With the con­stant pres­sure on aca­d­e­mics to pub­lish research papers, there is a temp­ta­tion for research groups to include “coau­thors” who have not really made any con­tri­bu­tion to the man­u­script. This seems more preva­lent in some fields (e.g., the health sci­ences) than others.

Occa­sion­ally, I am asked to add an author to a paper that has already been accepted for pub­li­ca­tion in the Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Fore­cast­ing. I am very reluc­tant to do this as it is hard to imag­ine how some­one could be left off a paper while it goes through sev­eral revi­sions, only to be remem­bered after the paper is accepted. It looks like a last ditch attempt to get some­one a pub­li­ca­tion rather than a gen­uine research contribution.

Most uni­ver­si­ties now have an author­ship pol­icy. The author­ship pol­icy at Monash Uni­ver­sity includes the fol­low­ing statements.

Attri­bu­tion of authorship

… in all cases author­ship must be based on mak­ing a sub­stan­tial intel­lec­tual con­tri­bu­tion to the work described and tak­ing sole or joint respon­si­bil­ity for that con­tri­bu­tion or, where appro­pri­ate, the work as a whole. Accord­ingly, author­ship must be based upon a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion and respon­si­bil­ity for at least one, and usu­ally more than one, of the fol­low­ing activities:

• Con­cep­tion and design of the project;
• Analy­sis and inter­pre­ta­tion of research data;
• Draft­ing sig­nif­i­cant parts of the work or crit­i­cally revis­ing it so as to con­tribute to the interpretation.

Unac­cept­able inclu­sions of authorship

The fol­low­ing activ­i­ties do not by them­selves con­sti­tute a claim to author­ship with­out sub­stan­tial intel­lec­tual con­tri­bu­tion to the work:

• Being head of depart­ment, hold­ing other posi­tions of author­ity, or per­sonal friend­ship with the authors;
• Pro­vid­ing a rou­tine tech­ni­cal contribution;
• Pro­vid­ing rou­tine assis­tance in some aspects of the project;
• Acqui­si­tion of funding;
• Gen­eral super­vi­sion of the research team;
• Pro­vid­ing data that has already been pub­lished or mate­ri­als obtained from third par­ties (includ­ing the rou­tine col­la­tion and pro­vi­sion of research source material).

Acknowl­edge­ment of contributors

All those who have oth­er­wise con­tributed to the research (see author­ship attri­bu­tion cri­te­ria above), such as research assis­tants, tech­ni­cal writ­ers, and research degree stu­dents have the right to be prop­erly acknowledged.

I think all researchers need to be care­ful to abide by rules such as these, not only because it is the right and eth­i­cal thing to do, but also because the notion of research author­ship will be greatly deval­ued if we don’t.

Related Posts:

• Should you make your work­ing papers public?
• How to avoid annoy­ing a referee
• The falling stan­dard of Eng­lish in research
• Writ­ing responses to ref­eree reports
• Your name is your brand