Guidelines on Interactions and Authorship
Much of what we do at ACT involves collaborative endeavors and contributions from several individuals. While engaged in active projects, we generally meet once a week for an hour or two to discuss progress and ideas and ensure collegiality. Other than that, we work primarily independently interacting on an as needed basis and collaborating when needed. When tasks are assigned, they usually have a person’s name associated with taking the lead to ensure it gets completed.
Different faculty have differing philosophies about the nature of authorship (who is listed and in what order). In general, authorship follows the degree of intellectual contribution; the issue then becomes weighing each person’s intellectual contribution (e.g., an individual may have wonderful ideas about the types of analysis that should be done or the overall context/issue that the research addresses).
More specifically, we offer a couple of guidelines as we move forward:
- To the extent possible, it is best to clarify such matters early in the process (sometimes this is not always possible when the idea for a paper may split, etc.)
- Performing a small bit of analysis for a paper may not always warrant authorship.
- Likewise, just collecting data or just analyzing data likely will not warrant authorship.
- Creating a figure or a table does not warrant authorship.
- Certainly, any work anyone puts in towards a project will be credited in the acknowledgements.
Overall, I tend to be VERY generous in granting any level of authorship to the student/researcher, provided the following expectations are met:
- The student performed the bulk of the analysis and contributed some intellectual “sweat” to the cause (e.g., they thought about what needed to be done and improved upon what I or others have thought of),
- The student performed the above work and the analysis was performed correctly,
- They completed some of the writing,
- They took the lead in fully preparing the article for submittal to a journal
First authorship for a peer review publication further requires the following:
- Being available after graduation to follow up on the article (after it has been submitted for initial review),
- Demonstrating the skill and commitment to bring an article to closure (that is, respond to peer review comments),
- Furnishing and modifying all figures and tables.
- Writing a manuscript at a level of quality such that the bulk of it does not require rewriting or considerably editing.
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