First first authorship!

[jedusor]

I was over at Dr. K's today analyzing some data and talking her into buying me Photoshop (successfully, yay), and we were talking about getting an abstract ready for our AChemS poster submission, and she just kind of casually mentioned "first author, which would be you..."

dude, what?

Apparently I'm going to be listed as first author on this. I guess it sort of makes sense, looking back over the work that's been done in the lab since last year's conference. And I'll be the one doing the writing and layout and graphs for the poster itself. Still, I wasn't expecting this, and it feels sort of amazing.

Comments

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

Envious!

Go you. :)

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

:D

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

So proud of and excited for you!

Does this mean you get to go to Florida in April?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I dunno, we haven't talked about it. It would be nice!

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

That's so cool! Congratulations!

You just have your undergrad degree, right?

ETA: Crap, does that sound bad or condescending or something? I totally mean the opposite. I think you are amazing.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Yup, just my bachelor's (in psych, even), and nope, not condescending. I think she listed an undergrad as first author on last year's poster.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

I find it interesting that different fields have such different standards for author order, from alphabetical to seniority to who actually did the most work to whether your advisor is a turd.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's different fields so much as different labs, and even one lab can use more than one standard. The order on this poster is going to go: me (for doing most of the work), the summer research students (in alphabetical order), a Clark professor (for helping us run the stats), another Clark professor (who's barely involved but needs to be on the list for us to keep our NIH grant), a UW professor (for getting us lab space in Seattle), Dr. K. Not sure why she's listing herself last.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

It certainly differs by field as well; I meant all fields (including such lab-lacking fields as mathematics), not just biological fields.

In the area of biology, the Wikipedia article on academic authorship has this to say: "Biologists tend to place a supervisor or lab head last in an author list; organic chemists might put him or her first."

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Congrats! So exciting!

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Thanks!