How my authorship has changed over time

Writing is still one of my top priorities, but the way in which I write papers has changed over time.

During my PhD and post-doc years, I would work on a first draft and then send this to my coauthors, who were my supervisors, for their feedback. I would get some feedback, process this, and submit the paper.

Nowadays, my involvement in papers is different, and broader.

I write single author papers for research that I have done completely on my own. On these papers, I obviously don’t get coauthor feedback. Sometimes it feels very scary to submit a paper without having had feedback.

I coauthor with my doctoral candidates. With them, I usually help them set up the first draft (organization, what to put where, sometimes a description of the paragraphs, and which photographs and illustrations would go where). Then, I give feedback on the first draft, and we usually go through some rounds of feedback.

I publish from my research with my coauthors. I do less of my own research and more supervision now, but I still do some research on which I’m in the lead. I coauthor this work with my colleagues in much the same way as I used to do during my PhD and post-doc years.

All these changes make that my publishing pipeline depends on more people than it used to. I’ve extended the number of colors I use in my pipeline google sheet, but I still use the sheet I set up somewhere towards the end of my PhD. My old system still serves me, with a few tweaks.