What are the rules for authorship?
Table of Contents
- 1 What are the rules for authorship?
- 2 Should an editor investigate based on anonymous publishing ethics complaints?
- 3 Are supervisors authors?
- 4 What are the ethical guidelines for authors?
- 5 Does your PhD advisor have a co-authored paper with his advisor?
- 6 Do different labs have different conventions for authoring papers?
Everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial, direct, intellectual contribution to the work. For example (in the case of a research report) they should have contributed to the conception, design, analysis and/or interpretation of data. Honorary or guest authorship is not acceptable.
Should an editor investigate based on anonymous publishing ethics complaints?
Should an editor investigate based on anonymous publishing ethics complaints? In principle, all substantial publishing ethics complaints that reach an editor should be looked into, as there could be legitimate reasons why a complainant might wish to preserve their confidentiality.
How do you list an author in a paper?
The most common way authors are listed is by relative contribution. The author who most substantially worked on the draft article and the underlying research becomes the first author. The others are ranked in descending order of contribution.
When should someone be an author on a paper?
Authorship of a scientific or scholarly paper should be limited to those individuals who have contributed in a meaningful and substantive way to its intellectual content.
Supervisors should be included as co-authors! We do not suggest that your supervisors have to be excluded in all circumstances from your paper.
Follow our top 10 publishing ethics tips for authors
- Declare to your chosen journal that your manuscript is not published elsewhere.
- Declare any conflicts of interest.
- Check all co-authors meet criteria for authorship and ensure appropriate acknowledgements made in the manuscript.
Can I list my advisor as a co-author on my Paper?
You must ask your advisor in advance what her coauthorship policy is. In theoretical computer science (and mathematics), it is generally considered unethical to list someone as a co-author who has not made a novel and significant intellectual contribution to the paper.
Do You Put your supervisor’s name on your paper?
Major papers that make heavy use of a lab’s resources (including you, a grad student funded by the lab) will likely have your supervisors name on the paper. More important than does/does not your supervisor’s name appear on your papers is (if you field follows the non-alphabetical author ordering scheme) where they appear.
My PhD advisor doesn’t have a single co-authored paper with his advisor. The following answer is based on my experience in the fields of Neuroscience, Biology, and to a lesser extent, Electrical Engineering. This is often an unnecessarily touchy subject amongst graduate students.
As other said, different fields have different conventions and different labs have different conventions, both on who’s an author, and on the author ordering. The first author is often who did most work; in biology, some grant programs require >=X papers as first author and >= Y paper as last author (senior author).