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Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles
4. I assume that I will be the first author and you will be the last. Who else should be co-authors and in what order? What will the responsibilities of each author be? Is there anyone who should be listed in the Acknowledgments? 5. Here is a list of experiments (or results) that I plan to include in the article. Do you think my paper should include this much of my work? Do I have enough for more than one paper? 6. When do you want the first draft completed? Can I show you each section as I complete it? (I might not write them in order.) 7. Would you like to meet regularly to discuss my progress, or should I just contact you when I need to talk about something? At a later time, you might want to tailor these questions for your own situation.
“A good mentor to critique your writing is invaluable.”
—Stanley R. Hamilton, MD, Pathology
Deciding on Authorship One of your first tasks is to determine the authors of the article and what role each author will play. The following are the 3 basic criteria that must be met to qualify as an author: An author should have generated at least a part of the intellectual content of a paper, either in conceiving or designing the study or in collecting reported data. An author should have taken part in writing the paper, reviewing it, or revising its intellectual content. An author should be able to defend publicly in the scientific community all of the intellectual content of the paper. Authorship is discussed in more detail in the chapter “Ethical Issues in Scientific Publishing.” “I would encourage anyone who is a first author to write the first draft of a manuscript himself. That is the only way to learn how to do it. Don’t let your supervisor do it… My advisor always made me write the first draft, and it was usually terrible. But that’s how I learned to write, by comparing my version with his.” —Mien-Chie Hung, PhD, Molecular & Cellular Oncology
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