I am a graduate student in a small department and have become the go-to person for statistics advice among the other students. I enjoy this but am wondering at what point I should expect, or request, becoming a collaborator on the project. Pointing someone towards a method, a paper or a book is definitely not worthy of any recognition, neither would a short one-off 15 minute conversation in the hallway. But what if I help them understand a difficult statistical method or fix some computer code that otherwise might have taken them days or even weeks to achieve on their own? What if our conversations helps clarify the questions they are asking either statistically and scientifically.
I assume that if I became a co-author, I'd continue to contribute to the project, help write the statistical methods, comment on the full paper, etc.
I'm wondering if I should set up ground rules that I tell people, like, "the 1st 20 minutes are free, but after that, we'll have to talk about long-term collaboration." Or I could come up with a list of services I can provide and what the expectations are.
This blog post comments on these issues from the perspective of a full-time statistician. This StackExchange question addresses more general issues about co-authorship.
Answer
I went and asked this question on the American Statistical Association's mailing list. If you have a login to the ASA's website, you can view the thread here. I'll paste the answers in here without names (and cleaning up a bit):
Unless the consulting was very minor (in 10 minutes), the statistical consultant should in my opinion be one of the coauthors. It is a matter of ethics and not a issue of being paid as a consultant. When I do the modeling and the analysis and the interpretation, I expect to be co-author. Sometimes I am the lead author. It seems to be a fight with the claim that "it is your job to do the consulting". I simply refuse such attitudes from faculty or clients. The way I see it is that without our services, there would not exist a paper anyways. Therefore, we must be co-authors.
I usually leave that decision up to the research leader and have fared well over the years. But then again, I consult in the area of agriculture, food, and natural resources, where the competition for attention is not quite as cut throat.
Personally, my benchmark is based on the answer to the question ' would this publication have seen the light of day without my involvement'? If the answer is no, then I should be a coauthor. If the answer is maybe or yes, then co-authorship is not really warranted.
An example, recently I spent quite a bit of time helping an author revise a manuscript that had been rejected, only to have the 'statistical expert' of the journal assume the 'my way or the highway' attitude. I suggested that the author not fight the 'expert' and get the manuscript published. The author had included me as a coauthor but I asked that my name be removed because of my personal criterion.
I generally agree with everyone so far but would like to add two little bits, that are apropos of co-authoring in general.
The initial question is very easy to answer — if you made a contribution you should be included as a co-author.
The next question is where on the author list should your name appear. When I was young I thought it should be based on the size of the contribution — I once argued with a colleague about who should be first. He felt that he should be since he provided the data. I claimed that the artistry was mine, and had he ever seen a painting signed Sherman Williams & Pablo Picasso? He prevailed.
As I got older I used a more Marxian approach - from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. What this meant was that I tended to put student or more junior authors first and put myself at the end. I have never regretted this choice.
There is, I think, no algorithmic answer to this question. The general principle is clear enough, anyone who has made an important intellectual contribution to the work should be listed as co-author. Ghost authorship is, in principle, as problematic as honorary authorship. The listed authors get artificially high credit if there are ghost authors. But then, one also has a duty to take part in the whole process with the manuscript. What constitutes an important intellectual contribution depends on context, the same contribution may be sufficient in a short article and too small in a larger and more complex work, usually the first author and/or the project supervisor should make that judgement.
There are also cases where an author has made an important contribution, but cannot agree with the conclusion and/or important methodological decisions. Then one cannot be listed as author. For instance, I have on some occasions made it clear that I could not be listed as author if the article included procedures such as stepwise regression, last observation carried forward or repeated measures anova.
Very interesting thread! I proposed a roundtable lunch on this topic for JSM Vancouver but it didn't enroll enough to take place. I'm glad to know that I was not wrong that there was some interest!
My own idea, which I got from several sources is:
- I'm happy to meet for an hour with any colleague who has a stat question, just to be a good colleague and as a community service.
- If we meet a second time, I would like some acknowledgment ... a mention in a footnote, or a note to the Dean, or some other professional marker.
- Before we meet a third time, I ask that to continue I would like to be a co-author because it's rarely exactly three times ... the count seems to go once, twice, many times. I am also then willing to work on the project in ways other than just meetings with the primary authors.
If I barely know the client and have to assume that his understanding of the non-statistical subject matter is correct, I often prefer an acknowledgement to co-authorship. The same applies if I am presented with an experiment that was already run and don't want people to blame the design of the experiment on me.
There was also a recommendation of Parker & Berman, "Criteria for authorship for statisticians in medical papers", Statistics in Medicine, 1998, 17, 2289-2299, which I don't have access to at the moment.
In addition, many societies and professional bodies have general guidelines or criteria for authorship, although these may not discuss the role of statisticians explicitly. For instance, those of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors were recommended twice (and do not discuss statisticians).
EDIT 2018-08-08: there were no more new replies to that ASA mailing list thread.
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