In last week's journal club, the IRSS stumbled across the concept of co-authorship.
It started by discussing when students ask other students or post-docs in the lab for help. The grad students didn't want to take up a lot of anyone else's time, so it was brought up: "At what point does helping a fellow student or colleague constitute co-authorship?"
This can be a particularly important question for the student/post doc providing help, because if co-authorship is involved it can provide a good amount of credit for the help provided. It is equally important for the grad student since they really don't want to accidentally snub any of their colleagues.
But we continued to discuss: "What are the rules?", "What about technical help and coding?", "If I give them co-authorship for X, do they have to help with Y?", etc.
So this is where we decided to dedicate a journal club session (and a section of our IRSS student welcome guide) to navigating co-authorship for scientific publication in the field of science - a guide for grad students!
So if we start with the basics and ask ChatGPT "what constitutes co-authorship for scientific publications?", this is what it tells us:
“Co-authorship for scientific publications typically requires substantial contributions to the conception, design, data acquisition or analysis, and/or interpretation of the results, as well as significant involvement in drafting or revising the manuscript. The exact criteria for co-authorship may vary depending on the specific field or journal, but generally, co-authors should have played a meaningful role in the research and/or writing process. Additionally, individuals who provided funding or other forms of support may also be considered for co-authorship. It is important for researchers to establish clear guidelines for co-authorship at the outset of a project to avoid misunderstandings or disputes later on. Some journals or fields may also use the term "contributorship" to acknowledge individuals who made smaller contributions to a publication.”
Makes sense. Of course, we can't/don't always want to trust AI in getting answers for us, so here are the guidelines from the Ecological Society of America, MDPI and Elsevier. (Don't worry, they're very similar and will be discussed later on.)
Who should be a co-author?
So the first important point about co-authorship is that it is someone with a substantial contribution to your paper.
That makes sense; you want to reward those who provided you with funding, expertise and resources, those who contributed to the success of the project, as well as increase exposure and visibility for your colleagues (because, like it or not, that's the academic system works! Publish or perish).
Tip #1: Co-authors are required to contribute substantially to the concept, data, data acquisition or analysis, and/or interpretation of the results, as well as significant involvement in drafting or revising the manuscript.
Who are the substantial contributors?
So you probably think there's a lot of people who provide substantial contribution to your research. But the key with co-authorship is that is should be established from the get-go. As Prof. ChatGPT tells us, it is important for researchers to establish clear guidelines at the outset of a project to avoid misunderstandings or disputes later on.
I resonate with this because this is something I had to learn the hard way during my PhD (misunderstandings and disputes were in fact, not avoided) and I feel it is a common mistake of other grad students. So, write that down.
Tip #2: Co-authorship should be discussed before writing a manuscript. Determine your core authors who will do the majority of the work and invite co-authors on as needed to fill skill/expertise gaps.
This also helps to keep the number of co-authors as small as possible and avoids just throwing down names of people who haven't [significantly] contributed.
What qualifies as substantial contributions?
There's a lot that goes into a research project, as well as publishing a paper. So to help take the guess work out it, knowing the different components help you determine who will do what.
A new way of identifying these components is called the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) author statements. I only came across these when publishing my 5th paper and let me tell you, it was a game changer. It made things so much clearer and made it so that you couldn't argue with who was co-author or not because it was all laid out for you. It definitely would have saved me some stress and a few uncomfortable conversations.
The CRediT author statements
The CRediT system was introduced from a 2012 workshop out of Harvard University and the Wellcome Trust along with input from researchers, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and publishers, including Elsevier, represented by Cell Press. It is used as a way to recognize the individual contributions of each author while promoting collaboration and limiting conflict and can be an objective way to give authors the opportunity to specifically outline their contributions to the work being published.
Tip #3: Having a clear guideline as to what constitutes co-authorship, like the CRedIT author statements is an objective way to understand different roles and contributions to your publication.
Below is a table describing the various contributions of the CRediT author statements as stated on the Elsevier website, plus an example of how these contributions may come about in grad student life.
Term | Definition from Elsevier | Examples of situations that may arise in grad student life |
Conceptualiza-tion | Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims | This is usually the principal investigator(s) of a research project |
Methodology | Development or design of methodology; creation of models | This may be committee members that help with field methods or suggestions and help with the statistical analysis |
Software | Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components | Because we can't all be software engineers or statisticians, it is likely you'll need to consult outside help at some point. This may be a committee or lab member who helps you with coding, analysis or script. ... |
Validation | Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs | ... More often than not, this counts as friendly collaboration and does not automatically grant co-authorship. However, if this person also helps with the analysis and interpretation, ... |
Formal analysis | Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other informal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data | ... it could be a good idea to invite them as a co-author. If you do - and if they accept - remember that must also commit to providing insight and input into the manuscript at a later time. |
Investigation | Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection | If you have a colleague who helps you with field data collection over several weeks or months, you may wish to invite them as co-author if they are in a similar field and can contribute significantly to the manuscript. Otherwise, you can thank them in the acknowledgement section. |
Resources | Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools | Your advisor or PI provides many resources for your projects (provided by the grants they acquire for your project) which often grants them co-authorship. But if you have other committee members or collaborators who provide equipment or instrument that your lab does not have, you can consider inviting them for co-authorship. |
Data curation | Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse | Similar example to software, validation and formal analysis described above. |
Writing the original draft | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation) | This is normally you, the graduate student. |
Writing - Review and editing | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre-or post publication stages | This is where other collaborators give the rest of their 'significant contribution' for co-authorship. Having your colleague read over a draft is not the same thing, but may warrant a thank you in the acknowledgement section. |
Visualization | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation | Anyone who helps you with figures or map generation will often have to provide a significant amount of time and may warrant an invitation to co-author. However, simply discussing visualization ideas (which plot design to use), suggesting code for figures, etc. does not usually count. |
Supervision | Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team | This is the responsibility of your advisor, PI, committee members and/or any government or industry partners you may have who provided their expertise throughout the project and contribute to the manuscript. |
Project administration | Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution | Similar to above. |
Funding acquisition | Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication | This is usually your advisor or PI unless you also have additional financial support that you personally acquired. |
How many of these 'contributions' were you aware of (or had considered) before reading this?
0 - 4
5 - 8
9 - 12
14 or more
Sample CRediT author statement:
From Weltzin et al. (2006). Authorship in ecology: attribution, accountability, and responsibility. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 4(8): 435-441. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3868870:
"P Allen contributed to initial discussions of this topic and co-refined the intellectual content of earlier versions of the manuscript. C DeVan assisted with data collection and organization for Figure 1. The survey on authorship was developed and implemented with the help of M Fitzpatrick, C Iversen, J Nagel, and L Souza. Comments from P Cole, S Collins, O Dermody, M Fitzpatrick, C Iversen, C Reilly, N Sanders, and L Souza improved earlier versions of the manuscript."
Other key takeaways
Another main takeaway that we learned from in Journal Club: Awareness is key.
Being aware of authorship at the beginning and throughout your graduate students can save you a lot of stress later on. It is also important to remember that small acts of collaboration and kindness do not guarantee co-authorship. Instead they should be a symbiotic relationship and considered a healthy exchange for practicing science. However, it could be worse to accidentally exclude someone from co-authorship than to invite them as one and have them simply decline (which has happened to me just as many times as those who have accepted).
Tip #4: Awareness is key; small acts of collaboration do not guarantee co-authorship, though it could be worse to accidentally exclude someone from co-authorship than to invite them as one and have them decline.
And last but not least: there is also some consideration that needs to be paid to the order of co-authors but these can be field-specific. For example, in natural science author order is determined by effort and contribution which often leads to the PI being listed second after the graduate student, followed by subsequential co-authors. By comparison, in the field of ecology the PI is normally listed as the last author regardless of contribution.
Tip #5: Pay attention to author order, as these may change depending on your specific field.
Take home message; tldr
Co-authorship is an important component of publishing to consider in order to acknowledge the contributions of your colleagues to the success of your publication.
Co-authorship should be determined before writing the manuscript to assign/recognize responsibility, limit the number of co-authors and avoid future conflict.
Having a clear guideline as to what constitutes co-authorship, such as the CRediT author statement.
Awareness is key to distinguish between helping with small pieces of your publication (friendly non-committal collaboration) and being awarded co-authorship (requires a significant contribution).
Don't forget to explore the specific requirements or guidelines for co-authorship in your specific field including the order of co-authors.
And as is always the case in the field of science, here are some...
Additional Readings:
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (n.d). Defining the role of authors and contributors. Accessed from icmje.org. Read the web page here
Logan et al. (2017) Author contributions to ecological publications: what does it mean to be an author in modern ecological research? PLOS ONE 12(10): e0187321; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179956
Allen et al. (2019). How can we ensure visibility and diversity in research contributions? How the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) is helping the shift from authorship to contributorship. Learned Publishing, 32(1):1-100. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1210
Weltzin et al. (2006). Authorship in ecology: attribution, accountability, and responsibility. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 4(8): 435-441. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3868870.
Thanks to all the IRSS lab members who participated in this journal club discussion including Sarah, Alex, Chris, Lukas, Kirk, Elaine, Evan and other lab members who discussed it on Slack as well.