Saturday, February 26, 2011

Credit for Graduate Students on Co-Authored Published Papers

This is an article published on Leiter Reports, it is a question posed by a graduate student. The question is about how credit is divided when one co-authors. I have listed a quick summery of what seem to be the important comments.




  1.  If you co-author with a professor, have the professor write you a letter of recommendation/explanation about the contribution. This will give the published work more credit. This can prove your degree of participation.
  2. Many papers have footnotes on the first page suggesting how credit is divided. ie: "First author is primary author; authorship is equal among the other authors".
  3. Usually authors are listed in alphabetical order, so "credit" is not a very obvious, and usually assumed equal.
  4. Some divide credit based on past publishing history. If you co-author and have no history of getting your own work into good journals while the other co-author has many solo articles, they will assume you did less of the the real work.
  5. Co-Authored publications can count for more than solo efforts in some situations as it shows participation and integration into your philosophy department and a willingness to work with others. (I assume this would be for jobs at "teaching" colleges.)
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