Authorship issues: one research center's experience with developing author guidelines.

The data are in and the primary analysis is done. It has been 5 years since the principal investigator had the initial idea for the project, and since then many people have joined and left the funded research team. The study team consists of three coinvestigators; one of whom left the university partway through to pursue interests elsewhere. Other members of the team include a project coordinator and a data clerk. Over the 5 years there have been a number of summer students, internship students, and various support staff who have come and gone. Several occupational therapists at five sites were involved in data collection. As analysis is nearing completion, the team is planning for publications and presentations of the results. Two comprehensive papers are planned. There are many potential secondary papers. The coinvestigator who left the university has reconnected and is interested in analyzing the cost-effectiveness data. A master’s student is analyzing some data for her thesis under the principal investigator’s supervision. There has been no discussion about authorship, and team members are unclear about their roles and unsure of how much effort to put into the various papers. Scenarios similar to the one above may be familiar to researchers in the rehabilitation sciences who work on collaborative projects with either colleagues or students. As the number of collaborators from different disciplines and different sites increases, determining authorship on papers, abstracts, and presentations can become a complex task. Previously in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT), Stern (2000), suggested that AJOT should make explicit its expectations about authorship using the American Psychological Association (APA) criteria for authorship. She also urged individual research groups to formalize their internal policies on authorship. Members of our university-based multidisciplinary research unit, CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research, decided to develop guidelines to acknowledge the importance of authorship and to prevent possible misunderstandings. This paper reviews the issues around authorship and describes the process we used to develop guidelines for authorship on journal articles, abstracts, presentations, and manuals. In academic and research environments authorship is particularly important as publications are a measure of a researcher’s productivity and are used when making decisions on hiring, promotion, and tenure. The complex nature of authorship may increase in a university setting where there is a need to support student education and growth while balancing the need to build one’s own curriculum vitae. For these and other reasons, authorship is an important issue that warrants discussion and agreement on clear guidelines. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) determined three minimum requirements for authorship on manuscripts submitted to medical journals: “(1) Substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data AND (2) Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content AND (3) Final approval of the version to be published” (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [ICMJE], 1997). The APA has published guidelines for determining authorship of manuscripts: “Authorship is reserved for persons who receive primary credit and hold primary responsibility for a published work” (American Psychological Association [APA], THE ISSUE IS Authorship Issues: One Research Center’s Experience With Developing Author Guidelines