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Co-Authoring

Co-authoring is common in Computer Science. There is no established convention regarding the significance of the intellectual contribution needed to merit being listed as co-author. and no standard convention regarding the order in which authors' names appear. Some people believe in listing authors in alphabetical order. Some teams of researchers who collaborate on more than one paper will rotate the order of authors. Some follow rules for who goes first, but the rules vary. Some examples of such rules are:

Most people believe that to be listed as co-author requires a major contribution to the intellectual content and/or writing of the paper. However, it would be wrong to assume that is true in all cases. Some people are willing to grant co-authorship for very small contributions. It is not uncommon for a person to be listed as co-author simply for being a member of the same research group, being instrumental in getting funding for a project, making some helpful remarks during a casual discussion over lunch, or reviewing and providing comments on an early draft of the paper. At the extreme, there may be a primary author who is responsible for nearly all of the content, and the contributions of others may be minor enough that in a different author's judgement they would have merited only an acknowledgement or citation as a ``personal communication''. In such extreme cases, though, it is likely that the primary author will be first.

For publications deriving from student reserarch projects, such as theses and dissertations, there is no universal rule about whether the faculty advisor is listed as a co-author, or about the order of authors. Some advisors insist on always being listed as co-author and always appearing first or always appearing last. Other advisors will only consent to being listed as co-author if the advisor was deeply involved in the work or provided the original idea.


next up previous
Next: Letters of Recommendation Up: dossier01 Previous: Software and Patents
Ted Baker
2001-09-04