I told my supervisor that I would like to publish one of my studies, he agreed and voluntarily offered help to write the introduction and discussion. However, as time goes by, he asked me to write the introduction instead which he will edit later. I basically have written the introduction, method and results.

And now he requested to be the first authorship of this paper! He argued that although I have done most of the work, but I got help from him to make this paper publishable, and also said that he did most of the conceptual part and he put more initial on this project! He mentioned if I want to be the first author on this paper, he ought to be the first author of one my next papers.

It is true he has applied funding for me (or he hired me) to do this project based on his initial research idea. But in terms on the concept of design of the research, I feel we are equal and probably I am slightly more than him as I created all the stimuli based on what I want. However, it is true he tend to over-control what I want to do which I have brought this issue up to the department.

Is it normal that supervisors are always the first author of one of their students' paper?

Anyone has similar experience?

Hi

Not normal at all in my field (biosciences). In fact supervisors are usually looking for last authorships when they reach that career stage, so no, not really. No idea what's going on here, but i suggest you stand firm on this, especially if you are writing up research that you have done.

I haven't gotten that far yet but although I'm very grateful for the help and support received, I believe that students have done most of the work and therefore we should be first authors... plus I've seen well published and known researchers being last authors in papers so I can't see any support for his argument either. Surely if your sup was right, these very well known peeps would always come first on these articles??? Good luck!