technicians and papers - (Jun/02/2010 )

It is idealistic -- but it should be the starting point. It's pretty much the standard all reputable journals state. It was the title of the thread that prompted my post -- of what consequence is it that someone's a technician? If his or her contribution was significant enough, they should be included as an author. What would you think if the title was "first-year post docs versus third-year post docs and papers"?

HomeBrew on Wed Dec 1 12:41:02 2010 said:

True, but what about "famous" scientist "giving" their name to give papers a certain reputation... How many times do you see a certain name of a well known professor on a paper just to "up" the reputation of that paper? (mostly at the end of the list)
While you know for sure that they had almost nothing to do with it or maybe even just checking it (reading it).

I'm not saying it doesn't happen -- it does, but it shouldn't. If the paper's good enough, the author names shouldn't matter...

HomeBrew on Mon Dec 6 14:31:31 2010 said:

True

nightingale on Mon Nov 29 22:27:01 2010 said:

Woaw that sucks. I am shocked. For me, adding one name on the co-author's list doesn't decrease the benefits of the 1st author. A tech should be paid AND be co-author when he did most of the lab work. I know that in the guidelines for co-authorship, the "lab work" isn't an accepted criteria but who are we fooling here? Many people get their names on simply because they share material or read the manuscript. A tech does much more than that.
OK, I vented, I feel better

nightingale on Mon Nov 29 22:27:01 2010 said:

Did the faculty get the same stipulation? If not, then unfair indeed.

even though some techs just do as they're told, sometimes these types of people should be put onto papers. the way i see it is that there are some techniques that are very finicky and require a certain level of finesse and natural technical talent. even if someone didn't contribute an idea, the time and money saved by a technically skilled and less theoretically skilled technician can be invaluable.

that being said, if u just ran repetitive gels all day then i don't think u can really expect to be on a paper.

i will say though that when i was a co-op at a lab (an undergraduate student working in a lab for work experience and was paid for it) i would have been put on a paper if i contributed any figures, no matter how much theory i contributed.

The way they do it in my lab is, if you have a figure that is the result of your own from start to finish, then you are in that paper.

E.g. the idea came from the postdoc. But you are the one creating the vector, mutate it continuously, grow it, IP, process data, western, cleaned it, redo everything etc until you have the final cleaned beautiful figure which is made into Figure 3. This deserves paper authorship. The postdoc should be first, because the whole paper is his idea, but you should be like 2nd or 3rd.

But if you just made buffers then you shouldn't be in paper. If you just helped miniprep everyday they wouldn't put you in paper. If you do 1/2 of the above they will put you on acknowledgement but I think you need to do everything your own for your name to be in paper. Did they give you even acknowledgement?

I don't think this matters that much whether you're a tech or post doc, e.g. when I was undergrad, I had my own project like that for 1 year and got 2nd authorsip (the grad student who write, come up with ideas, obviously got 1st). I'm a tech and the same rule still apply (I mean, tech are basically grad students and they are getting names on paper and also getting paid as well, right?)

well Maddie, i can't agree more !

u mean the doctors ???
off course not !!!
....