MaP Lab Authorship Policy (2006)

Authorship is a complex topic, in large part due to the never ending push in academics to publish more articles (promoting ‘guest’ authorship; for excellent reviews on authorship, see M. Grieger, 2005 or L. Claxton, 2005). In the MaP Lab, authorship is based on making significant contributions to all aspects of a given project.

Specifically, authorship is based on:

1) Significant contribution to the conception and design; 2) Significant contribution to analysis and interpretation of data; 3) Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 4) Final approval of each submitted version of the article. Authors must meet all four conditions. Data collection or acquisition of funding does not justify authorship. (This policy is a variant of the ICMJE Authorship and Contributorship guidelines).

Related considerations and implications:

While the MaP Lab authorship policy is relatively strict, it was adopted to ensure that authorship reflects genuine intellectual contributions (and also eliminates problems associated many authors; cf., D. Kennedy, 2003).

Authorship is considered on a project-by-project basis, as contributions for one project do not transfer to another.

Typically, the first author is a graduate student or post–doctoral student identified at the onset of a project who takes the lead on all aspects of the project (in consultation with the principal investigator, PI, who is usually the last author), including writing the first draft of the article.

The list of authors and authorship order is made (by the first author and the PI) at the time the first draft of the article is written, as it is often not possible to assess significance of contribution until that time (i.e., after the dust settles).

To exclude potential authors, it is sometimes useful (if not amusing) to use the following rules of thumb: 1) If the person did not exist (or could be replaced by another person), would the project be significantly different? If the answer is “no”, they should not be an author as there was no intellectual contribution; 2) If a person’s contribution was no greater than that of an astute manuscript reviewer, they should not be an author (or why not add reviewers to the author list?).

For the PI to be listed as an author on any article (e.g., associated with a collaboration outside the laboratory), all authors must qualify for authorship based on the above conditions. If it is determined that an ‘author’ does not qualify for authorship (e.g., if someone is added to a project after it has been initiated, making it impossible to fulfill all conditions for authorship), the PI will remove himself from the project (thus becoming a ‘ghost’ author; see authorship review links above). Regarding authorship, it is better to be a ghost than a guest.

Potential collaborators take notice – the MaP Lab technical resources are only utilized for true collaborations (where all collaborators satisfy all authorship criteria). If your established paradigm was run using our resources (e.g., fMRI or ERPs), no one would qualify for authorship. Furthermore, we maintain a focused research program and our technical resources are utilized at full capacity, so we only consider potential collaborations within our core areas of interest.