Pragmatics of authors-name order

[Barbara Need]

>In a message dated 2/24/04 11:58:28 AM, lesa.dill at WKU.EDU writes:
>
><< In scientific publications, the norm is that the primary investigator's
>name is
>listed last.  >>
>
>Is this written down somewhere, or are you just reporting your intuitions?
>(Not that the reporting of intuitions is bad--it is just important
>to know what
>the source is for such judgments.)

This is certainly the policy in the sciences according to my sister.
She is a pediatric cardiologist and as part of her board
certification needed to be LISTED as first author on one (or more)
publication(s). The last name of the many authors listed was the
senior member writing the article.

I have co-authored several papers with Eric Schiller, and I know we
traded off on who was listed first--and at least once he said, you
need the publishing credit more that I do.

Barbara Need
UChicago--Linguistics