Proven approaches to co-authoring and other publication strategies

1. Proven approaches to co-authoring and other publication strategies Arnan Mitchell KouroshKalantar-zadeh 22/08/2012

2. Definition of Coauthors • The American Chemical Society (ACS) defines coauthors for a scientific paper as those who "share responsibility and accountability for the results” • The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) advises "authorship should be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work" and “…authors are strongly encouraged to indicate their specific contributions as a footnote”.

3. Example! A paper written by Geim (won Nobel prize in Physics in 2010 for the discovery of graphene): “Detection of earth rotation with a diamagnetically levitating gyroscope“A. K. Geim,  and H. A. M. S. terTisha, PhysicaB: Condensed Matter Volumes 294-295, January 2001, Pages 736-739 He demonstrated the levitation of a frog! The second author was his hamster! The rumour is that initially the hamster that was supposed to be the “levitating frog” in the work (Geim won IgNobel Prize for this work). Finally the hamster did not cooperate, was spared the flight and instead added as a co-author. Ref: http://apetrov.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/serious-papers-funny-things-hamsters-as-co-authors-etc/

4. History of Coauthoring • Any issue of “Nature” journal today has nearly the same number of Articles and Letters as one from 1950, but about four times as many authors. The lone authorship has all but disappeared. In most fields outside mathematics, fewer and fewer people know enough to work and write alone. If they could, and could spare the time and effort to do so, their funding agencies and home institutions would not permit it. • From the late 1600s until about 1920, the rule was one author per paper: an individual produced an increment of science and obtained a corresponding increment of credit. This symmetry was breached in the 1920s, diminished in the 1950s, and largely abandoned by the 1980s. Ref: Greene, Mott (2007). "The demise of the lone author". Nature450 (7173): 1165

5. Credit share for coauthors • The (old and crude) ruling convention of multiple authorship is that all authors shared in the work more or less equally. • This is easy enough to swallow where three or four authors are concerned, harder when there are eight to ten authors, and almost impossible with twenty or fifty — let alone hundreds, as in some sequencing papers (All Animals Are Equal but Some Animals Are More Equal than Others) • It would be possible to specify in detail, as in movie credits, who did what on a scientific paper: although there is simply no pressure to do so. Nature's Editor Philip Campbell introduced a policy in 1999 of including a statement of author contributions in each paper (see http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/20743). Although this is voluntary, Nature authors are increasingly taking up the option. Ref: Greene, Mott (2007). "The demise of the lone author". Nature450 (7173): 1165

6. Credit share for coauthors • Lotka's law, obtained empirically by the mathematician Alfred Lotka in 1926 and many times confirmed, is a rough 'inverse-square law of scientific productivity'. For every 100 authors who each produce a scientific paper in a given period, there will be 25 authors that produce two, 11 that produce three, and one author who produces ten or more. • The appreciation of Lotka's law has allowed the implementation of citation counting as the principal means of establishing scientific prominence and reputation. No matter how many co-authors you have, the more times your name appears on a scientific publication, the more productive you are assumed to be, and the more worthy of support. • The only natural force opposing the utility of Lotka's law has been Goodhart's law, from the economist Charles Goodhart: "any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." Once citation counting became established as a means to determine prominence, players began to 'game the system‘. Ref: Greene, Mott (2007). "The demise of the lone author". Nature450 (7173): 1165

7. Credit share for coauthors • Now cracks are appearing in the system. It seems that Lotka's law applies only when papers with 100 or more authors are rare. When these become common, the disjunction between the number of papers being counted and the number of authors entering the system per paper becomes so large that the power-law distribution of multiple authorships breaks down. • The ability of Lotka's law to equate frequency of authorship with scientific rank is buckling as more and more areas of science — genomics, proteomics, climate modelling and particle physics are the most prominent — regularly produce papers with more than 100 authors. Further evolution of the system is likely in the short term. Ref: Greene, Mott (2007). "The demise of the lone author". Nature450 (7173): 1165 • Example: a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993 had 972 authors listed !! [The New England Journal of Medicine 329 (10): 673.]

8. Pros and Cons • Productivity – Having a coauthor can be productivity-enhancing or it can be a big drag. On the productivity-enhancing side, coauthors can divide their labor to improve efficiency, provide continual checks on the other’s logic, help fill theoretical gaps held by either author, and collaborate to improve the quality of the final draft. On the productivity-destroying side, coathors who don’t have compatible schedules, work habits, or skill sets may actually impede the ability of either author to get anything done. Figure out how compatible you’d likely be with a potential coauthor early on and then make a decision about how much time (if any) you’ll commit to doing a project with that person. • Diversity – Diverse coauthorscan be beneficial inasmuch as two or three coauthors with very different skill sets, knowledge, etc. will be able to offset the weaknesses of the other. But coauthor diversity probably has a curvilinear relationship with productivity. At a certain point, the level of diversity can push coauthors into having continual misunderstandings and either one author will take the project over and dominate or a final paper will never materialize. Ref: orgtheory.net, “coauthoring” by Tyler Cowen and Andrew Gelman

9. Bad examples! From :http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=27145.0 • “In grad school, I let a friend who already had his PhD rework one of my papers.  A senior person suggested that my friend should be first author, and I was okay with this.  My friend reworked it in a way that was completely unacceptable to me, and sent it off without my approval.  I had to call the editors (it was promptly accepted) and get the offending stuff taken out.  My friend and I haven't gotten along since then.” • “….The disagreement came from the fact that I'd returned something we'd been working on at a speed not fast enough to suit him/her.  S/he sent me a scathing personal attack by e-mail, and, as first author, I "fired" him/her.  I later published a similar article, using only my own data and past work, as a sole authored piece.” • These are not OK. You need to have fun with it …

10. Some Comments • Rates of coauthorship– different disciplines have different coauthoring norms. For example in economics, coauthoring is much less common than in sociology, which are both data-driven disciplines. Experimental papers are much more likely to be coauthored than theory-only papers. • Number of authors – For experimental works the divide of the tasks are much easier and transparent hence logical to have many authors. For non experimental works, projects with more authors might promote free-riding and the main authors usually get stuck doing most of the work. • Order of authorship – Deciding the subsequent order is usually negotiated before a final draft is finished. This ordering may change if one person ends up committing more time than another, but the negotiation should be done openly. Whoever is the lead author should be sure to figure out author ordering early on so that problems don’t erupt later. • Number of coauthored projects – Some would say that coauthoring early on in your career makes you look like a perpetual Research Assistant. For junior academics and PhD students it is always important to have a combination of first author and coauthored papers. Ref: orgtheory.net, “coauthoring” by Tyler Cowen and Andrew Gelman

11. The Coauthoring Groups Co-authors can be divided into two groups: 1- Your group: academics affiliated to your group, your researchers and students 2- Academics, engineers, staff and researchers other than the members of your group

12. My Group - Your Group I define your group as the people who listen to you! They are closely associated with your work, trust you and allow you have some control over the final decisions. Focusing on the co-authorship - as a good group leader: 1- You have to know the group members capabilities, 2- You have to assure that the members work together, and 3- Spend long time with them – listen to them – to some degree give them freedom.

13. Member of the Group How to control the process of authorship: 1- As the group leader your name can come last in the list of authors. For me this is the case unless about books, feature articles, or something that I write the majority of the text – I always remain as one of the “corresponding authors” (about 70% of the papers in my group) 2- Very early on: I choose a member of the group to take over writing the core – this person will be the first author and the others co-authors

14. The process The personal preferences of the group leader dictate as how to process the writing. In my group we : 1- Always start with a tentative plan: first discussions as what is novel, what is exciting for the readers, for researchers, for academics and the industry, 2- Novelty is identified: Make sure that what we will only do what has not been done before - a thorough literature survey, 3- We are realistic: Make sure that we are realistic about our capabilities – consider what we cannot do at the very beginning. we push ourselves to the limits at the same time. 4- Divide the tasks and make sure they love it: Make sure that the group members do it willingly – I present the ideas in a way that they feel that they suggested to do the task and they were not forced to

15. The process • Conducting the initial experiments/studies – I remain in very close contacts with the group members at the beginning. Even contacting them at 10-11 pm, if I find something new or think of something novel. The group members do the same and can contact me any time – this stage is generally stressful and we all feel pressure. • Theoretical: I only rely on myself ! Students under the recent curricula are not strong in theory. • We conduct the first series of experiments and compare them with theoretical values – see what items are missing. If needed, we replan things and redo the process

16. The process • I meet with the group members working on the paper individually – to understand their very separate points of views about the results – without the influence of others • See whether the results are meaningful – are they high impact results? – is there any serendipitous element that we can find in the process • Plan the complementary experiments (very likely that we also contact external groups at this stage – specially for unknown materials for us) if needed

17. The process • Even change the whole aim and story of the paper if we feel that our initial thoughts did not have the most impact and what we found on the way is more worthy • At this stage we choose the journal based on what we assess importance and impact of the work. The paper will be written into the template of the journal • After feeling confident about the outcomes – we start writing: finish writing the experimental and theoretical parts, then introduction and finally abstract and conclusion • Many iterations for the paper – we can easily go up to versions 30-40

18. The process • A letter to the editor is prepared. Lots of thoughts will go into this letter – high impact factor journal editors read the letter very carefully. E.g. Science and Nature journals editors do not send the paper for review if the letter does not provide evidence of earth shattering discoveries. • Always strong emphasis on the novel aspects of the work in the letters • Wait game: generally high impact and quality journals get back within 4-6 weeks – if there is only minor change requests • Sometimes – for contradicting reviews – they send the paper to the third or forth reviewer. This might lengthen the process to 8-10 weeks • Comes back as minor, major or reject. • Even reject does not mean reject!!! You can successfully appeal it in more than 50% of occasions

19. Collaboration with other groups We collaborate with others: • To develop new ideas • Use other their expertise to implement our ideas • Use their facilities • Share workload The rule is: if you can use other’s expertise to save time and enhance the work – use them

20. How to find them? • Find the most prolific young or retired researchers – they are the most likely to be interested in collaboration • Easiest is the direct contact – email. Sell yourself in the email. • The first priority are the groups in Melbourne, then other states and finally other countries • Lure them with joint authorship

21. The coauthorship with other groups In writing a paper with others: 1- You and your group have the leadership. Generally the first and last authors should be from your group 2- Others as the leader: they ask for your input in developing their ideas, or the capabilities that you have When others approach you always questions should be asked immediately – is the contribution worth the co-authorship or just acknowledgment? What do they offer you and your group? What is the long term plan? …

22. When others contact you Many opportunities: similar to what I presented before. Pitfalls: • Weak groups and unusual expectations – you have to spend a great deal of your time to bring them up to the level • Weak people ask for funny things • Weak people always complain – always say negative things • Weak people bring the spirit of your group down • Only accept collaboration with energetic, academically strong and prolific people. Trust?

23. Example: Coauthorship problems • The Schön scandal concerns German physicist Jan HendrikSchön (born 1970 in Verden) who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductors that were later discovered to be fraudulent. • Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize for Physics in 2001, the Braunschweig Prize in 2001 and the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in 2002. Ref: Wiki - Jan HendrikSchön

24. Example: coauthorshipproblems • Schön's field of research was condensed matter physics and nanotechnology. In late 1997 he was hired by Bell Labs, USA. • Schönclaimed spectacular on/off behavior, far beyond anything achieved thus far with organic materials. The findings were published in prominent scientific publications, including the journals Science and Nature, and gained worldwide attention. . In that year he announced in Nature that he had produced a transistor of a molecular scale. The implications of his work were significant. It would have been the beginning of a move away from silicon-based electronics and towards organic electronics. • In 2001 he was listed as an author on an average of one newly published research paper every eight days. He was the first author of all. • His claims in most cases were based on previous theoretical predictions. • Schon was asking for samples from different groups or individuals – and had them as co-authors Ref: Wiki

25. Example: coauthorshipproblems • Professor Lydia Sohn, then of Princeton University, noticed that two experiments carried out at very different temperatures had identical noise. Professor Paul McEuen of Cornell University then found the same noise in a paper describing a third experiment. This triggered a series of reactions that quickly led Lucent Technologies (which ran Bell Labs) to start a formal investigation. • In May 2002, Bell Labs set up a committee: The committee obtained information from all of Schön'scoauthors, and interviewed the three principal ones (ZhenanBao, Bertram Batlogg and Christian Kloc). It examined electronic drafts of the disputed papers which included processed numeric data. The committee requested copies of the raw data but found that Schön had kept no laboratory notebooks. His raw-data files had been erased from his computer. • On September 25, 2002, the committee publicly released its report. The report contained details of 24 allegations of misconduct. • The report found that all of the misdeeds had been performed by Schön alone. All of the coauthors (including Bertram Batlogg who was the head of the team) were exonerated of scientific misconduct. This sparked widespread debate in the scientific community on how the blame for misconduct should be shared among co-authors, particularly when they share significant part of the credit. • Bell lab rules were: all collaborators share some degree of responsibility for the entirety of any paper of which they are a co-author. Ref: Wiki

26. Negotiating Authorship Credit with external groups The rules are: • Negotiate everything clearly about the authorship at the very first stages • You will never have problems with prolific and high profile academics – make sure you only collaborate with such people • Be suspicious of something which is too good to be true