Personal circumstances brought me back to Groningen on Wednesday, December 11, and these circumstances also gave me the opportunity to stop by my old department. I actually wanted to stop by for quite some time now, as I wanted to know how everyone is doing, hear about the group’s ambitions for 2020, and get some updates on the progress of my former PhD colleagues.
While cycling towards the university that week, I realized that I was particularly looking forward to catching up with the group’s technicians. I do not exactly know why I felt the way I did, but corresponding feelings should likely be viewed in the context of me spending most of my PhD days on the lab with them. During the course of my PhD project, they were not only there to make small talk, to share a laugh, and to complain to about the weather, but they also liked to lend me a helping hand and actually made significant contributions to some of my projects. I always saw (and still see) them as valuable sources of knowledge with loads of experience. And frankly, I believe that I eventually hit a smaller number of dead ends in my projects than I would have if they had not been around. So, my eagerness to meet with them that week was maybe not only rooted in the fact that I miss them but also in my gratitude towards them.
When I think about the role of technicians in academic research groups, I need to keep in mind that technicians may play different roles in different departments. Nevertheless, I always get an awkward feeling when I hear about research groups which by definition do not include technicians as co-author on scientific publications. The same feeling also arises when I hear about groups which by definition exclude Bachelor and Master students as co-authors. I must admit that I only heard about such practices through the grapevine, yet I can assure you that I am not the only one who has heard them.
There are a lot of things I do not like, but that does not make them wrong, as would also apply to the above-mentioned practices. The thing is, many scientific journals adopted criteria for authorship based on those postulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which read as follows:
- “Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data for the work; AND
- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”
Only if all four criteria apply to you, you should be listed as author, and applying to three or fewer criteria disqualifies you from being an author on the corresponding paper. Still, it would be good that your contribution is mentioned in the acknowledgements section of the paper in the latter case, but that is all you deserve.
Just imagine, we have a PhD student who does not work on the lab him-/herself but who has a Bachelor student, a Master student, and a technician doing all the work on the lab. These three need to resolve all issues, they need to come up with innovative solutions to get publishable data, and they work together for a large period time on the edge of what is possible (and even push the boundaries of what is possible). Thankfully, they pull it off and subsequently deliver some topnotch and publishable data to the PhD student. This PhD student takes it over from there, he/she interprets the data together with his/her supervisor, the two of them write a manuscript, and eventually produce a groundbreaking scientific article. This article only features two authors, namely the PhD student and the supervisor, which would make sense as they are the only contributors fulfilling all four ICMJE criteria.
Let me take it a step further. Keep in mind that prizes and awards in science are often based on achievements or breakthroughs that are typically shared with the world via scientific publications. Now imagine that the Bachelor student, the Master student, and the technician solved the impossible puzzle which led to development of a simple pill which cures all diseases. Such an achievement will inevitably lead to numerous awards, from a local badge of honor awarded by the town’s mayor to the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But, who will get these prizes? The lab heroes? The PhD student? Or will it be the professor in whose lab and under whose ‘supervision’ the work has been carried out? I do not know, but I would not be surprised if many awards and maybe even one or two of the Nobel Prizes handed out in the past decades ended up in the ‘wrong’ hands.
So, please give credit where credit is due, give important contributors the opportunity to apply to all criteria for authorship, and let us get rid of idiotic rules or habits which prevent important contributors from reaping the harvest from (while also from taking responsibility for) the work they do.
analyzed-by-frank.com 