Evening all!

Just curious as to how much support I should expect from my supervisors regarding writing my first paper.
What are people's experiences with this?

Thank you in advance!
Jane

Hi Jane,

I think most would be okay to read a fully-written draft, with complete references and abstract, just give them plenty of time and of course don't assume they'll be too eager. That way, they can give you feedback in a similar way to the official peer-review editorial process. They are also very willing to point you in the direction of a journal that would be the best fit, as they have much more experience navigating the journal aims and submission process. Some journals are more accepting of early career researchers then others, as it gets to 'double-blind' process only after the initial editor's glance of seeing if it is worthy to pass to peer-review.

Anything more than that may step into co-authorship, which includes developing the argument or reading over incomplete sections and writing on them/suggesting the direction. Of course, you can ask them if they'd be willing to co-author.

Thanks for your advice Nad75. We've already discussed co-authorship which I think they're happy with - but I just want to make sure i'm first author as this paper will be part of my thesis. I've written a skeleton draft of the paper - i'm just trying to balance being first author and getting enough input and support from my supervisors as they're the experts at publishing. - plus i'm kinda feeling way over my head at the minute - I feel like i've no idea what i'm doing, and what i've written isn't the best quality (this is where i think everyone will find out i'm a fraudster and shouldn't be doing a PhD haha).

I know supervisors who write papers for their students to keep them in the lab but in my opinion this is very bad practice.
Don't worry about feeling a fraud. We have all been there.

Hi Jane92,

My experience was quite pleasant. I was given leeway to approach researching and writing the paper on my own terms. After every section we'd have a meeting. She would provide feedback to my writing styles, make changes where necessary and at the meetings, we'd just meet to catch up/brainstorm and make sure we're on the same page with the paper. I also had a third co-author, who would step in, to just proofread the whole paper and make sure it's ready to be sent for publishing.

This is all, considering I was the first author for both my papers. So my experience with writing a paper was quite monitored by my supervisors. This may differ, since different researchers have different styles and approaches, based on what my friends have told me.