Authorship Principles

01 What Authorship Means

Authorship reflects real, active, engaged contribution to a piece of work. When authorship is handled well, everyone on the author list feels proud of the work, glad to be on it, and confident that the list is complete and fairly ordered. When it is handled poorly, teams become dysfunctional and professional relationships can be damaged. These outcomes are worth taking seriously.

Before an author list is finalized, everyone on it should have been given a chance to review it and to voice any concerns. The list should feel right to everyone whose name appears on it.

Authorship should not be offered or accepted as a courtesy. If someone has not contributed meaningfully to the work, they belong in the acknowledgments, not the author list.

02 Who Deserves Authorship

Anyone who has contributed in a meaningful way that influenced the work, or was key to the end product coming to be in its published form, deserves to be considered for authorship.

A useful practical test: if you have had more than one conversation with someone about your work and their comments have been useful to you, consider offering them authorship. They are free to decline if they feel their contribution was not sufficient; in that case, they should be credited in the acknowledgments instead.

The line between authorship and acknowledgment is a matter of degree and judgment, and it should be discussed openly. When in doubt, err toward inclusion and let the person decide.

03 Authorship Conversations

Authorship conversations should begin at the start of a project, so that everyone understands their intended role and can plan their contributions accordingly. These initial conversations do not set things in stone. Projects evolve, people's availability changes, and the relative weight of different contributions shifts over time. It is common and normal for authorship to be revisited.

Check in with collaborators regularly to make sure that everyone is still prepared to fulfill their intended role, and to reorganize if that is not the case. First authorship in particular carries real responsibilities that must be actively upheld. If those responsibilities cannot be met in a timely way, the conversation about reassignment should happen early, not late. See 05 — First Author Responsibilities for detail on what that standard entails.

04 Author Order

Author order follows a conventional structure with three zones, each ordered internally by degree of contribution:

Co-first or co-senior authorship, indicated by asterisk, is appropriate when two contributors have made contributions of clearly equal weight. The decision to use co-authorship designations rests with the PI.

05 Disputes

Authorship disputes happen. When they do, bring the concern to the PI early and clearly. The PI will have a 1:1 conversation with each person involved and then bring everyone together to work toward resolution. The PI has final say over authorship order.

The goal of any dispute resolution is to have authorship designations and order accurately and fairly represent the work, effort, ideas, and importance of each individual's contributions. The process is not about winning; it is about getting the record right.

06 The CRediT Taxonomy

The lab uses the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to document individual contributions to published work. CRediT provides a standardized vocabulary of 14 contributor roles, making it possible to represent the full range of contributions to a paper clearly and consistently. Many journals now support or require CRediT statements.

When preparing a manuscript, every author's contributions should be mapped to the relevant roles below. A person may hold multiple roles, and a role may be shared across multiple contributors.

Full specification available at credit.niso.org.