Authorship Guidelines

What is it about?

This article is all ablut AUTHORSHIP, its benefits and consequences. I recently gave a lecture to the faculty and house officers in my department on the topic of submitting a manuscript for publication. I covered how to choose a journal, the importance of following the instructions for authors, responsibilities of authorship, communications with the editor, misuse of figures and tables, linking cited references to Medline and PubMed, what happens at the journal office, and what reviewers look for during the peer-review process. When I entertained questions, 7 individuals raised their hands. It turned out that 6 of the 7 questions were about authorship criteria, and each question related to a specific circumstance that the questioner had encountered or was currently encountering. Why did the fact that authorship issues challenged my colleagues come as no surprise? In my files I have a 1953 editorial, published in Circulation Research, on trends in authorship. In this editorial, Robert Alexander lamented the fact that scientific publications had “become afflicted with an increasing tendency towards multiple authorship of papers,” a problem that would “degrade authorship into a form of menial patronage.” In 2010, I ran across no fewer than 12 editorials on ethical issues associated with authorship, one of which inspired the title for this article. One would expect that the rules of authorship would be understood 58 years after Alexander wrote his editorial, but many of the same problems still exist. Even for a seasoned author and journal editor, what should be black and white can start off as gray. So what is the younger author to do? Fortunately, guidelines are available to help researchers and authors deal with issues of who should be an author and when the threshold for authorship has been met. The goal of this article is to introduce you to current guidelines on authorship and how journals are applying them.

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Why is it important?

Although one English equivalent of the French word paternité is “paternity,” the word also means “authorship.” Being or claiming to be a father carries responsibilities, and so does being or claiming to be an author. The process of deciding authorship can put one in an awkward position. Fortunately, there are guidelines available from respected organizations that can help in sorting out problems and determining who has passed the paternité test.