There are many ways to measure an academic career, but the most common ones use some form of "impact": how prolific an author is and how many citations does their work generates.
The sheer number of papers you publish matters when you are looking for jobs. I have lots of opinions about the pros and cons of using this metric to value scientists, but that is a fact.
I want to set clear rules and expectations for when a FASTLab group member is included in a publication of the FASTLab, but also discuss what your expectations should be when you collaborate with people outside of our team and when you should be expected to be a coauthor on publications.
The basic rule is that anyone who made a contribution of creative content to the project should be a coauthor. But this statement is awfully ambiguous. We have lots of conversations with colleagues in academia, and one could argue all of them contribute to the creative process after all!
I generally have a liberal policy on co-authorship: I tend to be inclusive. Other people do not.
As a rule: anyone who contributes text or code to a project will be included as a coauthor. If data collection was involved for this project, the person that collected the data will be included as a coauthor .If it ever occurs that you are not listed as a coauthor on a project for which you contributed any of these elements please let me know: this would be a mistake! and that is any time. Even if you worked on the project years ago and it gets published now, you should be a coauthor. no statute of limitation!
As an idea turns into a project tho, someone may make foundational contributions in conversations. This is a gray area, but again, my approach is to be inclusive. If you feel that you did have foundational contributions even if you did not contribute code or text, let me know, and let's discuss it.
Authorship order also matters. It is different in different fields but in Astronomy, Public Policy, Urban Science, it is generally understood that the lead author (first author) is the main contributor.
In most cases, I will set myself as the last author in papers from our group. The last author is commonly the P.I. (Principal Investigator) in most disciplines, but occasionally I may instead appear as the second or third author (in astrophysics, many groups leads put themselves as second authors in most cases).
If there are other clear core contributors, for example, if this is the product of a larger collaboration, but also people from our group that worked on part of the code (for example, in a summer project an undergraduate may make contributions to a project that is the thesis of a grad student) they will appear in order of the significance of the contribution (which of course... is somewhat subjective).
If there are any other colleagues losely involved (for example people external to the group that contributed before our group took ownership of the project, or with whom we consulted, or that provided access to datasets) they will follow after the core authors in alphabetical order.
I want to emphasize that this should be your expectations for any paper outside of FASTLab as well: if you wrote code, wrote words, or participated in regular topical meetings on a project you should expect to be a co-author! But this does not always happen... and the conversation may be awkward. I did write code for several papers that I was ultimately not included in and I am bitter about it, but did not feel comfortable with calling a person more senior than me out on this. But that is where I come in! my responsibility is to protect the interest of the people in my group so if you feel like you contributed to work and are being left out but are uncomfortable discussing it with the project lead ask me to intercede for you! Similarly, if you feel you appear in the authorship list in a position that does not reflect the significance of your contribution, discuss it with me, with the PI or lead author if it is not a FASTLab product, or ask me to interceed and discuss this with them on your behalf. I cannot make promises on the outcome when it is not one of our papers, but I commit to have your back.