In partnership with
Across academia, supervisors and senior collaborators often have more say in the order of authorship which can create conditions for unethical practices. Because guides typically control access to data, lab resources, publication pipelines, your grades, and overall knowledge about publication process, they may pressure junior researchers into accepting lower author positions than their contributions warrant, or conversely, demand first authorship despite limited direct involvement in the work. In some cases, guides add their names to papers where they do not meet accepted authorship criteria (gift or honorary authorship), or omit contributors who clearly qualify (ghost authorship). This newsletter focuses on equipping you with basic knowledge about authorship, author order, and what author order means for your future in academia.
According to authorship policies for Sage journals (often attributed to International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and Committee on Publication Ethics), all listed authors for that paper must meet the following criteria:
Made a significant contribution to the concept, design, acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data
Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content
Approved the final version of the article for publication
Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work and resolved any issues related to its accuracy or integrity.
Sage Journals do say that requirements 2 and 3 should not disqualify those who have made substantial contributions to the research. For PhD students and early-career researchers, this definition protects against both “gift” authorship (adding non-contributing senior names) and “ghost” authorship (omitting genuine contributors), and it gives a clear basis for negotiating who belongs on the author list. Now that you do know who can be an author, how can you decide author order?
Deciding author order is less about rank and more about negotiating contributions. The most widely recommended approach is to treat author order as an explicit, early conversation grounded in agreed upon criteria (not an afterthought at submission).
It might be uncomfortable to have a conversation on authorship in advance but that is what has to be done: decide on how many people are working and who is doing what work.
Many teams now use the CRediT taxonomy (14 roles such as Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Writing - Original Draft, Supervision, Funding Acquisition, etc.) to describe what each author did.
The first author should ideally be the person who led the project intellectually and did the bulk of the work (study design, data collection/analysis, and drafting the manuscript).
Some journals allow you to have co-first authors!
Middle authors contribute with meaningful but more limited roles (e.g., data collection, specific analyses, writing sections, feedback). Their internal order comes from relative contribution or simply the sequence in which they joined the project, as long as the team agrees.
The last author is usually the person who oversees all aspects but doesn’t get involved, often the supervisor.
The corresponding author is whoever will handle submission, revisions, and post-publication queries (basically all communications with the journal); this can be first, last, or a middle author.
If you are unsatisfied, re-negotiate in advance. Once again look at how work is distributed, what work you’ll be doing compared to others. It is important to do it in advance so you can back out of the project if you remain unsatisfied.
How do journals respond to authorship changes?
Keep in mind that journals are not happy with authorship changes after submission-
Changes after submission are allowed only with strong justification. Most journals state that adding, removing, or reordering authors after initial submission requires a clear reason (e.g., new substantial contributions discovered, earlier oversight) and is subject to editorial approval.
All authors must agree in writing: any change to the author list (before or after acceptance) requires signed consent from every author, including the person being added or removed. Editors can also investigate disputes rather than simply comply.
Post-acceptance changes are generally not allowed.
Reasons must be documented and defensible. When requesting a change, the corresponding author typically must explain: Why the change is needed and how any added author meets the journal’s authorship criteria.
Inadequate or suspicious explanations can lead to rejection at submission or can lead to retraction/investigation at any time in the future after publication.
Authorship order matters because, in practice, it functions as the main way to convey your contribution. First authorship is interpreted as “led the work”- designed the study, ran the analyses, wrote the first draft, and drove the project forward. Author order directly influences career outcomes for those looking to get further in academia. It affects who gets shortlisted for jobs, who is seen as independent enough for fellowships, and whose work is counted toward thesis or promotion requirements.
In India, under the UGC’s Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) for university and college teachers, research publications in Scopus-listed/UGC-listed journals carry a fixed “API” (Academic Performance Indicator) score per paper, and that score is adjusted based on authorship. When there are more than two authors, the first/principal/corresponding author usually gets a larger share of points. Some institutions also specify that only papers where the candidate is among the first few authors (e.g., first three) will count for certain promotions or research-score thresholds.
It should be acknowledged that author order is an imperfect proxy for actual contribution. In large collaborations or projects where intellectual work is highly distributed, position in the list may not reflect who contributed most substantively. The focus on author order creates pressure to “game” authorship (e.g., fighting over first-author slots, inflating senior names) and can disadvantage early-career researchers. In an ideal world, evaluators would look beyond order to detailed descriptions of intellectual work. In the current system, though, author order remains a powerful signal that can open doors for opportunities, which is why negotiating it fairly and transparently is both an ethical and a strategic issue.
Free email without sacrificing your privacy
Gmail is free, but you pay with your data. Proton Mail is different.
We don’t scan your messages. We don’t sell your behavior. We don’t follow you across the internet.
Proton Mail gives you full-featured, private email without surveillance or creepy profiling. It’s email that respects your time, your attention, and your boundaries.
Email doesn’t have to cost your privacy.
Call for papers!
Early Childhood Research Quarterly (Elsevier): Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Early Childhood Development and Education (Submission deadline: 31 December 2026)
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology (APA): From lab to reality: How psychological protocols and phenomena hold up in the real world (Deadline for letters of intent: 31 January 2027)
Personality and Individual Differences (Elsevier): Measurement and Correlates of the Impostor Phenomenon (Submission deadline: 28 February 2027)
Personnel Review (Emerald): Measuring GenAI and Productivity in Work and Careers (Closes: 31 January 2027)