What does the authorline of a paper represent?

As I seem to do at least once a week, I would like to point my readers over to a great discussion occurring at DrugMonkey. This time the topic is on paper authorship in the Biological/Biomedical Sciences. The main points of discussion circulate around PhysioProf's 5 authorship scenarios/issues: 1) collaboration between labs, 2) authorship for trainees, 3) to credit or not credit people who ran potentially influential but failed experiments, 4) should lab heads be given authorship for creating and maintaining the environment in which the research was conducted, 5) should someone who provides materials for the research be included as an author. As evidenced by the discussion at DrugMonkey, many of these are less than clear-cut issues.

I thought about discussing these issues from an ecological point of view where important differences in scientific culture and student funding could lead us to make different authorship decisions. I still think that would be interesting, but in preparing that I realized there was a fundamental question that had to be answered before I could meaningfully discuss more detailed scenarios. It is a shockingly basic question: what exactly is authorship of a paper meant to represent? We throw around phrases that sound like they define something (e.g., "meaningful contributions", "vouch for the validity of the research"), but the more I get into this crazy game the more unclear I become on just what those phrases mean.

Over the past coupe of decades, ecology has become immensely more collaborative and we frankly have been struggling with the concept of authorship as a result. In a very short period of time (I would guess 25 years at most) we have gone from primarily 1-2 authors per paper to these gargantuan authorlines generated by massive collaborative endeavors (for example, NCEAS working groups, LTER projects). It is easy to know who "should" be on an authorline when only two people are doing all the work, but when there are 20+ people, where does the line get drawn? Sometimes it seems that we've decided that anyone who breathes oxygen in the room while the research is being discussed deserves "credit". In addition to problems with trying to decide who should be on the authorline, how do you attribute credit to individuals? When it's just two blokes, (justly or not) you can feel pretty confident that those two people were intimately involved in most aspects of the research, but what does a 20+ authorline really signify?

In ecology, the large authorline is a reality that is more than just an artifact of NCEAS or the LTER network. Our science has been pushing across traditional boundaries with amazing boldness and speed.  This results in research questions that may require skills in physiology and ecosystem ecology, or combining theoretical ecology with field ecology. The training required to master one of these areas is immense and in my experience people are very very rarely able to master more than one area. But what happens if you want to understand whether the presence and abundance of the Cane Toad, which is an invasive species, impacts ecosystem biogeochemical cycling and whether this has anything to do with the physiological phosphorus and nitrogen requirements of the toad? For one person to do this project well without collaboration would require someone with the knowledge and ability to conduct: field sampling and experimental manipulation of the focal organism, physiological knowledge of and perhaps lab experiments on the focal organism, sampling of nutrients in the field, and the lab analyses of those samples to actually get measurements of different forms of nitrogen or phosphorus, and the ability to interpret said results in the context of both the species' biology and the ecosystem biogeochemical cycles. A lab that is set up for the species or ecosystem end of the question is often not set up for the other. Odds are you are looking for someone to collaborate with, if only to get it all done in a reasonable amount of time. Once you get past one author, the question automatically becomes how many people "deserve" to also be an author.

I keep putting the word "deserve" in quotes because it is a word we all use but I honestly am not sure what it means. "Deserve" implies that there is some level of contribution to the research that automatically gives someone authorship rights, but you only have to look at the discussion occurring over at DrugMonkey to realize that none of us has any objective idea what that that level of contribution might be. In ecology, the changes in our science have been occurring so rapidly, that I feel like we've just grabbed authorship "solutions" from other disciplines, assuming that they've already thought this through. However, what I would like to see is some discussion regarding what the authorline is supposed to represent. What information do we want conveyed by the presence and ordering of the list of authors? Obviously, we use the authorline (for good or ill) to make some judgments about the research and the contributions of the people involved. But what information exactly are we trying to extract or convey with that? I feel that until there is a serious discussion about what exactly the authorline means in this collaborative age, we have little philosophical foundation for these discussions of authorship rules and etiquette.

So, what do what want to know from our authorlines? I'm hoping others will weigh in as I'm very curious about what other people think, but I'll get us started with a couple of my thoughts:

1) I want to know who the main point person on the project is. This is the person with the best grasp on the overall project and the research conducted within it. This is the person who is most likely to be able to answer a question about the research or to know exactly who did that component and why that technique was chosen (even if they did not do that analysis/experiment themselves and or even begin to explain how to do that technique).

2) If different people are responsible for different components of the research, I want to know who did what. Who's "credibility" is on the line if that component is wrong?

3) Did different people do different amounts of work for this project? If so, who conducted most of the work (this includes both the research and writing aspects)?

Most of what I want to know from an authorline is how to apportion credit and (frankly) gain a sense of how much I trust the results of the paper. Was this predominately the work of the known moron on the authorline or the brilliant scientist? (I know this last point is a little...something, but I'm really busy and I just don't have time to read all the papers I should be reading).

What about the rest of you? What information are you looking for from authorlines?

Quantity vs. Quality: the never-ending debate

An anonymous commenter yesterday brought up an incredibly important point to remember when we discuss what kinds of publication records make our institutions (and tenure committees) happy.

"My point is that impact factors and so-called "top tier" journals are supposed to give some indication of quality and "toughness" in publishing. But there will always be someone who looks at numbers of papers (crap crap crap = 3) and others who only look for CNS and IFs. Keep track of your IFs, mark your CV with student "stars" and invited papers, and be on your toes constantly to defend why you chose the journal you submitted to."

I've now reached that stage in my career where a number of my friends are at a variety of institutions and nothing is clearer to me right now than every institution seems to have it's own crazy "rules" on this matter ("rules" are in quotes because these are not always officially sanctioned rules). I know some high quality programs where it seems to be all about numbers (i.e., 3 papers in low-tier journals are better than 2 papers in high-tier journals). I know some places have a formula combining number and journal "quality". And I know one place that apparently has a rule about where you are on the author line because I know a variety of their young faculty will throw people under the bus (including their own students) to get that particular slot. One of the messages that comes through loud and clear from my anonymous commenter is that there is no standard rule of 'success' and people can run into issues if the rules they are operating under are different from the ones their institution values (I would encourage everyone to read the comment in its entirety).

General Disarray and I have spent hours and hours discussing tenure criteria from various universities and what to do if you realize that your university does not value what you value in terms of the quality x quantity interaction (the teaching/research trade-off is beyond my abilities to deal with, so I will leave that for others). We decided that there are essentially two strategies: 1) to follow your institution's tenure criteria like they are commandments from on high or 2) focus on being as competitive as possible for the job market. We have been taking the latter path (I'll let you know how that works out for me as I get closer to the big tenure decision). Our decision was based on one core concept: if we are good enough to leave for a university of similar or better quality, we are good enough to stay. Now, there are risks with this approach, no doubt. We could potentially screw ourselves if our institution doesn't like our CVs and we actually cannot get a job somewhere else. But I would also argue that there are inherent risks to clinging to your institution's criteria - especially if in chasing those ideals you leave behind the science you love. I have friends who chased their institutions mantra of numbers above all else. To meet those criteria they  traded science they were passionate about for science that was easier to publish to large quantities in low-tiered journals. They have tenure now, but have drifted so far from the cutting edge that they can't figure out how to get back to what they loved. In part, I have to admit that I focus on option 2 for chasing tenure because it fits better with the type of science I want to do and the type of scientist I want to be...and an inherent realization that if I can't chance the questions I'm passionate about then my entire reason for doing all this in the first place is gone.

And this leads me to what I think is the most important lesson I learned from my advisor - do the science you love, publish it the best place you can, and never stop looking for the institution that is excited by that. There are so many ways to make a "successful" (and by successful I mean one that makes you happy) career in ecology that I honestly see no point in chasing someone else's ideal of "success" if it doesn't make you happy. So, if you're the woman referred to by the anonymous commenter, taking heat for only having 2 papers last year in the most prestigious journals in our field instead of 5 in some lower-tier journal, take heart, I'd hire you in a heartbeat. And to the guy who took heat for all his papers with undergrads in lower-tier journals, take heart there too, I think my university would probably over-rule me and hire you instead!

Journal Choice

There is an intensely fascinating discussion occurring over at DrugMonkey right now on the importance of journal choice strategy for manuscript submission. Instead of polluting their nice discussion, I thought I would use my own blog to provide an ecologist's commentary. Let me start this discussion with a quote from PhysioProf's original entry:

"If your papers are being routinely accepted with only minor revisions, you are almost certainly not aiming high enough with the journals you are submitting to. If you want to publish in high-end journals, the sweet spot to aim for is that only about 1/3 of your papers should end up accepted at the journal you originally submit them to, and the rest should have to filter down."

When I read this, I actually wondered if PhysioProf had bugged my home. This summer, General Disarray and I debated this point with regards to two paper I was an author on. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that both papers would fly into one of my standard haunts and wanted to shoot higher. Afterall, if I was sure they were sure things at one tier, wasn't that the best indication that it might be worth trying a little higher? A co-author (the same one in both cases) thought it a waste of time and wanted to dump them lower. I was swayed by the arguments because the co-author was someone I highly respected. General Disarray finally convinced me that this strategy only ensured that I would not get either manuscript into a higher tiered journal. (Hmmm, maybe PhysioProf didn't bug my house, but surely I would know if General Disarray and PhysioProf were the same person....right?). There are many assurances that make me happy in life (the love of my husband, medical insurance, 100% on-time arrival for a flight), but a guarantee for not getting a paper into a better journal is not one of them. So I currently have two manuscripts trickling through the system. (And yes, PhysioProf, most of my papers have been getting into the journals I first submit them to, which was also part of my reasoning for shooting higher...but surely you already know this since you have apparently bugged my home).

Part of what I wanted to emphasize for my more ecological friends is not to get distracted by the comments over at DrugMonkey that predominately focus on what they call C/N/S or GlamourMags, (Cell, Nature, Science; obviously Cell is completely meaningless to us and I am endlessly fascinated by Cell being on that list because to an ecologist it's like hearing Gold, Diamonds, and...Seashells? Really, you rank seashells with Gold and Diamonds? But that's for another discussion about the differences among fields and was mainly put in here as a friendly poke at my medical/molecular/cellular blogging friends.) Obviously, getting papers into Nature, Science, PNAS, and PLoS Biology are great career boosts for us but the argument is not that this is only relevant to that top tier. I think that CC said it most clearly: if you routinely get papers accepted on the first submission, you're obviously leaving impact factor points on the table. If you try to aim higher across the board (submitting what you think is a B paper to A and what you think is an E paper to D) you'll reap rewards more thoroughly. Conversely, if your first submission acceptance rate is zero or close to it, you're being too aggressive and annoying everyone. I have reviewed a number of papers in low-tiered taxon-specific journals that when asked on the review form about alternative journals I wanted to say: Yes, rewrite and send to Ecology! (For my friends outside the field, that is one of the top ecology journals).

While the approach of shooting a little higher than one might intuitively reach for is a good one for maximizing the "payoffs" for each paper, it should be noted that this strategy is not necessary to have a career as a scientist, especially an ecologist. How important it is to follow this approach all depends on whether or not you want a career at a high wattage R1, a less brilliantly lit R1, or a more laid-back R2 (which may sometimes experience brownouts). At my current locale, which is an R2, I could make a handy career for myself without ever stretching myself to more stellar journal heights. However, at one of the top R1 programs I might need to stretch more. The fact that I am currently stretching is not because I need to, but because I want to. Given the type of science and career I want for myself, PhysioProf has the right advice. Now, if only I could find that damn bug he put in my house.

Off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Milwaukee

I'm off to the big ecology meeting in Milwaukee so things should be quiet here at Professor Chaos for the next week. I may try to blog from the meeting, but I'm not making any promises. Afterall, writing blogs ain't meeting people...well, actually I seem to meet a lot of people writing blogs, so that's not technically true...anyway, you know what I mean.

See you all on the flip side!

Web of Science killed Book Chapters

Last week, the Junction Potential asked what the "bibles" of people's scientific fields were. That question got me thinking about the books I regularly pull off my shelf. Many of them are reference tomes on statistics or my favorite organism. Others are conceptual foundations for major areas of research by a single author. Others are edited volumes, where people in an area of research contribute a chapter on the theme of the book. The reference tomes are pretty recently published for obvious reasons (don't want to reference outdated information, afterall). The single author books span the range of really old (i.e., Darwin) to published a year or so ago. The interesting pattern is in the edited volumes. They are all pre-late 1990s. These older volumes are classics, with chapter after chapter of useful and novel analyses and ideas. I HAVE post-late 1990s edited volumes, but they do not move off my shelf and typically elicit shudders when I accidentally make eye contact with them. They are BORING. They are rehashs of already published information. They are often horribly written. Maybe I'm just buying bad edited volumes and I'm missing the innovative gems, but I think there is more to this than just my buying habits. I think book chapters are no longer as valued as they once were.

Why do I think this? Because I know they are less valuable to me. They are not indexed in Web of Science, so there is no easy way for me to track their impact for the bean-counters. They do not show up in the nice graph produced by Web of Science showing how many papers a person published each year, so if you published 5 book chapters and no journal articles it looks like you didn't publish squat that year. They are also harder to find than journal articles, so I think many chapters just get lost unless the books happens to be high profile for some reason. Finally, my Promotion and Tenure committee has made it clear that a first authored book chapter doesn't count in the "published a first-authored paper"column in the tenure checklist. (The checklist doesn't physically exist, but it's clear that column exists in their heads, so I guess it exists for me too). When I was a graduate student, book chapters were considered a big deal. (oooh, post-doc X wrote a book chapter, wow maybe someday someone will ask me to write a book chapter). It was a mark of your standing in a field that someone asked you to write a chapter for an edited volume, just like being invited to speak in a symposium at a conference. It was also an opportunity to say things that were too bold/crazy/innovative/speculative to get out in more conservative journals. Now I feel like it is not nearly as prestigious and, from my perspective, is a "lost publication".

So why write a book chapter at all? Well, sometimes there are social reasons for doing so. Sometimes workshops will require a book chapter from everyone and since they're paying your expenses it's a quid pro quo situation. Sometimes those symposium invites come with the same expectation (though without the benefit of the paid expenses). Sometimes the expectation of a book chapter doesn't get popped on you until you're AT the event. That one really annoys me. I've started employing "bullet time" when the word book chapter emerges - you know, like Neo in the Matrix? I dodge and I wiggle and I flail my arms around trying desperately to avoid being committed to writing a chapter. When I do get trapped, I have to admit I don't send my best stuff, for the reasons referenced above. I get no credit for it and I feel like there's a high probability that most people won't find it, so why "waste" my good stuff on a black hole.

The last edited volume I bought caused a revolt in my reading group where we were plodding through ridiculously awful chapters week after week. (Does it count as a revolt if you are both the head of the reading group and the leader of the revolt?) Since then I have stopped buying edited volumes without multiple letters of reference from trusted sources. I have wondered if the edited volume will eventually die or spawn a Web of Science-like database (Chapters of Science?). I suspect, to my dismay, that the edited volume is an albatross we are destined to bear for a while.

The Rabid Reviewer

Reading Female Science Professor's post this morning about inappropriate reviewing behavior, I was inspired to muse about a common type of review I receive on my submitted manuscripts: the rabid review. If you are lucky enough to not know what I am talking about (and yes, I mean rabid and not rapid), I envy you a great deal. The past couple of papers I've submitted have attracted the rabid reviewer like a lightening rod.

I have learned that there are a variety of review types out there: The dumb review: a review so lacking in basic logic and knowledge that you wonder how that person has enough brain cells to coordinate breathing, much less breathe and type at the same time...which come to think of it might explain the review.

The "Why didn't you cite me" review: my favorite example of this is a review I received that was riddled with citations like: Reviewer (1990), Reviewer et al (1992,1993,1994), Random person, Random person, Random Person, Reviewer, et al (2000). This is always particularly entertaining when the review is "anonymous".

The "obviously didn't read the paper review": often identifiable from the numerous critiques of things that the reviewer argues should be dealt with that are actually already in the manuscript.

The rabid review is a completely different beast. It is angry. It is often LONG. It implies that you should have your Ph.D stripped (at best), or be tarred, feathered and/or run naked through the streets (at worst). It is riddled with angry rants about things that are either not in your manuscript, or are pulled out of context in a disturbing political spin sort of way. And EVERYTHING is blown out of proportion. A comma in the wrong place is used as evidence that your science is sloppy. A citation with the wrong year is taken as deliberately misleading. Sometimes there are directly snide comments about you personally (though this is fortunately rarer).

When I was younger, the rabid reviewer would make me cry. After a week or so of waiting for me to get back on the horse, my advisor would take me aside and tell me that my science actually didn't suck and that the rabid reviewer was actually a good sign for the quality of the ideas. With age and maturity I have been able to reduce the time from the crying phase to returning to the manuscript to 24 hours (also, minus calling my advisor for a pep talk, which I often want to do but feel like I should be past by now). The other big difference is that now at the end of those 24 hours I AM PISSED. I am pissed because the rabid review means that someone let something personal interfere with the objective review of my work . There are a variety of reasons for the rabid review. The list is long and runs the gamut from competing labs to people who hate your guts. I don't know if I get the rabid reviewer more than my colleagues, I've never really asked around. However, if my advisor's right that it's a sign I'm on to something good, then my research program is on fire right now....and surely that's a good thing.

Advisors (Pt II): How important is the name?

As an older graduate student/young postdoc, I often noted that the people who received lots of job interviews tended to have stellar academic lineages (i.e., either their Ph.D. supervisor or post-doc advisor, or both, were scientific rockstars). The cynic in me assumed that this reflected more about the psychology of academia than anything else. However, I am beginning to wonder if there really is something about the "pedigree" that may be important.

Over the past couple of years I have run into the following scenario again and again: bright, capable student wants to publish papers in Ecology, American Naturalist, Ecology Letters, etc, but has no concept of how to write a paper that could possibly get accepted. The reasons for this vary. Some are working on projects that their advisor told them to do, but if it ever was cutting edge it was 20 years ago. Some are doing cutting edge science, but haven't learned how to write for big journals. The latter is a common scenario I run into; somewhere along the line the basic lesson has not been learned that writing for The Journal of Your Favorite Specialized Taxonomic Group probably results in a very narrowly written paper that is not acceptable for the broader, higher impact, ecology journals. Invariably these students seem to have one thing in common: they would never be described as having a great pedigree.

What I am wondering is if there is something important about who you train with. Having a big name advisor is obviously no guarantee of becoming a successful scientist. Having less than lustrous pedigree is not some unalterable death knell. I still believe a good pedigree says nothing about the inherent quality or potential of a scientist, but I am beginning to suspect that it does indicate something about the "scientific level" that someone has been trained to operate at.