Q: Can you help me understand the authorship issue over my postgraduate essay?

There are several aspects to your query. So, let me first summarize the scenario to ensure they are correct and then respond to the questions. (Which is also why I have made edits to some parts of the query.)

• By “postgraduate essay,” I assume you mean the master’s thesis.
• When you say A, B, and C have coauthored several papers, I assume you mean they have written several papers together in the course of the university/institute master’s program but these haven’t been published in a journal.
• Based on the above points, I understand A now wants to base his thesis on one of these previously coauthored papers and B wishes to have all these papers published in one or more journals.
• By “affiliation,” perhaps you mean “contact,” because ‘affiliation’ refers to the university or institute where a researcher or academic is studying or teaching and therefore affiliated to or associated with. To know more about affiliation, you may refer to this collection of resources on the site: Author Affiliations

Authorship issues over multi-author papers (such as in this scenario) are quite common, can be challenging to resolve, and therefore require the understanding and willingness of all parties involved. Hence, it helps to understand what qualifies for authorship, especially as A and B, being young unpublished researchers, may not be familiar with all its intricacies.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has established four criteria for being considered an author. You may read about these criteria here. But in short, authorship needs to be determined based on the quantity and quality of contribution to the research and the paper.

Based on these criteria, in this scenario, it may be that A and B’s contribution has not been equal in all papers. For some papers, A may have contributed more, and for some, B may have contributed more. Although the issue does not involve C (the supervisor), it may also be that C has not really contributed in the same measure to all papers or even to all papers. C may have been only a guest author or an honorary author, which is correctly speaking not the same as the main author(s). You may learn more about these forms of authorship in this piece: Who should be the author of your research paper

With this understanding, let us now consider your questions, beginning with the second one first.

Is it okay for B to publish the papers the way in which they are considering?

When seeking to publish the papers A and B have coauthored, B intends to write the author names alphabetically (in Chinese pinyin), with B’s name appearing first and A’s name second or perhaps third. Perhaps because B is not aware or does not have the publishing experience, but as indicated above, this would not be the right way to proceed. For a multi-author paper, the author names have to be listed in the order of their contribution, with the name of the author contributing the greatest appearing first, that of the author contributing to a lesser extent appearing second, and so on. You may learn more about the order of authors in this post: Deciding the order of authors on your manuscript

Therefore, A and B need to determine their extent and nature of contribution for each paper and then list their names accordingly. Apart from resolving the issue, doing this will also help when submitting to the journal. Journals typically have an author contribution form, where you need to outline the contribution by each author. Lack of clarity on author roles during submission could result in a delay in publication.

Will it be problematic for A to obtain his postgraduate degree?

I assume that by this, you mean that the university/institute needs A to have a published article in order to award the degree. If so, I can understand that this would be a problem if the authorship issue is not resolved between A and B. To avoid this situation, it would be better for A to take up a paper (to convert into a journal article) for which he has been the first or even the sole author. In case there is no such paper, A may then need to write a journal article from the start. In either case, when converting a thesis paper into a journal article, the author needs to make several modifications. So, there is some effort involved either way. However, writing a paper from the start would mean that there is no authorship issue over the paper to begin with, and it may therefore progress faster.

Here’s hoping the issue is resolved and also that A is eventually awarded the degree!