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by optimalsolver 749 days ago
>the author listed last is usually the most significant contributor

Where did you read that?

That's definitely not the case in machine learning.
1 comments
robxorb 749 days ago
I've read it in several places over the years, and just had a search now to find a reference to cite. Here's a PubMed paper on the subject:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010799/

(And note how points 1 through 4 all quite conflict with each other!)

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pama 749 days ago
If it helps think of the first author as the lead engineer or the CEO, and the last author as the board or the VC. In some areas of science (or some teams) the last author is closer to a CEO, in others closer to a VC (they almost always have the powers of the board). This picture does not contradict the guideline in the reference you shared. Typically, most of the work and writing of the paper is done by the first author, though sometimes, for example when a student gives up, only most of the writing of the paper. The main ideas may be from the first author or from the last author, and rarely in between, but the sorting typically goes by amount of labor/contributions on the task. In some narrow subfields, including most math, sorting is alphabetical or random.
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robxorb 749 days ago
That does help, thanks! Very intuitive analogy. Maybe this kind of organisational structure is a kind of natural archetype people gravitate towards when coming together to break new ground.
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