A protocol for randomizing author order based on a public seed, along with a LaTeX implementation.
The widespread "co-first star" signals that authors intend to share credit equally. But it can be unclear whether the order of the first two authors is intended to convey extra tie-breaking information.
We decided to make a protocol for randomization of author order with the following features:
- Even the authors themselves can't rig the results.
- Everyone can verify that it was really random.
The idea is to base a random permutation of author order on a seed which is unknowable until after an initial public submission. An imperfectly secure but perfectly adequate seed is the paper's arXiv identifier. An ironclad option is the NIST randomness beacon for tomorrow at noon.
- Prepare a version of your paper with an arbitrary author order and a sentence declaring your intended seed. For example, "The seed will be this paper's arXiv identifier." as a comment in the LaTeX source.
- Submit the first version to a public forum (e.g. arXiv).
- Obtain the now-available seed and permute the author order iff the XOR of the seed's 5 least significant bits is 0 (this gentle hash doesn't add randomness, just surprise).
- The newly equal-but-more-equal author buys her coauthor a drink.