Research paper authorship as an undergraduate: how does it happen?

kryptonsa36
Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:01:01 +0000

molliebatmit:

When I was a sophomore, I started working in a lab, and there was a certain part of a project that was basically mine. I did the work, and got the results, and my postdoc and I analyzed it together. When the paper was submitted, my work was a central cornerstone of the results, so I was an author on the paper.

Why were you only fifth author? Unless you had many, many collaborators (who also contributed important cornerstones), that sounds like something that would result in second authorship.