Early this year, I had a surgery-related study in rats and today I just found out my first authorship got turned into the second authorship in the final manuscript my PI planned to submit.
For the study which was my original idea, I spent a tremendous amount of time in conceptualizing the study, created the protocol and design for the stud (second and third authors also involved in this but not as much as I did), carried out all the animal surgeries and analyzed a part of the data independently (for this study, there were only two results we could get), and wrote the part of manuscripts.
The divided tasks between the first and second author for this project was I did all of the above mentionings, while the second author collected, collaborated with two other pathologists who are going to be the co-authors and wrote the discussion and conclusion section.
But all of a sudden, I was just informed today my PI is making the second author the first author because she spent so much time in collaborating with those pathologists and revising the manuscripts with her (they are very close to each other because the second author works full time but I worked the only parttime).
It was so ridiculous because it was our agreement before that she was in charge of the pathology section for the paper with other pathologist and I was in charge of other results. For the whole revision process, both the third author and I haven't been informed by any mean. And I always thought the manuscript was all done except the pathology part.
I brought up the concern to the second author and she told me she deserved the first because "I spent as much time as possible with PI in rewriting the discussion and manuscript" (without letting me know) and collaborate with other authors to put their input into the results which I don't even really need this part to make it published. (Moreover, it was my idea to work with the pathologists and I was the one who assigned her the tasks she needs to do with them).
I am so pissed off now and I would like some advice about my situation. I understand this second author spent a lot of time in revising the manuscript (she is good at writing so we agreed before she would write the discussion and edit the paper) but this was done without informing both first and third authors. And it was all because of me to make the project possible when none of the people including the PI likes the project early this year. I was the one spent every weekend and night time alone (until 10 or 11 pm can you guys image?) to carry out all the trails. I was also the one who analyzed the most important part of the data and gave all the inputs the second author needs to form the paragraphs. Now, what she did was just to put others' opinion (pathologists) into the paper, and remake the figures and table I made, so she and the PI wants to make her as the first author. Please help that this lab is so sneaky and horrible. And the similar sneaky revision happened before already to my work (Fountly, I kept my first authorship that time). I would like to take whatever I can to defend my right as I am done in the lab and I don't care if I will continue research in this field or to make the work unpublished.
*Note: Also, the PI and she added another person to the authorship who did nothing but for a "gift" because she is the new hire. but the other volunteer we had in the lab who actually contributed got nothing out of it. I feel so bad for her now too.
