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[lab_gal]

During my postdoc, I worked on a highly collaborative project that is taking an agonizing (AGONIZING) amount of time to publish. Collaborator I produced the reeds (2 years ago), I wove the basket (1.5 years ago), and then Collaborator II carried apples with it (1 year ago). The projects were independent enough that we planned to each publish a paper about it. The Reed Synthesis project is published in (semi-refereed) abstract form in a supplemental issue of a decent journal.

My work was ready to go a year ago. The delay on this project was a combination of factors: senior PIs in no rush, collaborator delays, my maternity leave / job hunt, and oh, did I mention that the senior PIs are taking forever? Grr. My postdoc position ends next week and we are ready to send the manuscript in. My postdoc adviser is urging me to simply cite the published reed abstract and not wait any longer for Collaborator I to publish the full paper.

Important background: CI is a wonderful collaborator and a professional friend, but not very fluent in english. He is really, really struggling with writing the paper. The PI for that project is a great writer, but, basically, the fact that they can't get this paper out is nobody's fault but their own.

CII has produced a semi-final draft of a paper that will be submitted shortly.

So, C1 is finally starting to get going on his (foundational) paper. Here's the problem. He wants it to be high impact (think, one of Nature's child journals), and it's simply not a project with enough impact to make it. But he and his PI want to include some of my New Basket Data (NBD) to make the paper better. C1 was an essential part of collecting NBD and words cannot describe how grateful I am that he dealt with some major occupational hazards for me while I was pregnant (basically, I had to run the experiment from another room while he operated the mechanics of it). But C1 does not even come close to understanding NBD. It's way out of his field. He's misinterpreted it before.

If I don't give C1 the NBD, there is a chance it will never get published. I might continue the project in my new faculty job and publish a more thorough report later, but this is not certain. If I give C1 the NBD, he won't be able to write about it - I'm going to have to do that. I can describe and I could do deep editing of a Reed Synthesis paper, but I had nothing to do with it and it's not my field - it seems inappropriate for me to be 1st author when it is ultimately a Reed paper.

I fully expected to help with the writing (and have offered MANY times). Still, I was shocked when I received the "very rough draft" this week: it was a bulletted list of ideas and quotes directly copied from other sources.

Urgh. C1's paper is a disaster. What would you do? Here are the options I came up with:

1. Insist that C1's paper be about the reed synthesis and the reed synthesis only. No NBD.

2. Give C1 the NBD along with a very thorough writeup, and expect to edit his paper as if it were my own (but only be second author on it)

3. #2, except request to be first author.

4. Give C1 the NBD and brush my hands of it. Figure I'll get a pass at a near final draft, however many more years that takes to produce.

I feel that 1. is the most scientifically appropriate choice, but it turns me into a data grinch and is a jerk thing to do after everything C1 did for me and the experiments. I have no idea what to do. 2 sucks because that's a ton of work on my part for very little reward. 3 is rude. 4 might be scientifically irresponsible and kind of rude as well.

[helpful]

This post shows the absurdity of 'author' conventions in scientific research. You and C1 are equals. Your authorship with your data and his analysis indicates that you are co-authors, not 'first' or 'second' authors.

Are there reputable journals in your field which allow for, and encourage, co-authorship?

[lab_gal]

This post shows the absurdity of 'author' conventions in scientific research. You and C1 are equals. Your authorship with your data and his analysis indicates that you are co-authors, not 'first' or 'second' authors.

Are there reputable journals in your field which allow for, and encourage, co-authorship?

Agreed! We could certainly submit the paper as a co-first-authored paper, but the problem comes in with the credit that I would get for such a paper on my CV. Whatever we agree to personally, everyone knows that co-first-authors are not given the same amount of credit as first-authors (and if your name is listed second, which mine probably would be), many will not notice or care. So that doesn't quite satisfy me.

Grrr. But it is what it is. I met with CI and his PI yesterday and truthfully I just can't ignore their request. We figured out a good way to use NBD and I think I am going to have to just suck it up and pretty much write the paper for him. Well, I mean, he's going to write it, but I know there is going to be some heavy editing. Thankfully the new way of using NBD is easier for C1 to interpret and describe, so I think that will help.

Actually, part of the conversation with CI and his PI was about how they wanted the Apple Basket data that CII is using, and at that point I just wanted to throw my hands up in the air. You could have used it! But write the damn manuscript first! CII is ready to submit and I'm not going to pull out the data from their paper because CI would prefer to use it (a year after the fact and 1 week before I leave for good)

Sorry. I'm frustrated about the whole situation. This should have been an easy data split, but I guess it isn't