Guidelines on Authorship in Scholarly or Scientific Publications
The public’s trust in and benefit from academic research and scholarship relies upon all those involved in the scholarly endeavor adhering to the highest ethical standards, including standards related to publication and dissemination of findings and conclusions.
Determining authorship is an important component of upholding the integrity of the research and scholarly enterprise and serves as an explicit way of assigning responsibility and giving credit for intellectual work. Authorship credit should be given to those who contribute and participate in substantive ways to scholarly and scientific work, and should honestly and accurately reflect actual contributions.
Financial and other supporting relationships of those involved in the scholarly work must be transparent and disclosed in publications arising from the work.
Applicability
These Guidelines apply to all faculty, students postdoctoral researchers, and staff.
Designing an ethical and transparent approach to authorship and publication of research, whether in a peer-reviewed journal or in an open access e-print or pre-print repository is a shared responsibility of all research team members but is primarily the responsibility of the Principal Investigator.
Principal Investigator defined as the holder of an independent grant and/or the lead researcher for the grant project, laboratory or study.
The University recognizes that there are different standards across disciplines regarding authorship and the order in which authors are listed or acknowledged. Additionally, journals often specify their requirements in their guidance for authors and require attestations regarding individual authors intellectual contributions to the work.
As a result, each research group, laboratory, department, and/or school should engage in conversations regarding their own discipline-specific standards of authorship. If needed, are encouraged to supplement the Guidelines herein with a description of these respective discipline-specific processes for deciding who should be an author and the order in which authors will be listed. When individuals or groups uphold authorship criteria that are not included in this guidance, they should have their views communicated publicly in their materials (normally website, acknowledgement section of their manuscript etc.)
Note that these Guidelines are not intended for allegations related to research misconduct, defined as fabrication or falsification of data or plagiarism.
Criteria for Authorship
RSP recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria, defined by the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). An author is an individual that:
- Provides substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work
- Drafts the work or revise it critically for important intellectual content
- Gives final approval of the version to be published
- Agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Some diversity exists across academic disciplines regarding acceptable standards for substantive contributions that would lead to attribution of authorship. This guidance is intended to allow for such variation in disciplinary best practices while ensuring authorship is not inappropriately assigned. The ICMJE provides additional comprehensive instruction on authorship on its website.
Individual Author Contribution
To give appropriate credit to all individuals listed as authors, the individual contributions
of authors should be specified. For general additional information, please see the
NISO CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) website.
Implementation
Implementation of these Guidelines supposes a commitment to collegiality, open communication, and expectation-setting throughout the research and scholarly process as well as the following considerations.
- Research groups should discuss authorship credit/criteria, presentation of joint work, and future direction of the research as early as practical, frequently during the course of their work, and as research team members begin or end their involvement. The Principal Investigator should initiate these discussions; however, any collaborator should feel free to raise questions or seek clarity throughout the course of the collaboration. Each research group may consider having a written document in place as guidance.
- In the case of scientific research, all members of the research team are expected to adhere to good laboratory practices including maintaining an accurate laboratory notebook and annotating electronic files, as these practices will aide in identifying and clarifying individuals’ contributions to a project. Researchers in other fields may apply this criterion, as relevant, to their discipline.
- Disposition of collaborative data and research materials should be mutually agreed upon among collaborators as early as practical and in accordance with any data-sharing and retention requirements.
- As indicated above, research groups, laboratories, departments, centers, and programs supporting scholarly work should have available these Guidelines, as well as, a description of any discipline-specific processes for determining authorship, and the order in which authors are listed, in publications or reports of their work. These Guidelines should be included in the orientation of new research team members.
Disclosure of Research Funding and Other Support
In all scientific and scholarly publications and all manuscripts submitted for publication, authors should acknowledge the sources of support for all activities leading to and facilitating preparation of the publication or manuscript, including, but not limited to:
- Grant, contract, and gift support
- Salary support if other than institutional funds. Note that salary support that is provided to the University by an external entity does not constitute institutional funds by virtue of being distributed by the University
- technical or other support if substantive and meaningful to the completion of the project.
Breach of Appropriate Authorship
The following are examples of situations that are generally considered to be a breach of appropriate authorship:
- Intentional exclusion of a person as an author: Intentionally excluding someone who has contributed to the work aligns with criteria for authorship.
- Coercive Authorship: Typically consists of a senior researcher forcing a junior researcher to include another individual that did not contribute to the work as an author.
- Honorary authorship: Granting authorship to an individual who has not appropriately contributed to the work, out of appreciation or respect, or with the belief that the honored individual will increase the likelihood of publication, credibility, or status.
- Gift authorship: Offering authorship as a credit or sense of obligation, tribute, or dependence with the belief of an anticipated benefit to an individual who has not appropriately contributed to work.
- Ghost authorship: Failing to identify as an author someone who has made substantial contributions to the research or writing of a manuscript thus meriting authorship. Allowing significant editorial control of a publication by an unnamed party, which may constitute a real or perceived conflict of interest that should be disclosed.