Authorship

Who gets to be an author?

The pressure to “publish or perish” can lead to many disputes about who gets to be an author on academic manuscripts, and in what order. Writing teams are encouraged to discuss authorship early and often, with renewed conversations as roles shift.

ICMJE Guidelines

Most academic journals follow authorship conventions outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). ICMJE guidelines necessitate that authors meet all of the following criteria for authorship:

  1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.

  2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.

  3. Final approval of the version to be published.

  4. Accountability for all aspects of the work, ensuring that questions related to accuracy or integrity are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who meet one or more of the above guidelines, but not all, may be mentioned in the Acknowledgements section of a manuscript.

Guest Authorship and Other No-Nos

The politics of authorship have also led to a phenomenon known as “guest authorship,” where authors provide authorship to a individual who has not contributed substantially to the work. Usually, the individual being gifted authorship is a senior or otherwise prestigious investigator who the authors believe may make the publication look more credible.

Additionally, guest authorship may be provided from a sense of awkwardness, wanting to be generous, a tit-for-tat arrangement (“gift authorship”), or other reasons. Guest authorship is considered misconduct and is forbidden by ICMJE guidelines. Authors are encouraged to provide an Acknowledgement to individuals who may have provided informative guidance but do not meet ICMJE authorship guidelines.

Author Order

The order of authorship can vary widely by discipline, with different author orders implying different types and degrees of contribution depending on the field. Most biomedical and health sciences journals follow a commonly understood, but unofficially defined, set of ordering conventions that researchers should be aware of. In these fields, author order tends to indicate the following:

  • First author: Typically, the person who did most of the research (or other work), contributed the most intellectually, and wrote most of the manuscript. May be a faculty member or a post-doc, graduate student, or other researcher.
  • Second author: The person who did the second most research (or other work) and contributed to the manuscript.
  • Middle authors: Individuals who contributed substantially to the manuscript and reviewed the manuscript. May have been involved heavily in one aspect of the project but not others (e.g. data analysis, patient involvement, student assistant, etc). The order of the middle authors is sometimes ranked in order of contribution, or sometimes is simply alphabetical by last name.
  • Second (or third, fourth, etc.) to last authors: Often collaborating PIs who provided important discussions, mentorship or resources, but are not the primary mentor with whom the project started.
  • Last author: Often the Principal Investigator (PI) under whom the first author works. Often started the big idea underlying the project and provided mentorship, resources,  and/or funding.

First and last authorship are both considered prestigious and are usually weighed more heavily in hiring or promotion decisions.

Use of Generative AI in Manuscripts

AI is rapidly being adopted almost everywhere, including within academic manuscripts. As the landscape changes, academic journals are trying to keep pace, with rapidly changing discussions about how much AI use is allowed and how it should be disclosed. When applicable, authors should describe the use of AI within the Methods seciton of a manuscript. Currently, ICMJE currently recommends that authors also disclose the use of AI within a submission cover letter.

As the guidelines and recommendations around the use and disclosure of AI rapidly develop, researchers are strongly encouraged to closely read the submission guidelines of the journal to which they are submitting work.