Two articles about polyelectrolyte complexes

In the last month, I have had two articles published related to the work a BSc student did with me on polyelectrolyte complexes. The first article, published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B, investigates the effect of the complex composition on the physical properties of the materials. We observed that complexes of two different polyelectrolytes in the ratio 20:1 showed higher proton conductivities compared to the pure materials, without compromising the structure or stability of the material. These results are of particular interest for fuel cell applications, where tough materials with high conductivities are required.

The second article, published in Soft Matter, examines the material structure upon adjusting the ratio of the two polyelectrolytes used in the complex. One component is a rigid polyelectrolyte that has shown preferential alignment in a specific direction. Complexing this material with a second, more flexible polyelectrolyte was expected to reduce the degree of ordering. However, the results indicated that the alignment was retained for polyelectrolyte ratios up to 10:1. Such behaviour may allow for tuning the structure of polymer films, which may then be applied as fuel cell membranes, filtration membranes, and sensors.

Authorship Order

When preparing a scientific article for publication, there is often the question of who are the authors, and in what order should they be listed. In some cases, it is easy - the person who conducted the research (and in many cases, this is also the person who wrote the article) is listed first, while the supervisor is listed last. When there are more than two authors, however, the additional authors are usually added in order of their contribution and/or seniority between the first and last authors. As this is generally the accepted order of authorship, it is immediately apparent to the reader who did the work and who oversaw the research. But is the order of the authors important? Within a scientific article, reference may be made to another publication, e.g. "In previous studies, Smith et al. found...", and in most cases, the citation refers to the first named author of that publication. Similarly, when discussing an article with a colleague, we often referred to it as "the so-and-so paper" according to the first named author. Furthermore, when searching for articles using a bibliographical database, the results are listed by both year and the first named author. However, it has been brought to my attention on a number of occasions that having your name last on an article is even more important. As the last author, you are assumed to be the innovator behind the research, which attests to your ability as a project leader. Consequently, it is also used as a quantifier of productivity and excellence, where not only the number of publications is important but also how many have your name last. Making the transition from first to last author can be difficult, particularly when seniority and politics come into play. But unless alphabetical ordering is adopted, this authorship hierarchy is unlikely to change.

'Piled Higher and Deeper' by Jorge Cham is the popular comic strip about life, or the lack thereof, in grad school. Check it out by going to www.phdcomics.com

Citation Etiquette

In my English class in high school, I was always told that you should never copy blocks of text from a source and use it verbatim in your own essay/article. If it was not possible to write it in another way, then the copied sentence/paragraph should be enclosed in quotation marks and the source cited appropriately. Such methodology is particularly relevant when writing scientific articles for publication in peer reviewed journals. Failure to do so is not only plagiarising, but also infringes on copyright and general scientific etiquette. Today, I noticed that someone had cited one of my publications in their article and I was curious to know what aspect of my work they had referred to. When I found a copy of the article, I immediately checked the reference list to see where in the text they had referred to my article - to my surprise I was the first reference cited in the paper! When I began reading the introduction of this article, it was clear that they hadn't referred to my research, but rather had copied word-for-word the first paragraph and a half of the introduction from my article! Upon seeing this, I wasn't sure if I should be insulted or flattered by what they had done. Although both articles are about fuel cells, the papers are otherwise unrelated. In that regard, it seems irrelevant to have referred to my article. I guess there is some consolation in the fact that they did cite my article, thereby acknowledging the source of the information. And given that there is so much emphasis on the number of publications and citations, perhaps I should be happy with any form of citation, no matter the context. Although I don't agree with what they did, I am not going to take it any further. However, a colleague did suggest that I contact this group and inform them that this was not my best article and that next time they should copy another one... :)

H-index

Universities are continually looking for ways to quantify the research output of their academic staff. With databases such as 'Web of Science' on the Thompson Scientific ISI Web of Knowledge website, it is possible to obtain various statistics related to the number of publications for a given researcher. The factors that universities are looking for are how many articles one publishes, but also how often they are cited as a reference in another publication. The most mind-boggling statistic obtained from this analysis is the h-index. If an author's publications are ranked according to the number of citations with the most cited article listed first, the h-index is the number where the h-th article has been cited either h or more times. Huh? In other words, an h-index of 10 means that there are 10 publications that have 10 or more citations. The 'Web of Science' argues that "This metric is useful because it discounts the disproportionate weight of highly cited papers or papers that have not yet been cited." While this may be the case, it seems that it does not necessarily give an indication of the impact of the specific research or article. For example, an article that has been cited 1000 times has presumably had more of an impact on the scientific community than an article that has only been sited 100 times. So what does the h-index actually mean? Someone who has 50 articles each of which has been cited 50 times (h-index: 50) would appear to be more productive than another person who only has 5 articles that have been cited 500 times (h-index: 5), but does that mean that the first person is a better scientist? By the way, my h-index is 6.