It is rare that a scientist works in isolation, despite the existence of single-author papers. The problem is there is only one label: author. And this fudges with everyone’s heads.

Let me explain.

In high school and for a while afterwards, I was in a band. We went through a series of names, but always had the same four in the core: Damien on drums, John on the bass, Paul with his vocal chords, and yours truly on the guitar.

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In Grand Master Workmen (circa 2000-01), we strived for a funky punk rock vibe. Much of the music came from never-ending jam sessions. Lyrically, we all contributed, be it Paul ad-libbing lines during an improv jam, a line or two borrowed from one our teen-angsty, presumably profound poems, or just something funny of clever one of us said that would get us giddy and inspire a song.

At some point, GMW broke up. The four of us spent some time apart. Paul was off at college, John and I were installing carpet and pushing carts. Damien was still in high school. Eventually though (circa 2003-ish), we reunited.

We were no longer the Grand Master Workmen. We were Elsewhere. This name was cool for various reasons: for one, Elsewhere is the part of spacetime inaccessible to an observer (i.e., elsewhere is outside your lightcone); for two, Elsewhere is the place citizens are “released” to in The Giver (i.e., the afterlife!).

But as we later joked, Elsewhere might also be the place people want to be when they’re at one of our shows!

In the intervening time between bands, we had all matured, both personally and as musicians. John wasn’t slapping his bass every chance he got. I wasn’t hitting as many notes, desperate to show off my chops. Paul came into his own lyrically. And Damien? Well, he took to the new sound in the way that drummers tend to do—by banging on shit a bit differently, you know?

In our new incarnation, we sought a more refined, jazzy rock feel. We even invited Matt the saxophonist into the band.

“Kevin, what the heck is the point of all this nostalgia?

Patience, Reader. I have a point—and the point is: in a band, there is no pressing need to drive yourself crazy wondering, “Who is the author of this song?”

Writing music in a band is a team effort and the team consists of folks with both overlapping and orthogonal talents.. It’s not really necessary to decide on an author, or even the ordering from most-to-least important contributor. No one need be relegated to the Acknowledgements Section. Somebody might have written the catchy riff for one song, but someone else wrote the hook in another song. The guitar part is cool, but the walking bass line is what makes it sound great. Maybe the drummer wrote the lyrics and the singer wrote the guitar part. At the show or on the recording, the minutia doesn’t matter too much: the band is the band, and the band authors the songs.

Publishing a paper is a team effort too, but the pesky topic of authorship often distorts this fact. This is because there is only one label: author. This is oversimplified.

Don’t get me wrong: even in a band, labels are a simplification of the reality—but at least in a band, there are multiple labels to use, which allows peace and harmony: he’s the drummer, he’s the singer, she plays the keyboard, Scotty’s on bass, and I’m the guitarist.

Imagine the flaring tempers and raging egos if a band had to use only one label?

“Who wrote this song?”

Well, uh, I think I should be the sole author of this song since I wrote most of the lyrics and the guitar part. I mean, I guess the singer can be second author since he wrote some of the lyrics and everyone identifies him as the face of the band. But the bass player? He just follows the guitar part. And the drummer just hits the snare on 2 and 4. We can put them both in the acknowledgements section.

It wouldn’t be long before the band broke up under the crushing weight of ego and semantics!

In the scientific setting, we have bands too: engineers and instrument designers, theoreticians, experimentalists, statisticians, data analysts, modelers, observers, big thinkers, tinkerers, perfectionists, pragmatists, writers, idea bouncers, scribes, peons, leaders, and followers — i.e., it’s a damn typical human endeavor. Almost any significant research effort these days is a collaborative effort comprised of an assortment of organizational, technical, and esoteric expertise. And yet when publishing the various end-of-the-line results of a research program consisting of these various talents, we only get to decide who is an author. If you don’t make the cut, you might be “acknowledged” at the end of the paper. But many people whose talents and expertise made the research efforts possible and ultimately successful are slighted by no mention at all. Sometimes this is an oversight, but mostly it’s a cultural thing: e.g., when does the funding manager get any credit for seeing promise in your proposal and fighting for you behind the scenes? Other times its because some ego junkie can’t help but to trivialize other people’s direct or indirect contributions—and in some circumstances, who can blame them? Sometimes you really don’t think someone, despite their small contribution, should be called an “author.”

“So, Kevin, what is your solution?”

Well, I’m not exactly sure. Some journals are trying new things, e.g., descriptions of an author’s contribution listed somewhere in the publication. At least that’s what my brother told me. He’s from biology. Maybe their more progressive over there.

My advice is that it’s better to be inclusive than exclusive. You know who you work with. You know who you bounce ideas off every day. You know there have been times where you spent an inordinate amount of time helping your colleague with their data analysis, or their plots, or whatever—and then, wtf? They published the paper without even acknowledging you? Ouch.

Authorship is weird.