Genome publication strategy

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The second reply from Gos Micklem about the Human Genome publication.

Regards

Pippa.

-- 
   +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
      Pippa Wells, Div EP, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.
      Telephone 78179 or 73839 (External +41 22 76 78179 or 73839)
   +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 16:37:39 +0000
From: Gos Micklem <gos@gen.cam.ac.uk>
To: Pippa Wells <Pippa.Wells@cern.ch>
Cc: Gos Micklem <gos@gen.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: genome publications

On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 02:09:54PM +0100, Pippa Wells wrote:
>=20
> Dear Gos
>=20
> Thanks for that information - it was exactly the sort of thing I was=20
> looking for. The typical size of our collaborations up to now has been =

> several hundred authors, but not quite as many as 1000. The =
experiments=20
> starting in 2007 will have nearly 2000 collaborators. The present =
practice=20
> is to print the names and institutes of all members of the =
collaboration,=20
> giving no information on who did what.
>=20
> When I said "who signs" I meant "who is listed as an author of a =
paper",=20
> rather than who is in charge of the approval procedure. Could you give =
me=20
> a little bit more information on how the 100 names listed in print for =
the =20
> human genome paper were selected?

a) group leaders
plus
b) the people in the data analysis group (which cut across multiple
institutes)

> How many future publications would you expect from The Human Genome
> Sequencing Consortium?

Maybe no more, and apart from the first (incorrectly attributed to
"Lander et al") only one other has been published.  In this latter
one, no individual author names were published in print: all of them
were in the online supplement.


> Would a different 100 people be expected to sign future papers, with
> reference to the full consortium?

As above I think the consortium name would be used in print, and the
full author list would be given as an online supplement: this would be
all authors, not just the group leaders.  One would expect there to be
a large but not complete overlap between author lists.

Best wishes,

Gos



> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Gos Micklem wrote:
>=20
> > Hi Pippa,
> >=20
> > Practice is varied and there have been a number of mishaps.  For
> > really big publications (the human genome - >2500 authors) the full
> > publication list was in an online supplement to the paper and a few
> > 100 chosen few were listed in the print publication.  The way this
> > publication was cited in PubMed (the definitive list of biomedical
> > publications www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) was "Lander et al", as =
Eric
> > Lander happened to be the first author, within the first group =
listed
> > as collaborating.  Apparently this annoyed a lot of people as the
> > citation was supposed to be "The Human Genome Sequencing Consortium"
> > but somehow Nature failed to pass this on to PubMed who won't change
> > it unless the journal re-submits which they haven't.  Another
> > annoyance for the 2000 extra authors on the full author list is that
> > Nature didn't pass that on to PubMed either.  This means that if one
> > of those authors cites the paper as a publication and a prospective
> > employer checks on PubMed it will seem that they are not an author.
> >=20
> > So - it would be good to be clear on all sides that when a =
consortium
> > is planned as being the "author" that this is dealt with =
consistently.
> >=20
> > > >I'm involved in a committee established by IUPAP to discuss the =20
> > > >authorship
> > > >policy of the large HEP collaborations, and how to improve the =20
> > > >recognition
> > > >of who did what within the collaboration and for a particular =
paper. =20
> >=20
> > Who did what is obviously a tricky one when large numbers are
> > involved.  The best thing to do is probably to explain what each =
team
> > did, rather than each individual.  The recently-established, highly
> > regarded open access journal PLoS Biology is among the first in the
> > biomedical sciences to include a paragraph giving an author by =
author
> > account of their contributions.  Authorship battles (who is first,
> > last, corresponding author) are very common in the biosciences and I
> > imagine that this new practice will introduce a new level of =
battling.
> > I'm not sure what they will do if a paper is submitted with a very
> > large number of authors: probably they will attribute by group.
> >=20
> > > >One
> > > >thing the committee wants to do is survey current practice in =
other
> > > >disciplines with large collaborations. I volunteered to try and =
find =20
> > > >out
> > > >what the current practice is for papers in the field of =
genetics/human
> > > >genome, and was wondering if one of you had a college colleague =20
> > > >involved
> > > >in the Sanger Institute who could give me a short summary of how =
they =20
> > > >deal
> > > >with publications, especially who signs (main authors, large =20
> > > >teams.....?)
> >=20
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "who signs" - do you mean who signs =
off
> > on the draft?  This can be done in a hierarchical way - the team
> > leaders being responsible for signing after appropriate consultation
> > within their teams.
> >=20
> > If you mean who is cited as an author I think that anyone who has
> > contributed substantially should be an author and it is quite wrong
> > for only the group leaders to be cited "because there would be too
> > many authors otherwise".  The names and affiliations of ~2000 =
authors
> > will only be around 100,000 characters which is tiny amount in these
> > days of electronic publication.  There is something to be said for
> > very large multi-team publications being cited as a consortium =
listing
> > just the collaborating institutes, with the details of all those
> > involved listed elsewhere.  What is bad practice is to have a =
two-tier
> > system with those who happened to be around at the right time =
gaining
> > a "proper" citation and others not.
> >=20
> > Hope this helps - let me know if you have further questions,
> >=20
> > Gos
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
>=20
> --=20
>    =
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
>       Pippa Wells, Div EP, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.
>       Telephone 78179 or 73839 (External +41 22 76 78179 or 73839)
>    =
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

--=20
Gos Micklem PhD              g.micklem@gen.cam.ac.uk
Department of Genetics/ Department of Applied Maths, Cambridge =
University
Tel : +44 (0) 1223 765 281
Fax : +44 (0) 1223 333 992
www.ccbi.cam.ac.uk   www.flychip.org.uk   www.flymine.org
www.gen.cam.ac.uk/newdept/research/labs/micklem.htm