[visionlist] ORDER OF AUTHORS IN VISION

[David H. Foster]

ORDER OF AUTHORS IN VISION

Conventions governing the order in which authors are listed on a
journal paper vary with discipline. Some common rules are these:

1. Alphabetical order.
2. Descending order of contribution.
3. Descending order of contribution but "senior" (e.g. most
experienced) author last.
4. Descending order of need (for employment, promotion, etc).
5. Random order.

Some guidelines have been published on the necessary conditions for
authorship (see e.g. http://www.icmje.org/) and some journals require
authors to declare explicitly the nature of their contribution. In
addition, some conferences require that the presenter be the first
author in any conference abstracts or proceedings. Nevertheless,
author ordering remains an important measure, not just to fellow
scientists, but also to faculty administrators, grant-awarding
agencies, and others.

In 2004, I conducted a survey on the practice followed by researchers
in vision (results at
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/david.foster/). I am
interested in seeing whether practice has changed. Because some
previous respondents used more than one rule, it would be helpful to
have an indication of the relative frequency of each usage, e.g. "70%
by rule 1 and 30% by rule 2". Please also indicate your current
discipline (e.g. "psychology", "neuroscience").

Comments on personal experiences or more general observations are
welcome, but please tell me whether you would prefer that they remain
confidential.

If there are enough replies (to me please at
d.h.foster at manchester.ac.uk, not to the list), then I shall post a
summary, with a link to respondents' comments.

Thanks,
David Foster

-- 
D. H. Foster, DSc, FInstP
Professor of Vision Systems
Head of Sensing, Imaging, and Signal Processing Group
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
The University of Manchester
Sackville Street Building
Manchester M60 1QD, UK.

email: d.h.foster at manchester.ac.uk
tel: +44 (0)161 306 3888
web: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/david.foster/