Conventional Norm for Authorship in PhD Research

By Shashikant Nishant Sharma

There is no specific UGC, AICTE, IIT, or NIT rule that mandates:

“PhD scholar must be first author, supervisor second author, then others.”

In India, authorship order is generally governed by:

• the discipline’s academic convention,
• the journal/conference policy, and
• the actual contribution of each author.

However, across most engineering, planning, science, and management fields in India (including many IITs/NITs), the common academic practice is:

1. PhD scholar / primary researcher → First Author
2. Supervisor / Guide → Second Author or Last Author (often corresponding author)
3. Other contributors/co-supervisors → subsequent authors

This convention is widely followed because the student usually:

• performs most of the research,
• data collection/analysis,
• manuscript drafting.

The supervisor contributes through:

• conceptual guidance,
• review,
• funding/lab support,
• revisions,
• research direction.

Many institutions also follow international ethics frameworks such as:

• ICMJE authorship guidelines
• COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)

These state that author order should reflect substantial intellectual contribution, not designation or hierarchy.

Some important practical conventions:

• In many IITs/NITs:
  • Student = first author
  • Supervisor = corresponding/last author
• In some labs, supervisor may appear last because the last author is treated as the “senior supervising author.”
• Co-first authorship is also possible if two researchers contributed equally.
• Merely being a supervisor does not automatically justify first authorship under publication ethics.

A strong statement often used in institutional research ethics is:

Students should normally be the first author on publications arising primarily from their thesis/dissertation work.

So, while there is no formal national rule, the ethically accepted and academically recognized norm for thesis-based papers is usually:

PhD Scholar (First Author) → Supervisor (Second/Last/Corresponding Author).

References

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