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Notes on authorship, project roles, and describing scientific contribution without flattening collaboration.
A citation is designed to compress. It gives a reader the title, authors, journal, year, and enough information to find the paper again. That economy is useful. It is also why a publication list can say exactly where a paper appeared while saying very little about how any one person helped produce it.
The research record in this portfolio includes first-author papers, co-first-author work, a collaborative article, conference presentations, and projects carried out in different roles. Those labels belong beside the outputs because the outputs alone cannot explain them. A paper title names the scientific subject. The byline records authorship. Neither one, on its own, describes the shape of a contribution.
I have come to see contribution statements as a small but necessary part of an academic portfolio. They do not replace a byline or turn collaborative work into an individual story. Their purpose is narrower: to tell a reader what kind of responsibility sits behind each entry.
Authorship position is one coordinate. Project role is another. Presentation role adds a third, and publication status changes how each should be read.
The distinctions are visible across the work collected here. The myo-inositol study on cryopreserved boar semen is recorded as co-first-author research connecting antioxidant supplementation with post-thaw sperm function and fertility. The studies on porcine blood composition and tailored fluid therapy are first-author publications linked to a broader project in which my role is listed as co-investigator and senior researcher. An earlier paper on a mini straw for boar semen cryopreservation is collaborative work rather than a first-author output.
These descriptions should not be forced into a single ladder. Co-first authorship, first authorship, and collaborative authorship indicate different positions in the published record, while project roles describe responsibility at another scale. A portfolio becomes less accurate when it treats every entry as equivalent or implies that every kind of credit means the same thing.
The useful unit is therefore the pair: what the output is, and what the person did within the work that produced it.
Roles also change within the same research line. The MTNR1A epigenetic-activation project is listed as principal-investigator work on porcine cumulus-oocyte complexes, promoter demethylation, redox defense, Cx43 gap junction communication, and oocyte competence. Its manuscript is recorded as co-first-author work and remains under review. The related conference records identify first-author presentations in both oral and poster formats.
Those entries refer to one connected scientific question, but they describe different responsibilities. Leading a project is not identical to occupying a particular position on a manuscript. Presenting the work is another responsibility again. Keeping the records linked allows the reader to see the connection without pretending that the labels are interchangeable.
The genome-edited porcine embryo project offers a second example. Its project entry names a co-investigator and senior-researcher role in IVF, embryo culture, genome editing, molecular validation, and large-animal model design. Within that research setting, the extended blastocyst-culture study appears as a first-author poster and a first-author paper. A related review of CRISPR/Cas-based animal models is also recorded as co-first-author work.
A flat list of titles would hide those changes in responsibility. The linked record shows that a research line can include method development, synthesis, presentation, project coordination, and primary authorship without reducing all of them to one generic claim of involvement.
Contribution becomes misleading when status is vague. A published article, a manuscript under review, a conference presentation, an archived project, and a live public tool are all legitimate entries. They are not the same kind of evidence that something has been completed.
The portfolio already has the vocabulary needed to preserve those differences. Published articles carry journal details, DOI information, and, where available, a PMID. The MTNR1A manuscript is labeled under review. Research projects completed between 2022 and 2025 are marked archived. VETFI, KVLE, and this website are marked as ongoing work.
These labels keep ambition from outrunning the record. They let a reader distinguish peer-reviewed work from a developing manuscript and completed research programs from projects that are still being maintained. They also leave room for an entry to change honestly over time. A manuscript can become a publication. A beta tool can mature. The description should change when the underlying status changes, not before.
Contribution statements become more useful when they are connected to the project, publication, and presentation records around them. The link between the myo-inositol project, its conference poster, and the Antioxidants paper shows one trail through the work. The porcine fluid-therapy records connect breeding-cycle blood composition, customised ionic solutions, two publications, and conference presentations. The blastocyst-culture records connect a larger embryo project with a poster and a later paper.
That structure helps a reader check the claim. It also keeps the portfolio from assigning all meaning to the most prestigious-looking output. A paper may be the durable scientific record, but the project entry explains its setting and the talk entry shows how the work entered scientific conversation. Each record answers a different question.
This matters for collaborators, too. Scientific work is compressed easily into the story of the person whose portfolio is being read. Precise role labels resist that pressure. Saying "co-first author," "co-investigator," or "co-author" places the work within collaboration instead of borrowing the entire project as a personal achievement.
An academic portfolio makes claims about a person through selection. The decision to include a paper, project, or talk tells the reader that this work belongs in the account of what that person can do. A contribution statement gives that claim a boundary.
The standard I want is simple enough to test. A reader should be able to tell which work I led, which work I shared, which work I presented, and which work remains in progress. The language should be specific enough to distinguish those categories and restrained enough to leave collaborators visible.
There will always be more detail than a portfolio can hold. Research responsibility includes decisions, revisions, technical labor, and conversations that do not fit inside metadata. A concise entry can still choose labels that point in the right direction and links that let an interested reader follow the record further.
A byline remains essential, but an academic portfolio has room to say a little more. Used carefully, that room turns a list of outputs into an account of responsibility: what was studied, where the work stands, and what part of it one is prepared to answer for.