Mapping author taxonomies and author criteria: good practices for thinking through complex authorship situations

Abstract

Authorship criteria can be difficult to apply in complex situations, such as multicenter clinical trials, multidisciplinary research, or manuscripts reporting the results of several studies. Authors may need additional guidance to appropriately credit their colleagues even when using existing accepted author criteria and/or contributor taxonomies to guide their decisions. Definitions and explanations of authorship by various editorial groups such as International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Committee on Publication Ethics, the World Association of Medical Editors, and the Council of Science Editors emphasize intellectual input and accountability. Existing contributor taxonomies list additional activities that should be credited, but do not stand in for authorship criteria or confer authorship. The literature was searched for existing guidelines for authors that suggest how to apply accepted authorship criteria to activities listed in contributor taxonomies. No publication was identified that mapped specific authorship criteria to particular contributor taxonomies. Suggestions were developed to assist in differentiating activities that meet author criteria from other contributions outlined in two existing contributor taxonomies.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

The teams that conduct and publish medical and scientific research must decide who should be listed as an author on articles and other publications. Even though journal editors provide author guidelines, members of research teams can disagree about how to use them. Certain problems occur when studies are done by large groups of researchers or by experts who do different kinds of research. This paper suggests some ways to use the guidelines from major editorial groups like the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Committee on Publication Ethics, the World Association of Medical Editors, and the Council of Science Editors. The guidelines are compared and explained, and then a specific process is outlined for using these guidelines. Charts were made to show authors how to match possible contributions to some specific author guidelines.

Keywords:

• Authorship attribution
• ICMJE
• authorship criteria
• CRediT
• publication ethics

Transparency

Declaration of funding

No funding was received for the development of the paper.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

This paper is an independent, sole-authored academic statement. The paper describes no products that might create a conflict of interest with any commercial, academic, or government entity. No medical writing support was received or hired. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the peer reviewers for their insights and patience during the peer review process.