Should I use canonical tag along with the next and prev tags?

[AlmostHuman]

I have a usual blog with usual pagination.

The question is: should I use rel canonical tag along with the prev and next meta tags on paginated content?

It's just I got this idea in my head that next and prev can be used without the "canonical" tag and its being on those pages can only confuse things.

I hope I'm wrong.

[JD_Toims]

If you're meaning to "point" the paginated pages to the first in the series, then no, the "canonical" is basically designed to be a "poor man's redirect" or used in situations where content is essentially the same and a 301 is not appropriate eg different sorting of items on product listing pages based on URL/query_string parameters or even the case of "product pagination" where there are multiple pages of products and someone wants only the first page indexed.

As far as "creative work pagination" goes, it's really not necessary or even appropriate use of canonical to point to the first page, imo.

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If you're meaning should you declare a canonical for each page pointing to the main version of each page [meaning canonicalizing /blog/article/page-3.ext to http://www.example.com/blog/article/page-3.ext] as "security" against possible onsite duplication causing dilution of ranking factors, then yes, that's something I think would be a good idea.