How to get first authorships?

norcalguy
Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:53:10 +0000

It really takes a lot of luck. I’ve heard of people working at a lab for 2 years and not get publishable results. There are also people who get pubs for just a summer’s worth of work. That’s the way it is with research. Sometimes, you can work really hard at something but just not get results worth publishing. But this doesn’t mean that you didn’t get anything out of it or that you didn’t learn anything.

Some labs also publish more than others. Some labs are willing to publish less significant results in smaller journals as opposed to saving their results for a more substantial paper in a more significant journal. Personally, how much a lab published wasn’t a factor for me. As long as I got my own research project and it was in a subject I was interested in, then I was fine. If I get a paper out of it, it would be a bonus.