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In my research group, there is a researcher who usually approaches other PhD students who are about to write papers in order to offer his help. Normally, he does not actually do any research related to the paper. Instead, he reads our papers, makes comments about the writing style and sometime re-writes some sections in order to make them more readable. At the end, he will claim the co-authorship of the paper. I can see it is very helpful for new PhD students who don't have much experience in writing papers or articles. However, it is sometime uncomfortable for me to see someone who doesn't do actual research but still manages to get an authorship.

So, I want to ask if it is a common practice for someone to help writing a paper without doing any actual research relating to it, and claim the co-authorship. If it is not, how should I react if someone wants to do the same to me?

aparente001
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user12635
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    I've seen this. This kind of people are usually easy to recognize because they don't have a "research line" and it's hard to tell what is their expertise, their publications spread along many different topics. Despite of having seen these results, I've never known how is the process before the publication, by your description it seems to be quite creepy... – Trylks May 21 '14 at 12:30
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    A word comes to mind: "Predator". – Tobias Kildetoft May 21 '14 at 12:35
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    Honest question: Does it hurt anyone by adding this type of person as a co-author? I've helped people write their papers in the past before and in the process I learned a great deal about the subject matter. Also, people who help write papers may help fulfill one of the pillars of scientific discovery... communication of the science. Without that, a discovery is nothing really. – LordStryker May 21 '14 at 12:44
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    @LordStryker It hurts all those people who will be competing with those who artificially inflate their publication lists in this way. – Tobias Kildetoft May 21 '14 at 12:47
  • Great comment. I know this is obvious, but just to make it even more obvious: inflating produces inflation. – Trylks May 21 '14 at 12:53
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    @TobiasKildetoft I suppose I still live in a dream where I view science as one, giant team effort (I'm still young). I wish it could just 'be this way' but we all know that it can't. *sigh – LordStryker May 21 '14 at 13:06
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    There is the ideal academia and the real one. In many fields people get co-authorship for much less than this. The obnoxiousness here is asking/claiming co-authorship in what seems to be a strategy to inflate one's publication list. A strategy that sounds flawed to me, as co-authorship usually counts very little when applying for any serious academic position. – Cape Code May 21 '14 at 14:10
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    I think I have some kinda Groundhog Day thing going on where I log onto stackexchange everyday and read about the unfair co-authorship. If I recall, Bill Murray broke the cycle by doing good deeds. Guess I'm screwed. – coburne May 21 '14 at 18:23
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    At my university, this is a violation of the code of research conduct. – David Ketcheson May 21 '14 at 19:09
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    Near-duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20901/compiling-ethical-standards-for-coauthorship-across-academic-fields-and-regions – Jukka Suomela May 21 '14 at 22:46

7 Answers7

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people who help write papers may help fulfill one of the pillars of scientific discovery... communication of the science.

There is an appropriate place to credit people who read your paper and offer useful comments on it: the acknowledgement section. It is very common to see acknowledgements "for providing valuable feedback", "for suggesting a cleaner presentation", "for pointing out important related work" and so on. Even "for providing a simpler proof of Lemma X.y".

None of this rises to the level of co-authorship.

What's worse in this case is that

At the end, he will claim the co-authorship of the paper.

While I'd find the idea of co-authorship for such contributions odd, I would not think too much about it if it were negotiated in advance (as is the theme of many of the answers on this site). But to offer what appears to be unconditional help first and then (when the student really has no choice in the matter) to demand co-authorship is plain wrong.

To answer your last question on what to do, the answer, as is always the answer, is to negotiate things up front. It's a little awkward, but a little pre-collaboration awkwardness is MUCH better than a lot of post-collaboration recrimination and hostility.

Suresh
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    There is a difference between "providing valuable feedback" and re-writing large portions of a paper. The former certainly belongs in the acknowledgements section, but the later might be different and might be what the asker is referring to. – Behacad Oct 21 '14 at 04:01
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The so called Vancouver protocol (developed by ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and its definition of authorship has been mentioned in many questions of this kind here on Academia but I think they deserve being repeated. The protocol describes authorship through three components which every author must fulfil:

  1. Conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data

    AND

  2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content

    AND

  3. Final approval of the version to be published.

A key point here is the "AND". To read and comment on the text is clearly not enough for authorship by these standards. In fact a reviewer of the manuscript would at least fulfil point 2 whereas a person helping out as you describe would not.

It is difficult to fend off this behaviour from more senior colleagues as a PhD student. It may, however, be good to bring up an open discussion about authorship standards in the group without necessarily directly connecting it to the draft of a paper. In some research groups systems for determining both order and authorship as such have been developed by splitting the paper up into tasks. See for example, AuthorOrder.com for an example. Looking at the tag here on Ac.sx and a search on Google will provide much background. But, I particularly recommend the recommendations report from ICMJE; ICMJE developed the protocol and their recommendations constitutes their continually updated version of the protocol.

Peter Jansson
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    Good point, +1. However, this kind of opens the related question of people who contribute to the research but are never heard of when it comes to writing the papers - no edits, no comments, no nothing. "Research yes, writing no" may be less infuriating than "research no, writing yes", but I am still uncomfortable with co-"authors" who haven't authored a single word in the final manuscript. – Stephan Kolassa May 21 '14 at 15:46
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    As far as I can see, under the rules quoted here, if X proves a great theorem and explains it (the theorem and the proof) orally to Y, and if Y then writes it up nicely, then nobody is entitled to be an author of the resulting paper. – Andreas Blass May 21 '14 at 15:57
  • Hypothetical scenario: Scientist A conceives and designs a project. Carries out project and interprets all the data. Suddenly Scientist A dies (or becomes incapacitated). Scientist B picks up the data and drafts a worthy article. According to the Vancouver Protocol, nobody can author this paper which seems rather silly. – LordStryker May 21 '14 at 16:58
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    @AndreasBlass If Y is merely transcribing a proof provided by X, then X did draft the article and therefore deserves authorship. Otherwise, writing the proof requires hundreds of small but crucial design and analysis decisions, and therefore Y deserves authorship. (But she should really ask X to critically evaluate the paper, if only by saying "yes, okay", so that he can be a coauthor, too). – JeffE May 21 '14 at 17:09
  • @JeffE I"m glad Y can be an author, but I really think X ought to be an author too, even without critically evaluating the paper, because X did the most important part of the work. – Andreas Blass May 21 '14 at 18:38
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    @AndreasBlass the protocol actually specifies that X must be given the opportunity to get involved in article revisions and final article approval; however, if they refuse to participate in the actual article, then it means also a refusal from authorship, and it's a valid choice that they are allowed to make. – Peteris May 21 '14 at 21:40
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    +1 Interesting. Among other things, this 'Vancouver protocol' would condemn the practice in some labs of always adding the lab head at the end of the author list. – Mark Peletier May 22 '14 at 05:13
  • @LordStryker: nice example. If Andreas's X were still alive then one can argue whether they hit point 3 but have very passively chosen to approve whatever Y wrote. But it is certain that your A does not hit point 3 and therefore is not an author. However, if something silly happens for a rare and genuine reason then the "obvious" thing is to let it happen. You'd have to find a journal willing to accept a paper with no authors though! The protocol's authority is only as strong as journals' strict adherence to it. – Steve Jessop May 22 '14 at 07:38
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    ... on the other hand, if A had already written most of a paper, but B did do some remaining data analysis that A left unfinished, let's say 0% of conception and design, 5% of the data analysis work, 20% of write-up and sole final approval/submission, then would it be ethical for B to claim sole authorship with a massive acknowledgement to A for "doing the research and writing most of the paper"? I wonder, would B's sole authorship break people's adherence to the protocol, or would most researchers and editors comfortably say "of course, A died prior to final approval so B is sole author"? – Steve Jessop May 22 '14 at 07:42
  • Hi Peter. For convenience, how about a link to the Vancouver protocol document? – Faheem Mitha May 22 '14 at 07:57
  • @StephanKolassa - contributors that are not authors should be acknowledge in the acknowledgment section. Not acknowledging contributors is as bad as claiming unwarranted authorship IMO. They are both cases of academic dishonesty. – luis.espinal May 22 '14 at 16:57
  • The link to authorder.com appears to be broken. – E.P. Mar 10 '17 at 15:21
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Obviously his service and helps do not count as co-authorship. I have seen various versions of this tactic before, for example in the form of showing interest, or giving some general and mostly useless advices, comments and discussions. None of these are co-authorship either.

But to answer you question on "how should I react if someone wants to do the same to me?", I recommend you restrict your research communications to a small list of people who have the following qualities: 1. they are experts in the subject your are working on, 2. you have some kind of agreement about how to perform the research and who should do what, 3. they have scientific integrity and are not looking to get credit for something they have not done!

Finally, it is not recommended that you show or discuss your work to someone who is not a trusted expert before submission.

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This happens quite often in industrial PhDs, at least based on my experience. Every paper I've written so far had around 5 authors, although myself and a research fellow were the only ones doing the work. I completely understand your frustration because there are two guys who have technical backgrounds but doing management work (thus no technical input to my papers whatsoever) who have their names on my papers (that applies to other PhD Students here too). I am not sure about pure academic research (i.e. funding from university) tough, things are likely to be different in that case.

SimpleMan
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It doesn't matter whether it is common or not: it is inappropriate.

He is "editing" and not "authoring".

Don't let it get to you. Even if you were to stop this guy, there has been, are, and will be many others doing the same thing. Just hope that karma will take care of it.

Bob Thule
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    The OP should print @Peter Jansson's answer and post it in a big 11x17 sheet of paper on the most visible board in the department :) Then the "gratuituous contributor" would get the message (and would educate others on how to handle him/her.) – luis.espinal May 22 '14 at 16:59
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An author should be involved in the research, otherwise it is only a clerical role. However, it is not unusual for a collaborator whose contribution to the research is below the average to compensate by doing more work on the writing.

Brendan
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I once was asked by a prof to provide comments on a draft paper given to him by a colleague. I added a third section to the paper, and re-ordered and re-worded the arguments that were in the draft. The paper was then published with no further changes. There was no recognition of my contribution by the author.

DovidM
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  • Your help should have probably been acknowledged, but co-authorship way not necessarily deserved unless you negotiated before your editing. – Noctis Skytower Oct 30 '15 at 14:58