Hi guys,

Obviously first and last authors are most important, but say if there are 10 authors on a paper is being the third author pretty much the same as being the say saventh? Or is being the third better?

Thanks :)

Hey! Actually it depends on your field whether the last author is important. In my field the last author is not viewed as important, but simply as the person who has contributed the least, so it's the worst place to be! I know that in other fields the last author is often the grantholder, so it's almost as good as being first author, but it's not the same across the board! If there are a lot of authors I'd say the nearer to the beginning you are, the better, but I'm just saying this on the basis of my knowledge of my field! Best, KB

Hi Lostinoz!

I'm in biomedical sciences. Generally, the first author is the person who has done most of the lab work, the last author is the PI/grantholder, and they'll write the manuscript together. Second author is pretty good too, and then it goes downhill from there.

Hi Lostinoz. I'm not really sure of this either, but in my field (biological sciences) it's the first and last author who are most important. For the middling authors, the way I did it was just to put them in descending order of who did the most work, so it goes: 1st, last, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. I didn't have any complaints from my supervisors but maybe just check with yours when you're going to submit!

Well, 1st, last and second author were obvious, but other 7 were kind of similar in terms of work.

So I put the third one the person who has been a better friend :$

(obviously I am not going to explain to my supervisor the reasoning behind this)