Giving Techs Credit

[C. Boake]

In article <873634077.31273 at dejanews.com>, kathleen at mail.idt.net wrote:

> A recent thread made reference to (but didn't really deal
> with) several aspects of technicians working in research
> positions.  I'm interested in this on behalf of my sister
> who is a nurse and worked for years on drug-company sponsored
> research at a NY hospital.  An article on the research
> was just published and she was not given credit in the
> publication.  Do technicians normally get credit?  Are there
> established procedures for correcting this?  Should she
> write to the journal (J of Bone & Joint Surgery)?
> I would appreciate any direction you can provide.
> 
> Kathleen Kelly


Most journals have a policy about authorship that is published as part of
the instructions to authors; your sister should start by examining this. 
Generally, coauthors are expected to have made substantial intellectual
input to a project, which might include some combination of designing the
project, analyzing the data, or writing the paper.  Many journals
explicitly point out that a person who was hired to collect data would not
normally be considered for coauthorship; similarly, if a head of a lab
contributed only space and money, that person should not expect
coauthorship.  However, someone who was paid to collect data can
reasonably expect to be mentioned in the Acknowledgments.  A book by Day,
called "How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper," has a chapter on the
ethics of coauthorships.

best wishes,
Chris Boake