Publishing is an essential way of presenting the results of scientific endeavors and discoveries to the outside world, thus contributing to the body of knowledge. Authorship is a researcher’s main instrument to gain credit for scientific work. Because it has important academic, social, and financial implications, authorship must be assigned fairly and reported honestly. As authorship is often a contentious issue, Amsterdam UMC researchers and research groups are encouraged to discuss this topic and related cases with colleagues or at research meetings.
1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND 2. Drafting the work or revisin it critically for important intellectual content; AND 3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides useful information and tools (flowcharts, checklists, cases) on the subject of authorship and for managing potential disputes. Moreover, the American Psychological Association (APA) has an interesting tool to determine authorship and the order of author listing.
The term ‘authorship’ refers to both sole or first authorship and co-authorship.
All persons who fulfil the requirements for authorship should be offered authorship.
All persons designated as authors should meet the criteria for authorship. Thus, an ‘author’ is generally someone who has made substantial intellectual contributions to a research publication. Not fulfilling or only partially fulfilling these requirements is not in line with research integrity standards. The ‘senior’ or supervising author (usually the study’s principal investigator; PI) has to take responsibility for ensuring these requirements are met.
An author must take responsibility for at least one component (with respect to content) of the work described and should be able to identify who is responsible for the other components. He/she should have no reason to doubt his/her co-authors’ ability and integrity. Some journals request and publish information about the contribution of each person (‘qualified authorship’) named as having participated in a submitted study, at least for original research.
Authorship is preferably agreed upon and documented in an early phase of the research project.
Agreements about publications and authorship can be included in research collaboration agreements (see also Chapter 'Research collaboration agreements'). However, early agreements about authorship are provisional as contributions may change over time and therefore need to be discussed again. The study’s PI must coordinate discussions about authorship. The bottom line is that all authors must meet the four ICMJE criteria above.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or merely general supervision of the research group or department where the research took place does not justify authorship.
Demanding or accepting an authorship for which one does not qualify (gift authorship or honorary authorship) is a breach of research integrity.
Leaving out someone who does qualify as an author or not giving such a person the opportunity to qualify (e.g. by not asking for input on drafts of the article) is a breach of research integrity.
Types of authorship and other contributions
With respect to the author list, there are huge interdisciplinary differences in views regarding the acceptable numbers of authors and the significance of the various order positions.
First author: it is customary for the researcher who did the majority of the work and prepared the first version of the manuscript to be listed as the first author. That will often be the PhD student or postdoc working on the research project. If the first and second authors contributed equally, this can be mentioned as shared first authorship in a footnote (‘these authors contributed equally to this study’).
Last author, also referred to as senior author: usually the researcher who is most broadly involved in the successive components of the project (conception and design, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation), and has taken on most responsibilities with respect to supervision of the first author or authors. As with the shared first author construction, shared last authorship (‘joint last authorship’) can be acknowledged in a footnote.
Corresponding author: the first or last author is usually the corresponding author. There might, however, be good reasons to assign this role to another author, for example if the first/last author will be leaving the group soon after publication.
Other authors: the remaining authors are listed in order of contribution. In some cases, however, the order is based on other principles (e.g. alphabetical order or balancing authors from different contributing disciplines or institutes). The order in which the authors are listed should be a joint decision, in which the last author ultimately decides after consulting all authors (see below).
Guarantors: 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. This is usually combined with information on ‘qualified authorship’, in which all authors specify for which part of the publication they are responsible (while still fully meeting the criteria for authorship).
Group authorship: when a large, multicenter group has conducted or contributed to the work, the group should identify those individuals who fully meet the criteria for authorship defined above, and accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. Such manuscripts may be published with these individuals as authors, or may be submitted with the group as author. In the latter case, the individual authors need to be listed as ‘collaborators’ under a separate heading. The intention to use group authorship instead of individual authorship should preferably be discussed in the early phase of the project.
In an acknowledgments section of a manuscript, contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship may be listed as ‘collaborators’, ‘clinical investigators’ or ‘participating investigators’, with their title, function and specified contribution. Those included need to consent to being listed and for the way they are listed, by approving the final version of the manuscript.
Financial and other substantial material support for the project should always be mentioned in the acknowledgements or funding statements section. In the case of research that involves human participants, this requirement is laid down in the Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (Wet Medisch-wetenschappelijk Onderzoek met Mensen, WMO). These funding statements are complementary to the Conflict of Interest Disclosure Forms filled out by each author, as standard procedure for manuscript submission to a journal. This obligation of disclosure also applies to sponsorship of journal supplements in which authors publish original or review articles. Sponsors and parties with whom sponsorship has been agreed (authors, journal editors and others) have a mutual responsibility to disclose these potential conflicts of interest.
Professional considerations when preparing publications
Members of a research group involved in a joint research study must not prepare separate publications without the prior consent of the other members. Any proposal to use the results of a project for special publications (e.g. a thesis) not envisaged at the start of the project should be agreed upon by the research group as a whole. Finally, it is prudent to designate at the start of a research study a senior researcher (usually the study’s PI) who will be responsible for resolving any possible conflicts regarding publication of the work.
