Last and corresponding authorship practices in ecology.

Meghan A Duffy

doi:10.1002/ece3.3435

Abstract

Authorship is intended to convey information regarding credit and responsibility for manuscripts. However, while there is general agreement within ecology that the first author is the person who contributed the most to a particular project, there is less agreement regarding whether being last author is a position of significance and regarding what is indicated by someone being the corresponding author on a manuscript. Using an analysis of papers published in American Naturalist, Ecology, Evolution, and Oikos, I found that: (1) the number of authors on papers is increasing over time; (2) the proportion of first authors as corresponding author has increased over time, as has the proportion of last authors as corresponding author; (3) 84% of papers published in 2016 had the first author as corresponding author; and (4) geographic regions differed in the likelihood of having the first (or last) author as corresponding author. I also carried out an online survey to better understand views on last and corresponding authorship. This survey revealed that most ecologists view the last author as the “senior” author on a paper (i.e., the person who runs the research group in which most of the work was carried out), and most ecologists view the corresponding author as the person taking full responsibility for a paper. However, there was substantial variation in views on authorship, especially corresponding authorship. Given these results, I suggest that discussions of authorship have as their starting point that the first author will be corresponding author and the senior author will be last author. I also suggest ways of deciding author order in cases where two senior authors contributed equally.

Highlights

Who is the last author on a paper? Depending on authorship conventions in a field, the last author might be the person whose surname comes last alphabetically, the person who runs the research group where the research was carried out, or the person who did the least work on the project (Tscharntke, Hochberg, Rand, Resh, & Krauss, 2007)
The number of authors on papers in ecology has increased over time; in 1956, most Ecology papers had only a single author, whereas in 2016, the median number of authors was 4
Prior to the late 1990s, it was rare for the corresponding author of a paper to be designated; the first author is usually the corresponding author, with the last author being the corresponding author in a minority of cases

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

Who is the last author on a paper? Depending on authorship conventions in a field, the last author might be the person whose surname comes last alphabetically, the person who runs the research group where the research was carried out, or the person who did the least work on the project (Tscharntke, Hochberg, Rand, Resh, & Krauss, 2007). Grant proposals, and tenure and promotion decisions are all impacted by publication records If people evaluating these applications, proposals, and dossiers have different views on what it means to be last or corresponding author, authorship order does not provide a reliable signal. This can be problematic if, for example, an assistant professor puts herself as last author as an indicator of having led the work, but a tenure letter writer thinks she is last because she did the least work. I give suggestions for how to determine authorship order in cases where two “senior” authors have made equal contributions to a study

| Literature survey

Findings

| DISCUSSION