The truth about credits
There’s one thing that is more thrilling for a scientist than his thrilling experiment’s results themselves.
It’s the author’s ranking on the resulting publication. This ranking always gives pain, being the reason for hassle and hatred between former colleagues and close collaboration partners.
Of course, the most important position on a scientific paper is the first one. The first author is the person who achieves fame and honour and later a lucrative job. In addition, most people think that the first author is the person that has optimised and executed most of the experiments.
The last author position is sought-after, too. Usually we suppose that it’s the venerable person behind the team (normally the full professor or at least a skilled post doc). For most people, the senior author is the ingenious mastermind behind the scenes and the experiments.
Nice belief – but completely wrong.
If you are interested in seeing how the cat jumps, just look at this web page. There you will learn to give credit where credit is due.
Really comical stuff, this PhD comics site.
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