Authorship and Collaboration 3 Discussion

Collaborations are awkward arrangements at best: usually an agreement is made early on as to how specifically each group will interact, and what specifically will be the roles in publication.  To stray from that initial agreement is construed as underhanded, so it is necessary to spell things out explicitly ahead of time. 

However, there is a typical courtesy in collaborating with external institutions, and it is reasonable even in the absence of an agreement for the other group to expect to be consulted prior to submitting a paper with their data; if the data have not yet been published, then some of them would normally expect to be co-authors.

Matters of breakdown of trust usually require arbitration: if the initial agreement has been broken, then an outside mediator may be needed (how does one actually resolve this issue?).  However, before the collaboration even begins, it is necessary for each group to be in agreement on who gets to write up what.  

Usually the matter can be resolved between the PI’s in the two groups. In this example, improved communication between the two groups, both initially and ongoing, would all new physics issues to be encountered and developed collaboratively.