Authorship

In collaborative research, it is important to talk early and often about authorship. It is James’s responsability as PI to lead this conversation. When collaborating with colleagues in other labs, especially those in different fields (which may have different norms about authorship), communicating clearly and frequently about authorship is critical.

General Guidelines

A good general reference for authorship is given by the American Geophysical Union guidelines, which state that authors are expected to do the following to contribute the highest quality science to AGU publications:

  1. Present a precise and accurate account of the research performed and a clear, objective discussion of its significance.
  2. Include sufficient detail and reference to sources of information in a manuscript to permit the author’s peers to repeat the work. Limitations on use of or access to data must be clearly identified.
  3. Identify sources of all information and cite those publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work and that guide the reader quickly to the primary and other earlier work essential for understanding the present investigation. Information obtained privately, as in conversation or correspondence, should not be used or reported without explicit permission from the source.
  4. Carefully document methodology, assumptions, and uncertainty.1
  5. Follow the appropriate procedures in force in their countries that govern the ethics of work done with human or animal subjects.
  6. Never plagiarize the work or ideas of others or your own work. Always provide appropriate citation. [The AGU provides further information on plagiarism, which you should read.]
  7. Avoid unnecessary fragmentation or redundant publication of research reports to artificially increase the number of publications.
  8. Never include personal criticism in a written piece of work.
  9. Report to the editor any changes made to the manuscript after acceptance.
  10. Include as coauthors only those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work and determine order of authorship in a manner appropriate to the contribution.2 All coauthors share responsibility for the quality and integrity of the submitted and published manuscript.
  11. Reveal to the editor any potential conflict of interest for any author that might be affected by publication of the results contained in a manuscript or in the development of the research.
  12. List all funding sources and sources of data or other in-kind support for all authors in the acknowledgments.
  13. In the role of corresponding author, ensure that all coauthors are fully cognizant of the steps and changes in the manuscript during the peer review process.

You must follow these guidelines if you are listed as an author or coauthor on a paper submitted to an AGU journal, but you should follow them regardless.

Paper Contract

To facilitate conversations about authorship, contribution, and research design, we write paper contracts early in the research design process. Paper contracts lay out the paper’s research questions, hypotheses, broad methodology, author line, submission plan, and author contributions. Templates and details are given on the Papers board in Notion.

Footnotes

  1. Accurately characterizing uncertainty is difficult; we do our best and then try to be transparent about assumptions, honest about limitations, and open about exposing our tools and methods to critique.↩︎

  2. This may vary by journal. In some fields the norm is to order authors alphabetically or (to avoid disadvantaging authors whose names begin with Z) randomly. Check the expectations for the journal to which you are submitting.↩︎