Well, my very first paper has been rejected, although I am not really all that surprised. I was re-reading it the other day and thinking that Good General Journal would be foolish for giving it the 'revise and resubmit' stamp. It simply wasn’t good enough. All the issues that the reviewers suggested were lacking I had originally included and Advisor A removed out in her final, somewhat brutal, edit. This is the same paper that Ad A appropriated first authorship. Once I realised that my own work wouldn’t even have my name first, I decided to give up fighting for what I saw as crucial to the paper’s conceptual coherence.
Secretly, I feel vindicated that the paper was given the big fat brush off. Although my smug glow soon wore off when the reality hit. Now I will have to re-write the paper and Ad A will resubmit with her name still tauntingly first.
Although, I guess there is now no reason why I shouldn’t bring up the authorship issue again. But I have to balance it with the fact that I will have to work with this woman for many years to come. This is a moment when I have to take psycgirl’s advice and pick my battles, and the answers to the questions she logically asks all point to the fact that I probably should fight this one.
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Arrrrrgh! Authorship battles suck, but I think they're important. Somewhere there are actually guidelines for authorship.... maybe in some APA publication. I got burned on this once so now I always ask up front - citing the burn. For our last paper, I actually said to Dr. Smooth "This might seem like an odd question already... but I've been burned before... can you just let me know what authorship order you were thinking?" He basically said "Oh of course, that's good to work out early." so I didn't look like a possessive freak. I also use authorship order to gauge how much work I have to do (First author = great deal of emotional investment and work. Third author = some work, try not to get too emotionally attached. Fourth and beyond = myeah. Whatever)
I think generally first authorship is a combo of 1) Its your design and you participated in running the project 2) You ran a great deal of the analyses 3) You did the majority of the writing. And always when its your thesis/dissertation. Third/Fourth is usually 1) you're in the same lab 2) You helped edit the paper. I think. Good luck!
P.S. Good for you that you had all of the reviewer's issues in there! Even if it did get turned down, you were on the right track.
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