Mentor added his name as the author and changed the series of authors into alphabetical order, effectively putting my name at the last I was recruited by a university to work on a research project as a research fellow and have dedicated over 8 months to it. I have maintained a schedule of fortnightly presentations with another senior research fellow and professor to update them with the progress of the research. After I shared the first draft of the paper with them, the senior fellow rewrote the introduction and added his and professor's name to the author list. He alphabetized the list by our last names stating that's the convention they are beginning t follow, which effectively puts my name at the very last. I have done all the research and I feel shortchanged. I did not like the fact that this was not even discussed with me before changing and the senior fellow will be presenting my paper, I was informed. Again, I am upset about this.
Yet, I have been in the system for 8 months, 4 more months to go before my contract is over with the institute. It matters a lot to me that my name appear first in the list of authors as I am planning to do my PhD soon and having a list of publications with my lead authorship will help me get work with the university of my choice.
What should I do? Should I let this go and not be bothered or should I discuss my concerns with the professor? The senior fellow and professor are very good friends and have been working together for over 6 years and I do not want them to gang up against me as I am new to the field. Please advise.,
Speaking from a field where author lists are always alphabetical: This will do you good in the long run! If you follow this convention, you will never have to argue over authorship order - take a look at the amount of questions on this site dealing with exactly this question, and be thrilled that you have the option to simply exclude that from your life.
Since I am in such a field, I also know what people do on their CV: they explain what they did for the study. You can write that you did the experiment, the analysis and wrote the first draft of the paper. This will be more informative for a hiring committee than any amount or author-list ordering principle you can come up with.