Establishing authorship
As per the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, only
individuals that make substantive intellectual contributions to the project should be listed
as authors and the order of authorship should be based on the degree of importance of each
author’s contribution to the project. The latter may be difficult to establish in disciplines,
such as particle physics, where a team of several dozen, perhaps even over one hundred
contributors, may author a single paper. Authorship entails the ability to publicly take
responsibility for the contents of the project (e.g., being sufficiently knowledgeable about
the project to be able to present it in a formal forum). What determines whether a
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contribution is substantive or not is a matter of debate and, technically, it should not matter
whether the aim of the collaboration is an internal technical report, a conference
presentation, or an article targeted for refereed journal. Generally, examples of substantive
contributions include, but are not limited to, aiding in the conceptualization of the
hypotheses, designing the methodology of the investigation and significantly contributing
to the writing the manuscript. “Mechanical” activities, such as entering information in a
database or merely collecting actual data (e.g., running subjects, collecting questionnaires)
are not sufficient grounds for authorship, but should be acknowledged in a footnote. In
addition, “honorary” or “courtesy” authorship assigned on the basis of some leadership
position (e.g., such as being head of the department where the research is carried out) must
also be avoided.
GUIDELINE 24: Only those individuals who have made
substantitve contributions to a project merit authorship in a paper.