Letter

Authorship1 and the comment by Kutluk2 describe assigning authorship of journal articles strictly by descending order of contribution, with first place being the first prize. When I worked in basic science (primarily cellular and molecular biology), I was accustomed to an order of authorship in which first place and final place both were first prizes. This order of authorship connoted position in the hierarchy, with authors closer to first authorship being lower in the hierarchy and authors closer to final authorship being higher in the hierar-chy. As described in a wonderful book about the race to clone the human insulin gene,