, or you can be a little bit sneakier about it and you can say, you know what, you do this for me, I'll do that for you, and you just kind of all work together, particularly common in early career researcher circles. The last thing you can do is you can just buy authorship. If writing a paper, doing years of research, questioning everything you're doing with your life is too much, you can just buy a place on a paper. There are WhatsApp groups, there are Facebook groups where you can just buy authorship on peer-reviewed papers. Those may not be peer-reviewed papers that are particularly good, but nonetheless, you can buy positions on a paper. That is how people value this, with cold, hard cash, because it's way easier than spending years of your life studying a certain field to then have to convince other academics in the field that this should be published. You can just pay money. Great, don't do that, by the way, I'm making it seem like you should do it. Don't do it, but it exists. The next video you should watch is this one, so I talk about the 10 brutally honest lessons about doing a PhD that I learned and you should know too. Go check it out.