Research collaborations, colleagues and supervision

Seminar 2

Adam Sobkowiak Andreas Blidberg

Dou Du Fredrik Lindgren

Yu Zhang

Relations with fellow researchers

• Collaboration between two PhD students, one experimentalist and one theoretician.

• The theoretician proposed the project.• The theoretician is dependent on the experimentalist

unique method.• The experimentalists work is fast and light and quickly

makes a draft as first authors without discussion. • The theoretician PhD student need at least one paper

as first author.

What is the problem?

• Collaboration was launched without proper planning. • Different expectations from the two PhD students. • Different timescales of the work. • The theoretician is dependent on the experimentalist,

but the experimentalist can collaborate with others.

• Who decides the author order?• Who made the largest and the most significant

contribution?

Possible solutions

• Publish as is, experimentalist first author• Publish as two individual papers• The project is cancelled – no publication• Theoretician is first author

• Publish with two first authors

The actors

• Strengths– No bad feelings– Win win situation– High impact journal– Journal gets a nice publication– Synergetic effects – the sum of

the parts is larger than the whole

• Opportunities– More citations and references– Future funding– Society notice & media pick up– Many researchers will notice

and can continue.

• Threats– Journal accept 2 authors?– ”Forced” solution => damage

future collaborations– Illusion of a good

collaboration

• Weaknesses– Ethically correct? Theoreticians

did 70%!– Credit to the right funding and

agency.– Credit to the right researcher– Dilute the authorships– The real problem is not solved

Concluding remarks

• Bad planning results in this kind of situations. • No standard or rules to decide the author

order.• Difficulties in evaluation of contributions (idea

vs. unique technique). • No perfect solution.