How does authorship order affect the evaluation of a publication record?
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How does authorship order affect the evaluation of a publication record?
- First authorship indicates you were primarily responsible for idea generation and/or running subjects and/or writing the manuscript. Thus, the research is viewed as directly reflecting the abilities of the first author.
- If not first author, the order of your authorship is generally less important because second authorship provides generally the same weight as a third, fourth, or etc authorship. Being second, third, fourth, or etc, provides relatively little information about your ability to conduct research because its difficult to know the contributions of non-first-authorships and the research is usually not viewed as directly reflecting the ability of the other authors who are seen as having secondary roles on the project.
- One caveat is that if the first author is a graduate student, the research may be viewed as reflecting the abilities of the faculty member irrespective of where in the authorship order that faculty member has his/her name.
- At the same time, another possible heuristic that may be invoked when evaluating your publication record is whether on your non-first-authorship articles you have a tendency to be closer to the front when it comes to authorship order, or a tendency to be farther to the back. In this case, having a tendency to be closer to the front may indicate something about your contributions and ability to conduct research.
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