Authorship at LBNL
Authorship and contributorship is determined by the research participants in accordance with department/division guidelines and society/journal publications rules, and funding acknowlegement and author affiliations are required. It is highly advised to discuss authorship expectations in advance; even then, the course of the research and participant roles and responsibilities can change over time. Different communitites of practice take different approaches. For example, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has recommended the authorship criteria listed below.
- Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, 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. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
- When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript (3). These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. The NLM indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript; it also lists the names of collaborators if they are listed in Acknowledgments.
- Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.
- All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Research Collaborations
Avoid research collaboration issues by discussing, in advance, overall goals, roles and responsibilities, and authorship/credit criteria for the collaboration.
Consider using a partnering agreement, such as this one from the office of the NIH Ombudsman. A field guide for collaboration and team science is also available.
