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

oasis
Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:20:59 +0000

True story from a MIT alum '76:



I worked in the same bio lab during my entire undergrad career. Back then, research papers were actually submitted via typewriters, since that’s really all we had at the time. My PI was this pretty old professor who did great research, but had a tough time typing. I was working late in the lab one night my sophomore year, when my PI signaled me over. “I just can’t type fast enough and we’ll have to mail this out early tomorrow morning. Do you mind typing out the rest of the paper?” Naturally, I obliged.

I finished around dawn the next day, the entire paper proofed and ready to go. As I was scanning the paper through for the final read, my PI (who stayed up with me) gestured at the author line.

“Put your name there.”

“What?”

“Type your name there.”

“Okay.”

With that, I became the contributing author of a research paper. My lab would go on to publish more papers, many of them typewritten by me. Granted, towards the end, I actually contributed significantly to the research conducted, but I counted that I was the co-author of seven research papers by the time I left MIT.