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.