Authorship: references and further reading

Internal

• The Bristol Doctoral College has guidance for PGR on academic publishing, the peer review process, successfully choosing journals to target for publication.
• Library research support at UoB provides guidance for academic publishing regarding acknowledging funders, co-authors and other sources of support.
• The Responsible research assessment page has information about responsible use of metrics and bibliometrics in publication matters.
• The Research Governance Team provides guidance on good research practice, training, policies and quality assurance.
• For further information on transparency and reproducibility in research publication, see the University’s statement on transparency in research.

Within handbooks, there is some discipline specific guidance on Authorship:

• On page 49 of the Bristol Medical School Handbook for Postgraduate Research Students & Supervisors on Policies, Procedures and Useful Information
• On page 27 of the School of Geographical Sciences Handbook for Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs) and Supervisors 2020-2021.

Please see the Research Governance and Integrity Policy, and Regulations on Research Misconduct  and University Policy on Academic Integrity for further policies that may relate to authorship and publication.

External

• The American Institute of Physics (AIP) Publishing features information for obligations for authors, including re-use of material from conferences.
• In their publication on the ‘ethical guidelines for education research’ the British Educational Research Association (BERA) have a section on responsibilities for publication and dissemination from bullet points 72 to 83, with a particular focus on authorship on bullet points 78-81.
• UoB is a supporter of CASRAI. They provide a Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) outlining and defining 14 distinct roles of: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal Analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
• The Council of Science Editors and the British Sociological Association features information about authorship negotiations and disputes, attributing authorship or acknowledgement, ordering of authors, and journal considerations.
• COPE provides a wide range of resources, cases, flowcharts, guidelines seminars & webinars, forum discussion topics and discussion documents on authorship and contributorship.
• The Institute of Physics (IOP) has an ‘Introductory guide for authors’ for early-career researchers who are beginning to write papers for publication.
• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has general guidance on the importance of authorship and defining the roles of authors and non-author contributors and best practice about ordering authors.
  They recommend that 4 criteria are met to be an author:
  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
• In the Medical Research Council (MRC) ethics series entitled ‘Good research practice section Principles and guidelines’ there is information relating to authorship, publication and peer review in the section ‘Reporting and disseminating research’ from points G1-G8 on pages 16-17.
• The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has a simple infographic on authorship practices to help avoid conflicts.
• UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) has a range of resources on authorship and publication including guidelines and discussion documents, references and webinars and videos and as part of their code of practice. Their 10 day authorship challenge provided resources for days 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and 9.