Authorship

1
Authorship

• APS Professional Skills Course
• Writing and Reviewing for Scientific Journals

2
Authorship Issues

• When is authorship assigned?
• Who is entitled to be an author?
• What are the responsibilities of an author?
• In what order should authors be listed?
• What are the career implications to authorship
  position?

3
Authorship Decisions

• Decide on authors and their order as early as
  possible
• Notify all authors of any changes that occur
• Follow the policies of the specific journal

4
Why is Authorship an Issue?

• Authorship has value
• Researchers want/need credit for their work
• Authorship carries responsibility
• Greater awareness and sensitivity to scientific
  misconduct
• Authorship describes professional collaborations
• Increased number of authors per paper

5
ICMJE Criteria for Authorship

• International Council of Medical Journal Editors
  ICMJE
• 1) Contributed to the intellectual content of
  the work
• Conception or design of the work
• Data acquisition
• Data analysis and interpretation
• 2) Draft, critically review, or revise
  manuscript
• 3) Approve final version of manuscript for
  submission

6
Alternative Authorship Criteria

• Contributorship Model
• Explicit disclosure to the reader of every
  participants contribution to the work and to the
  article
• Quantitative Uniform Authorship Declaration
  (QUAD) System
• Authors are listed in descending order of total
  contributions across four categories
• Conception and design
• Data collection
• Data analysis and conclusions
• Manuscript preparation

7
Authorship is NOT awarded

• To honor someone for past contributions to the
  field
• To honor someone for being the senior person in
  the lab or department
• For political reasons
• To reward someone for service
• There should not be hidden authors

8
Key Authorship Criteria

• An author must be willing to take public
  responsibility for the ENTIRE content of a
  manuscript

9
Authorship Responsibilities

• Authors must be willing to
• Defend the intellectual content of the
  manuscript, including results and conclusions
• Concede publicly any errors
• In the case of fraud, state publicly its nature
  and extent and account for its occurrence
• Authors must certify that
• The manuscript is original work without
  fabrication, fraud, or plagiarism
• The manuscript has been submitted to only one
  journal for consideration
• Any conflicts of interest by any author have been
  disclosed

10
Acknowledgement vs. Authorship

• Acknowledge those who contributed but dont meet
  all the authorship criteria
• Common acknowledgments
• Intellectual contributions
• Technical contributions
• Financial contributions (grants, awards)

11
Authorship Agreements

• Who will do most of the writing?
• Who will deal with the editors?
• Who will manage revisions?
• Who will be responsible for settling disputes
  among authors?

12
Order of Authors

• Depends on Journal
• See Instructions for Authors
• First author and last author
• Typically the most important
• Some journals have equal contributors authors

13
Examples from APS Journals

• First author (principal author)
• Primarily responsible for collecting and
  analyzing data
• Often writes manuscript draft
• Very important for trainees
• Last author (senior author)
• Principal investigator
• Carries overall responsibility for the study
• Often the corresponding author
• Very important for new investigators

14
Authorship Problems

• First author (trainee) and advisor/PI dont agree
  on authors
• Advisor/PI includes/deletes authors without
  discussing with trainee
• Many authors vs. 2-author paper

15
It Comes with Experience

• What to do when you have been left off as an
  author
• How to handle co-workers asking to be included as
  an author
• What to do when you are a secondary author and
  you have concerns about the manuscript content
• When to challenge a person of position on an
  authorship issue (advisor/dept. chair)