The Postdoc Life Cycle: Best Practices for Negotiating Authorship

This workshop is part of "The Postdoc Life Cycle" series.

Featuring: Melissa Brodrick, Ombudsperson, Ombuds Office for HMS/HSDM/HSPH

Elaine Elion, PhD, Professor, Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, HMS

Workshop Description: Tensions rising as you try to determine authorship order with a collaborator? Thought you had first authorship lined up for your manuscript until you found out you’d been bumped? Join us for a practical look at best practices for preventing and de-escalating authorship disputes. You’ll hear from an experienced HMS faculty member and the HMS/HSDM/HSPH Ombudsperson about authorship guidelines, proactive steps to take to avoid authorship conflicts, and skills to use when a challenging authorship negotiation heats up.

Speaker Bio:
Melissa: Since 1985, Melissa has served as a mediator, facilitator and trainer in the field of dispute resolution. She has worked in private practice, helping clients to engage in effective communications and problem solving while navigating high impact work and family issues. She has also worked with numerous institutions, health care organizations, Fortune 500 companies, state and federal agencies, and non-profit groups. Melissa has served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Association of Mediation Programs and Practitioners, Director of The Children's Hearings Project and mediator of educational appeals for the Massachusetts Department of Education. She is the recipient of numerous awards in her field and holds an MEd from Harvard University and a BA from Amherst College.

Elaine is a professor in the department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology where she has studied basic mechanisms of signal transduction and differentiation in budding yeast. She received her A.B. from Mount Holyoke College, PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoc at the Whitehead Institute of MIT. Elaine served on admissions committees for many years, has been an editor at several journals and has done extensive peer review for a variety of journals and funding agencies. She also has experience helping lab members get appropriate recognition on collaborative publications.