COIN OF THE REALM: PRACTICAL PROCEDURES FOR
DETERMINING AUTHORSHIP
Thomas F. Babor and Dominique Morisano
Like a coin, authorship has two sides: credit
and responsibility. One receives professional credit from
his/her publications and takes responsibility for their contents.
(Biagioli et al. 1999, p. 2)
INTRODUCTION
Authorship credit is conceivably the most important
and least understood area of professional life for members
of the scientific community. Because promotion, prestige,
and productivity are judged largely by publication activity,
authorship credit has become the 'coin of the realm' in the
scientific marketplace (Wilcox 1998). Beyond the value of
authorship to individual investigators, the assignment of
individual credit to a publication implies certain ethical
and scientific imperatives that are of tremendous importance
to the scientific enterprise. These imperatives include the
certification of public responsibility for the truth of a
publication and the equitable assignment of credit to those
who have contributed in a substantive way to its contents.
The need for clear and consistent procedures
for the determination of authorship credits comes from two
considerations. First, many journals are now demanding that
papers be prepared in a way that is consistent with the principles
of responsible authorship. Second, a clear consensus about
the conditions governing authorship decisions would make the
work of individual authors much easier.
Numerous professional organizations (e.g., American
Psychological Association 2002), expert panels (International
Committee of Medical Journal Editors 1991; 2003), and individual
commentators (Rennie et al. 1997) have developed policies
and procedures dealing with individual, group, and corporate
authorship. In this chapter, we review some of these guidelines
from both the practical and ethical perspectives, in an attempt
to develop workable procedures that authors can follow during
the course of preparing and publishing a scientific article.
In addition, we consider authorship problems that sometimes
arise in the course of a publication cycle.
These problems seem to be occurring with increasing
frequency (Wilcox 1998) and include duplicate and overlapping
publications; failure to involve potential collaborators;
failure to credit collaborating authors; undeserved authorship
credits; relaxed policies for students, research assistants
and post-docs; multiple publications on related themes; and
excessive numbers of co-authors. Although these are all serious
problems, the pervasiveness of some of them in the publication
process is suggested by the extent to which most scientific
readers can be amused by the satirical humor epitomized in
the 'Ode to multi-authorship' quoted in Box 5.1.
BOX 5.1 ODE TO MULTI-AUTHORSHIP: A MULTICENTRE,
PROSPECTIVE RANDOM POEM
All cases complete, the study was over
the data were entered, lost once, and recovered.
Results were greeted with considerable glee
p value (two-tailed) equaling 0.0493.
The severity of illness, oh what a discovery,
was inversely proportional to the chance of recovery.
When the paper's first draft had only begun
the wannabe authors lined up one by one.
To jockey for their eternal positions
(for who would be first, second, and third)
and whom ‘et aled’ in all further citations.
Each centre had seniors, each senior ten bees,
the bees had technicians and nurses to please.
The list it grew longer and longer each day,
as new authors appeared to enter the fray.
Each fought with such fury to stake his or her place
being just a ‘participant’ would be a disgrace.
For the appendix is piled with hundreds of others
and seen by no one but spouses and mothers
If to ‘publish or perish’ is how academics are bred
then to miss the masthead is near to be dead.
As the number of authors continued to grow
they outnumbered the patients by two to one or so.
While PIs faxed memos to company headquarters
the bees and the nurses took care of the orders.
They'd signed up the patients, and followed them weekly
heard their complaints, and kept casebooks so neatly.
There were seniors from centres that enrolled two or three
who threatened ‘foul play’ if not on the marquee.
But the juniors and helpers who worked into the night
were simply ‘acknowledged’ or left off outright.
‘Calm down’ cried the seniors to the quivering drones
there's place for you all on the RPU clones.
When the paper was finished and sent for review
six authors didn't know that the study was through.
Oh the work was so hard, and the fights oh so bitter
for the glory of publishing and grabbing the glitter.
Imagine the wars when in six months or better
The Editor's response, ‘please make it a letter’.
RPU = repeating publishable unit; PI=principal investigator
Quoted from Horowitz et al. (1996)
CONVENTIONS IN ASSIGNING ORDER OF AUTHORSHIP
One of the difficulties in determining the criteria
for authorship comes from the different traditions and practices
that have been used to distribute authorship credits. Authors
are sometimes listed in alphabetical order to avoid controversy
about the relative contributions of different authors, especially
when the contributions have been fairly equal. A related convention
is to list authors in reverse alphabetical order, presumably
to avoid the preference given to persons whose surname begins
with a letter that appears early in the alphabet. Another
convention is to list the laboratory director, center director,
or other prominent person last. As noted in other parts of
this chapter, this convention is not ethical unless that individual
has made a substantial contribution to the publication and
is not being listed merely to curry favor or add to the prestige
value of the authorship list.
The convention followed most frequently in the addiction field
is to list authors according to their relative contributions,
with the first author assumed to be responsible for writing
the paper, corresponding with the journal editor, and making
the most substantive contributions. Although the main author
first convention is assumed to be based on the equitable distribution
of authorship credits, the relative ordering of authors is
often dependent on the first author's judgment of others'
contributions. In the absence of conducting an inventory of
contributions, effort, and follow through, it is likely that
some contributors will receive more credit than they deserve,
and others less, because of the ambiguity and arbitrariness
of the process.
With the growth of multi-center clinical trials and other
'big science' collaborative projects, corporate authorship
has also increased. This convention lists a team name as the
author, with a footnote or acknowledgement describing the
contributors and the corresponding author. One reason for
this convention is to make citations and referencing more
efficient in cases where there are large numbers of contributors.
Corporate authorship may also help to avoid the difficulties
associated with determining who contributed what to a multi-authored
paper, and how much credit each author should receive. Some
journals require contributors to formally name at least one
person in the masthead, however (e.g., Alexander Bloggins
for the Addiction Research Group).
Because of the problems associated with determining who merits
authorship credit, one editor (Smith 1997) proposed the concept
of ' contributorship'. This involves listing the contributions
of each person involved in the project, and avoiding the attribution
of authorship entirely. Although some journals now request
all contributing authors to list their contributions when
an article is submitted, and some publish a summary in a footnote
or acknowledgement, this convention has not been adopted by
any journal in its pure form (probably due to the problems
it causes with referencing).
In summary, a variety of conventions have been
used to arrange the names of individual contributors in multi-authored
papers. Some conventions are used more than others, with the
'main author first' convention used most often. Other conventions
(e.g., corporate authorship) tend to be used in special situations
as the case demands. The purpose of these conventions, particularly
more recent variants, is to assure that proper credit is assigned
so that individual responsibility for a publication can be
inferred by the reader.
PUBLICATION POLICIES AND PUBLICATION MISCONDUCT
Over the past 25 years, journal editors, research administrators,
and funding agencies have devoted increasing attention to
the ethical and practical issues of scientific authorship.
Concern about authorship has been heightened by a number of
events and situations that have at times compromised, and
at other times embarrassed, the entire scientific enterprise.
The most flagrant examples involve scientific misconduct.
In a number of well-publicized cases (Broad and Wade 1984),
investigators have published scientific papers that have been
retracted because the data were fraudulent or the contents
plagiarized from other sources. What is remarkable about many
of these cases is that in addition to the person directly
involved in scientific misconduct (e.g., John Darsee, who
was the lead author on numerous fraudulent articles), there
have typically been a number of co-authors who apparently
had no idea that the senior author was fabricating data or
copying others' ideas. This implies that in some cases, co-authors
are not in a position to take public responsibility for the
contents of a scientific report, which is now considered to
be one of the main criteria for authorship credit. In its
updated statement on authorship standards for submissions
to biomedical journals, the International Committee of Medical
Journal Editors (2003) indicated that some journals now request
that one or more authors, referred to as 'guarantors', be
identified as the persons who take responsibility for the
contents and integrity of the work as a whole.
Extreme cases aside, the abuse of scientific authorship has
been suspected in an even greater number of cases where the
scientific misconduct is much more subtle. Examples include
the addition of authors to curry favour, conferring co-authorship
by virtue of status or power, rewarding students or junior
faculty with co-authorship to advance their careers, and adding
a prominent name to a list of co-authors to receive a more
sympathetic editorial review. Related to these problems and
to the ever-growing importance of 'research productivity'
are disturbing trends toward the proliferation of authorship
credits attached to publications, a growth in the number of
mediocre quality publications ('paper inflation'), and the
multiplication of reports using the 'least publishable unit'
(LPU) in order to maximize the output from a single study
(see Lafollette 1992).
In part to prevent these kinds of problems,
many journal editors and other individuals in scientific publishing
have promoted policies designed to both detect misconduct
and prevent the more blatant forms of authorship abuse. These
policies include the requirement that all authors sign a statement
of authorship responsibility, descriptions of the criteria
for scientific authorship, limitations on the number of authors
listed on the masthead, and requests that co-authors provide
a written explanation of their individual ontributions to
a publication.
How does all of this apply to individual authors?
Even if most authors in the addiction field have never encountered
an instance of data fabrication or plagiarism, they are likely
to encounter the more subtle forms of irresponsible authorship
and publication misconduct, such as 'gift authorship' and
'ghost authorship (Flanagin et al. 1998). Honorary or gift
authorship consists of awarding authorship credit because
of the person's power and prestige, rather than for time,
effort, and substantial contributions to the work. Ghost authorship
refers to the failure to include as co-authors those who satisfy
the criteria for authorship (Sheikh 2000). In the remainder
of this chapter, we review guidelines that have been developed
to deal with publication misconduct before describing some
practical steps that can be taken by individuals, project
teams, centers, departments, and professional organizations
to ensure responsible authorship.
FORMAL GUIDELINES
In order to develop a more coherent, equitable,
and ethical set of guidelines for addiction journals, various
policies and procedures have been set forth in the recent
scientific literature. These policies include the guidelines
recommended by the Council of Science Editors (Biagioli et
al. 1999), the Sigma Xi standards for responsible authorship
(Jackson and Prados 1983), the statement of the International
Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2003), and a variety
proposals from individual commentators (e.g., Fine and Kurdek
1993; Broad and Wade 1984). Box 5.2 describes the general
guidelines developed by the American Psychological Association
(2002), which have been the subject of a considerable amount
of interpretation and discussion in the psychological literature,
and some attempts have been made to develop operational definitions
of the specific criteria.
BOX 5.2 AUTHORSHIP GUIDELINES PROPOSED BY THE
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
Psychologists take responsibility and credit,
including authorship credit,
only for work they have actually performed or to which they
have
substantially contributed. Principal authorship and other
publication credits
accurately reflect the relative scientific or professional
contributions of the
individuals involved, regardless of their relative status.
Mere possession of
an institutional position, such as department chair, does
not justify
authorship credit. Minor contributions to the research or
to the writing for
publications are acknowledged appropriately, such as in footnotes
or in an
introductory statement. Except under exceptional circumstances,
a student
is listed as principal author on any multiple-authored article
that is
substantially based on the student's doctoral dissertation.
Faculty advisors
discuss publication credit with students as early as feasible
and
throughout the research and publication process as appropriate.
From Section 8.12, American Psychological Association (2002)
In an interesting variant of the APA guidelines,
Winston (1985) developed a system in which points are earned
for various professional contributions to the scholarly publication,
with research design and report writing assigned the most
points. A certain number of points must be earned to qualify
for authorship credit, and the individual with the highest
number is granted first authorship.
One of the most cited sources on authorship
is the 1985 consensus statement of the International Committee
of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE 1985). The statement indicated
that only those in a position to take public responsibility
for the work could claim authorship. Although this definition
would preclude gift authorship and help to minimize ghost
authorship, there were problems with these criteria, such
as the requirement that all authors be prepared to take public
responsibility for its contents and the definition of a 'substantial'
contribution (see Yank and Rennie 1999). In addition, there
was a problem with the distribution of recognition to collaborating
investigators who band together on a project in order to take
advantage of expertise that is unlikely to be concentrated
in one individual. These problems were corrected in a 2003
revision to this statement (see http://www.icmje.org/).
ICMJE now indicates that 'each author should have participated
sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for
appropriate portions of the content', and that one or more
authors ('guarantors') should take responsibility for the
integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published
article.
In addition, all authors must have made substantial
contributions in each of the following areas: 1) conception
and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation
of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically
for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval
of the version to be published. Additional changes were made
by ICMJE to deal with contributors who do not meet the authorship
criteria, such as people who provide technical help or writing
assistance, or general support for a project. These individuals
and their contributions should be listed in an acknowledgements
section. To the extent that a listing of such persons could
be interpreted as an endorsement of the data or conclusions,
all persons listed must provide written permission to be acknowledged.
STUDENTS AND POST-DOCTORAL TRAINEES AS AUTHORS
In recent years, there has been increasing pressure
on graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and even lab technicians
to author scientific publications. In some countries, the
number of publication credits is now a key criterion for students'
acceptance to advanced study, internship placements, receipt
of scholarships, fellowships, and grants, and employment opportunities.
Students at more competitive universities are sometimes urged
to compose theoretical papers and review articles, and to
write up unpublished data from their respective labs (usually
the theses or projects of students who have moved on).
Authorship is now at the forefront of issues
faced in graduate and post-doc education in many countries.
Within this arena of pre- and post-doctoral education, a number
of ethical and practical issues arise that need to be considered
by both the mentors and the mentees. For the great majority
of students, authorship will only come from collaboration
with faculty members and supervisors. At the heart of such
collaborations lies an inherent power imbalance (Fine and
Kurdek 1993; Murray 1998). Often, the faculty members that
students have the most interactions with (and thus the greatest
chance to collaborate with) are responsible for preparing
letters of recommendation for those students, in addition
to assigning their grades, providing them with critical feedback,
and evaluating their work. Further, many students start out
with minimal experience and competence in the area of publishing,
and need to rely on faculty support and guidance. Even if
students and post-doctoral are consulted during the process
of assigning authorship, faculty members are usually responsible
for deciding where (or whether) students are placed on papers.
Students who disagree with or misunderstand such decisions
often fail to voice their contentions for fear of negatively
influencing the way in which those faculty members will evaluate
them.
In addition, the academic level of the collaborating
faculty member or supervisor can influence the authorship
decision-making process. Senior faculty may be more likely
to give students the opportunity for first authorship on co-authored
publications, and may even provide students with more chances
to publish in general, handing over projects, ideas, and datasets
to students. Junior faculty members often need to get their
own names on publications to earn research grants and advance
to higher faculty positions, and thus may be less concerned
about helping their students publish. Other issues that are
often brought up in the realm of student authorship concern
timeliness of publication, financial remuneration, and ignorance
of both research ethics and responsible authorship guidelines.
TIMELINESS
Regarding timeliness of publication, some supervisors
and faculty members feel that it is important to put limits
on the time that a student has to publish his or her thesis
or project data in a scholarly journal. When this time limit
is expired, it is thought that the right to publish these
data should be forfeited to the faculty supervisor or members
of the dissertation committee. In most cases, the researcher,
whether a student or someone else, should have the right to
publish his or her results, even with considerable delays.
However, if the timely dissemination of important
scientific findings is at the root of such policies, then
these procedures are probably warranted. Graduate students
sometimes lose interest in publishing thesis and project data
after proposals have been defended (or even before!), and
important or interesting scientific results are often buried
under more salient tasks at hand. Regarding specific policies,
this is an issue that supervisors and members of dissertation
committees should discuss with their students early in the
process of collaboration. Perhaps the most reasonable solution
for the various parties in these cases is to designate a mutually
agreeable time period together, and then sign a written agreement
that would bind them to this time period.
An interesting example of a policy that was
put together recently and published on the Internet is that
of Karl Wuensch, PhD (2002, East Carolina University, Department
of Psychology, http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/thauth.htm).
On his website, Dr. Wuensch clearly states his policy regarding
timeliness of publication for student theses. For example,
if the thesis is the student's idea, the student does most
of the work (i.e., collects and analyzes the data, writes
the manuscript), and the manuscript is prepared within 18
months from the date of the initiation of the research or
one year from the date of the defense of the thesis, then
the student is the first author (if warranted by their contributions,
the thesis director and other committee members may also be
listed as authors). However, if the student does not complete
the research, including defending and depositing the thesis
and preparing the manuscript for submission for publication
within the time limits mentioned above, then all rights to
use of the data from that thesis revert to the director of
the thesis committee. On his website, Dr. Wuensch also indicates
procedures for other situations that may arise (e.g., the
manuscript is not accepted upon initial submission to a journal).
FINANCIAL REMUNERATION
Some faculty and supervisors feel that students
who are being paid as research or graduate assistants should
not be given authorship because credit for performed work
is being given in the form of a salary. These same faculty
members often feel that publication credit replaces the need
for financial remuneration, as the students will ultimately
benefit from having their name listed on a paper. Fine and
Kurdek (1993), on the other hand, are firm in their position
that paying a research assistant or graduate student should
not substitute for authorship credit, where credit for professional
and intellectualcontributions is due. The controversy surrounding
financial remuneration clearly indicates that this topic should
be covered when creating institutional and departmental
guidelines surrounding authorship procedures. In light of
the authorship criteria discussed elsewhere in this chapter,
it is clear that neither financial reimbursement nor its absence
should be considered in the determination of authorship credits.
IGNORANCE
The most salient issue in all of this is that
students are often uninformed as to what constitutes an acceptable
procedure for deciding authorship within a given field or
discipline. In addition, procedures seem to vary so greatly
even within departments that it can be difficult to stay abreast
of what constitutes acceptable practice. The need for departmental
or centre guidelines seems requisite to create equal opportunities
for student authorship and consistent procedures for student-faculty
collaborations. As in the case of the more general issue of
authorship (discussed above), there are specific guidelines
available that can facilitate this process at some universities,
and that can help to prevent problems from arising in the
first place.
PROCEDURES FOR FACULTY-STUDENT CO-AUTHORSHIP
The University of Pennsylvania's Graduate Council
of the Faculties (1998) now requires individual departments
to develop and post guidelines regarding facultystudent co-authorship
that reflect prevailing standards in each discipline, because
different traditions of joint authorship exist in different
disciplines and departments. Mandating such procedures within
each graduate group is meant to clarify expectations concerning
authorship for both students and faculty members. The general
policy, and links to specific departmental policies, can be
found at: www.upenn.edu/grad/authorpolicy_alpha.html.
Specific departmental guidelines cover such topics as authorship
criteria (specific and general principles regarding the kind
of work that warrants a publication credit); whom to consult
in order to resolve disputes; and the issues that faculty
should discuss with students when beginning joint projects.
Examples of such issues might include: a) whether the graduate
student will share authorship credit; b) the order of authorship
expected; c) the division of labour on the project; and d)
when to revisit or review work that is being completed by
each collaborating member of the pair or group. The University
of Pennsylvania guidelines provide a good model for the development
of similar policies in universities across the world. Such
university-wide policies seem to be a good way to keep students,
postdocs, and faculty members informed about the most fair
and equitable procedures in joint authorship situations.
Fine and Kurdek (1993), in what has become somewhat
of a US benchmark article for writings on student-faculty
co-authorship, also put forth a set of general recommendations
on the topic. These guidelines were based on the idea that
faculty and students should both meaningfully participate
in the authorship decision-making process. In general, Fine
and Kurdek recommended that supervisors and faculty collaborators
should provide new students and post-docs with information
about how authorship decisions are made at the very initiation
of joint projects. In addition, Fine and Kurdek made some
specific and potentially controversial recommendations. They
argued that supervisors cannot and should not expect as much
from students as from experienced professional colleagues.
Therefore, there should be a different standard for the level
of professional contribution that is required to attain a
given level of authorship credit within a student-faculty
collaboration. Fine and Kurdek also emphasize, however, that
student contributions must be professional in nature: i.e.,
creative, intellectual, and integral to completion of the
paper. Examples of such contributions might include developing
the research design, writing sections of the
manuscript, integrating diverse theoretical perspectives,
developing new conceptual models, designing assessments, contributing
to data analysis decisions, and interpreting results. Tasks
such as entering data, carrying out statistical analyses specified
by the supervisor, and typing a manuscript may warrant footnoted
acknowledgement, but they do not deserve authorship credit.
Fine and Kurdek suggested that supervisors and students should
decide early in the publication process what combinations
of professional activities merit a given level of authorship
credit for both parties. Consistent with these recommendations,
the American Psychological Association's Ethics Committee
(2002)
issued an updated version of their policy statement on Publication
Credit (Section 8.12) that has implications for student-faculty
collaborations. The policy statement makes the following points:
1) principal authorship and other publication credits should
accurately reflect the relative scientific or professional
contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their
relative status; 2) except under exceptional circumstances,
a student should be listed as principal author on any multiple-authored
article that is substantially based on the student's doctoral
dissertation; and 3) faculty advisors should discuss publication
credit with students as early as feasible and throughout the
research and publication process.
In summary, the relationship between a seasoned
investigator and a student or other trainee provides a golden
opportunity to learn how the publication process works. Unfortunately,
the learning process has not been clearly documented in terms
of its rights, responsibilities, and roles. In this section
we have shown that while progress has been made in clarifying
the issues and formalizing some long overdue policies, much
remains to be done at both the level of the academic institution
and the level of the individual faculty and student. At the
very least, the sharing of articles and chapters such as this
one may help to raise awareness of the issues and how to deal
with them. It should also be noted that our main sources of
information on this topic come from North American universities,
and the issues and solutions may not necessarily generalize
to universities in other regions.
PRACTICAL STEPS TO DETERMINE AUTHORSHIP
The foregoing discussion of conventions, problems,
and policies suggests that authorship of an article or paper
is first and foremost a social process that requires a considerable
amount of negotiation, influence, and persuasion. If there
is a general perception that the current procedures for attributing
authorship credits are inadequate and ineffective (see Yank
and Rennie 1999), then it may be because the social nature
of authorship has not been taken into account in the design
of policies and procedures for responsible authorship. Most
guidelines focus on individual accountability in relation
to abstract ethical principles, with bureaucratic controls
and punitive sanctions emphasized instead of practical guidance
about what to do at the level of the group where real influence
and control are concentrated. In this section we describe
a model process to demonstrate how many of the helpful suggestions
provided in the literature on scientific authorship can be
implemented in a practical, systematic and open way. The process
is based on the assumption that because authorship on a multi-authored
article is a social process, responsibility, accountability,
and the equitable distribution of credit reside in the group
of individuals most responsible for conducting the research
and writing the article. This process can be easily implemented
by an external agency or even within an institution, department,
or research centre. It needs to be conducted in an open, democratic,
and ethical way so that all collaborating investigators agree
to accept the basic values of scientific integrity.
As in any group process, one or more individuals
need to take a leadership role. There is general agreement
in the scientific community that the person most closely associated
with the project should take responsibility for drafting the
paper and being first author. Exceptions to this rule are
possible, such as when the investigator who conceived and
directed a project cedes responsibility to a junior investigator
who made special contributions and who is capable of carrying
the written report to a successful conclusion. A critical
skill that should be taken into account in the choice of one
or more leaders for a scientific publication is familiarity
with the authorship issues described in this chapter. If the
person has had no formal training in research ethics, the
papers cited in the reference section of this chapter should
be reviewed, giving special attention to several key sources
(e.g., International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
2003; Fine and Kurdek 1993).
To avoid conflict, misunderstandings, and publication
misconduct, both the leader and the group should be guided
by generally accepted procedures that are characterized by
openness and transparency. In this section we provide an outline
for such a model that can be modified to fit the needs of
a project team.
The model requires the completion of specific
tasks at each of three stages in the publication process.
As described below, periodic discussions about authorship
and accountability should be conducted at the planning stage,
the drafting stage, and the finalization stage of a publication.
According to Lafollette (1992, p. 107), 'The issue is absolutely
clear. Who did what and how much? Answering those questions
early on - and continuing to ask them as projects change -
can help to prevent disputes or embarrassment later'.
PLANNING STAGE
The planning stage of the publication process
begins when a scientific investigation or other project (e.g.,
a review paper) has advanced to the point where it is likely
that a scientific article is appropriate or warranted. This
decision is usually made by the project leader, who either
takes direct responsibility for the direction of the publication
or designates one or more individuals to initiate the publication
planning process. The following tasks and activities are suggested:
• One or more senior members of the research
or writing team take responsibility for developing an outline
of the paper, a timetable for the completion of the article,
and a list of potential co-authors, based on actual contributions
to date and expected contributions in the future. The outline
is distributed to all prospective authors, with the understanding
that authorship will depend on substantive contributions,
as well as effort and follow-through, as described in relevant
policies and publications (including this chapter).
• It is explained that there will be a
periodic reassessment of the contributions of the research
team throughout the planning, drafting, and finalization stages.
If it is found that previous expectations are not being met,
then assignment of authorship credit may have to be modified,
based on the actual contributions at the completion
of the publication.
• Relevant policies and publications (including
copies of this chapter) are distributed to prospective authors
along with the outline.
• A meeting is called to discuss the proposed
publication and the distribution of responsibilities for its
completion. Assignments are made for data analysis and writing
sections of first draft. A timeline of key tasks should also
be distributed and discussed.
DRAFTING STAGE
After the first draft of a paper is completed,
or as relevant sections are finished, the drafting author(s)
circulate the article for comments. At this stage potential
authors again need to be reminded not only about their rights
to possible authorship, but also about their responsibilities.
A crucial task at this stage is the process
of identifying who qualifies for formal authorship credit
according to generally accepted criteria for responsible authorship.
One way to accomplish this task is to ask all potential contributing
authors (including the lead author) to describe their contributions
to the project.
BOX 5.3 CHECKLIST FOR CONDUCTING AN INVENTORY
OF MAJOR AND MINOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO
A SCIENTIFIC PAPER
Instructions:
Use the checklist to describe your contributions to the project
to date. Under
each item you have checked, describe the nature of your contribution,
the amount
of effort you put into it (e.g., hours, days, months), and
whether your contribution
fulfilled all of the requirements for that task or some of
the requirements (e.g., in
collaboration with others you wrote part of the paper, or
collected part of the
data).
Conception (planning meetings, drafting of research proposal,
etc.)
Review of literature
Obtained funding or other resources
Assembling the project team
Coordinated study (5) by assigning responsibilities and tasks
Training of personnel
Supervision of personnel
Human (or animal) subjects approvals
Design of methodology or experimental design (2)
Advised on design or analysis (9)
Writing the research protocol
Collection of data (4), including follow-up data
Clinical analysis or management (6)
Performed randomization or matching
Statistical analysis of data (8)
Interpretation of data (3)
Economic analysis of data
Managed data (10)
Provision of technical services, e.g., coding questionnaires,
laboratory analyses (7), etc.
Provision or recruitment of patients
Provision of materials or facilities
Present and defend findings in a public forum
Writing draft of paper
Writing final version of paper (1)
Submitting report for publication
Responding to reviewers' comments
Other activity or service (describe)
Note: numbers in parentheses refer to the top 10 overall categories
of contribution identified by Yank and
Rennie (1999) in a content analysis of articles according
to the most frequently mentioned contributions to
authorship.
Box 5.3 provides a checklist of possible contributions
that prospective authors should be asked to complete by the
lead author in order to determine eligibility for authorship
at this stage in the process. Disclosure checklists like this
one have been found to be feasible and to provide important
information that is relevant to the determination of authorship
credit (Yank and Rennie 1999).
Once the checklist is completed, the lead author
calls a meeting to discuss authorship and other matters related
to the proposed publication. At the meeting, each person is
asked to describe his or her contributions to the project
to date. In such a setting, individuals often reveal contributions
that others were not aware of, and in other cases describe
activities that may not be considered substantial in comparison
to those of others. At this time it is important to discuss
generally accepted criteria for authorship, such as those
listed in Box 5.3, to make sure that everyone agrees on the
standards to be used to determine who should be listed on
the paper and in what order the names should be arranged.
To provide authority to the process, it may be advantageous
to mention that most journals now require a similar process
of asking authors to sign a statement attesting to the fact
that they have met minimal criteria for authorship, and some
journals (e.g., The Lancet, British Medical Journal, American
Journal of Public Health) require authors to describe their
individual contributions in a footnote that is published along
with the article.
One of the most difficult decisions in the assignment
of authorship is the distinction between major (or substantial)
and minor contributions. A major contribution usually involves
the independent development or interpretation of ideas that
are critical or essential to the advancement of a scientific
study or scholarly article. It may also involve the use of
special skills to perform a complex task without which the
project could not have been done. The emphasis in these definitions
is more on quality than quantity. All persons making major
contributions should receive authorship credit, provided that
they also participate in the writing of the article and any
revisions required by the editor. Such individuals should
also be capable of taking public responsibility for both general
and specific aspects of the publication, although opinions
differ as to what this means. Although the checklist provided
in Box 5.3 was compiled from a variety of sources, we borrowed
heavily from Yank and Rennie (1999), who distinguished between
'major' and 'partial' contributions, and also reported the
10 major contributions that were observed in a content analysis
of articles where authors provided a description of their
roles in the publication process. A major contribution meant
that the contributor fulfilled a majority of the activities
for a given category. A partial or minor contribution refers
to a more limited role, presumably in terms of time, effort,
or substance.
According to Yank and Rennie (1999), examples
of major contributions that fulfill their 'lenient' interpretation
of the ICMJE criteria (ICMJE 1991) for authorship are: a)
conception of the idea for the study or article; b) design
of the study; c) statistical analysis or interpretation of
data; d) laboratory analysis; e) management or analysis of
clinical aspects; and f) performance of field work or epidemiology.
Anyone who wrote or revised the paper (even sections) fulfilled
the second part of the criteria (i.e., drafted the paper or
revised it critically for important intellectual content).
In considering the relative importance of major
contributions, we believe two additional factors should be
taken into account by the leader and the group. These factors
are effort and follow-through. Effort pertains to the amount
of time spent on the particular contribution. Follow-through
involves active participation at various stages throughout
the project. For example, if a person has participated in
a study in a minor way, or has made a major contribution that
involves minimal effort (e.g., the development of an idea
for the study, or a novel hypothesis) and/or follow-through,
this does not necessarily entitle the individual to authorship
if other persons have made greater contributions with respect
to effort and follow-through.
Non-substantive considerations should not determine
the order of authorship or whether or not to include an individual
as an author. Examples of non-substantive factors include
rank or status, need for publication credits to justify advancement,
involvement in the project as a consequence of routine duties
for which the individual is paid (e.g., collecting lab samples),
or ability to provide access to experimental subjects. The
person who is named as the principal investigator (PI) may
not qualify for authorship under these circumstances if she
or he had no role in the design and conduct of a particular
project (e.g., the secondary analysis of data collected for
another purpose).
Members of a research team also need to recognize
that individuals will be expected to contribute to projects
in a collegial fashion without necessarily receiving credits
in all publications. In some cases it may be justified to
award authorship to individuals who have made minor contributions
to several papers, but who may not qualify as having made
a substantive contribution to all of them. And, as noted above
under Students and Post-Doctoral Trainees as Authors, the
group may want to give consideration to the special situation
of students and post-doctoral fellows. Taking all of this
information into account, it should not be difficult in most
cases to reach consensus about who qualifies for authorship,
and what the most equitable relative ranking of contributions
should be. When contributions are discussed in an open forum
in relation to generally accepted criteria and ethical principles,
secondary (nonsubstantive) considerations tend to be difficult
to defend, especially when there is a written record of each
individual's perceived contributions. If there are discrepancies
between what an individual perceives to be his or her contributions,
and the perceptions of others, these differences often can
be resolved through open discussion.
FINALIZATION STAGE
Before an article is formally submitted to a
journal, there is a need to designate a corresponding author.
This person is usually the first author, but sometimes it
is also the senior project leader in cases where the first
author is young or inexperienced. A prominent or senior co-author
should never be designated as corresponding author solely
to influence the review process. If there is general agreement
about the order of the contributing authors, this can be reviewed
at the final stage to determine whether the process of preparing
and revising the paper altered the relative order of the contributions
enough to require any further changes.
CONCLUSION
Intellectual honesty is a fundamental ingredient
of scientific integrity, and this extends to the need for
complete accuracy and transparency in representing contributions
to research reports and other scientific writing. The contributions
of colleagues and collaborators need to be recognized in all
scientific publications, but authorship must be assumed or
awarded only on the basis of substantive contributions to
an article and the ability of its authors to take public responsibility
for its contents, or at least for major parts of the contents.
Decisions regarding authorship should be seen as part of a
process that begins with the development of a publication
plan and ends with the final revision of an accepted paper.
In between, it is best to have all potential contributors
to a publication participate in an open process of stating
their perceived contributions to a given project in the context
of generally accepted criteria for authorship. Such a process
is likely to prevent publication misconduct as well as misunderstandings
and conflicts. To the extent that authorship credit continues
to be seen as the 'coin of the realm' in addiction science,
both sides of the coin (credit and responsibility) need to
be valued.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Ian Stolerman
for his helpful comments and suggestions.
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READING)
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