Manuscript Authorship Order

Author List -  One of the most important parts of writing a journal article is constructing the author list.  While many people leave this to the end,  it should be done early in the writing process so all the co-authors happy with the co-author list and the order of authors at the end.  The first author gets the most credit.  The senior author is usually listed last but at some institiutions the senior author is listed second.   Check and recheck spelling of author names before submission as typos in author names result in problems with searches and indexing.

There are published guidelines that authors should abide by.  These are called the Vancouver Guidelines and they were put forth by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editorswho met in Vancouver.  The full guidelines can be found at:   http://www.icmje.org/#author s

The main thing you can do to make this potentially sensitive topic go smoothly is to discuss authorship at the beginning of the project and again before the paper is written.  The main aspects of the Vancouver guidelines are:

• Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or 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, multi-center 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 group author manuscript, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and should clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals will generally list other members of the group in the acknowledgements. The National Library of Medicine indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript.

• Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify 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.

Some journals now also request that one or more authors, referred to as “guarantors,” be identified as the persons who take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article, and publish that information.

Increasingly, authorship of multi-center trials is attributed to a group. All members of the group who are named as authors should fully meet the above criteria for authorship/contributorship.

The group should jointly make decisions about contributors/authors before submitting the manuscript for publication. The corresponding author/guarantor should be prepared to explain the presence and order of these individuals. It is not the role of editors to make authorship/contributorship decisions or to arbitrate conflicts related to authorship.

II.A.2. Contributors Listed in Acknowledgments

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Editors should ask corresponding authors to declare whether or not they had assistance with study design, data collection, data analysis, or manuscript preparation. If such assistance was available, the authors should disclose the identity of the people that provided this assistance and the entity that supported it in the published article. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged.

Groups of persons who have contributed materially to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be listed under a heading such as “clinical investigators” or “participating investigators,” and their function or contribution should be described—for example, “served as scientific advisors,” “critically reviewed the study proposal,” “collected data,” or “provided and cared for study patients.”

Because readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions, all persons must give written permission to be acknowledged.

The University of Pennsylvania also has some very good guidelines that are based on the Vancouver agreement and include specifics of authorship order:

1. Qualifications for Authorship[1] All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship.
a. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content
b. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the following areas:
1. conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data
2. drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
3. final approval of the version to be published
c. Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met in assignment of authorship
d. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship
e. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship
f. Appropriate credit for the contributions of other individuals to the work described in the publication should be made as an acknowledgment
g. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author. If that author is a student, then the faculty mentor shares the responsibility

2. The Order of Authors[2]
a. The first author is that person who contributed most to the work, including writing of the manuscript (an author is a person who writes)
b. The sequence of author listing is determined by the relative contributions to the work. In the instance that equal credit is due, this should be footnoted (by asterisk) and it is suggested that authors be listed alphabetically (you may wish to note this policy on your CV)
c. Decisions about authors and the order in which their names appear should be discussed as early as possible, even at the outset
d. Decisions about authors and the order in which their names appear should be made by group consensus, and under the guidance of the lead investigator(s)

3. Other General Rules
a. The data presented in the publication must preserve full protection of patients' rights to privacy at their institution(s) as specified in informed consent and IRB approval documents
b. The data presented in the publication must be generated under the approval of, and in full compliance with, Animal and Human Subject codes at the authors' institution(s)
c. All authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might reasonably appear to bias their work
d. Decisions of the suitability of a manuscript for a particular journal should be made by group consensus and under the guidance of the lead investigator(s)
e. All items presented in the publication must be original (inclusive of other submitted publications), unless otherwise specifically stated in the publication
f. Secondary publication of manuscripts, either in full or in part, in review form, in another language and/or in another country, is justifiable provided that the authors have received approval from the editors of both journals, that the secondary manuscript includes a footnote to this effect, and that the secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version
g. In the instance of review articles, which may include previously published and/or unpublished data, appropriate acknowledgments must be made for published data, and appropriate consent must be received for unpublished data; however, generation of such data does not necessarily warrant authorship (for example, if a faculty member writes a review based on a student's published work and acknowledges the student' s contributions, the student does not necessarily have the right to coauthorship)

4. When Conflicts Arise
It is recognized that even when the above guidelines are followed, conflicts of opinion may arise. When disagreements cannot be resolved within the research group, the process for handling disagreements regarding authorship between students and faculty members is as follows:

a. The faculty member and student should seek mediation with the graduate group chair. If the faculty member wishes, his or her departmental chair may be included in this process as well
b. If mediation with the graduate group chair fails to satisfy both student and faculty member, the Director of BGS should be consulted. The Director of BGS will convene a committee of three BGS standing faculty members and one BGS student for arbitration. The committee will consider the opinions of the student, the faculty member, the graduate group chair, and, if appropriate, the faculty member's department chair. However, it must be understood that the opinion of the appeals committee is not binding without the consent of the lead investigator