How do you agree on authorship with fellow researchers?

Prof. Mark Israel (Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services) has kindly given permission for this hypothetical case study to be reproduced.

You have been invited to join a multinational, multidisciplinary U21 collaborative team looking at the impact of Free Trade Agreements on the working practices of lawyers. While the project is being established, the team start to allocate responsibility for possible research outputs. Various suggestions are made about who should be authors. You hear the following comments:

* In my discipline, the whole research team would be given authorship.
* My university needs me to put my name on every publication that comes out of this collaboration.
* In my country, author order follows seniority.

How would you respond?

Reference can be made to the guidelines relating to criteria for authorship set out in the HKU Policy on Research Integrity, as well as the external documents cited in the Policy:

• HKU Policy: Authorship Criteria
• ORI Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research: Authorship Criteria
• The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity: Authorship Criteria
• Singapore Statement on Research Integrity: Authorship Criteria

In addition, reference can be made to the guidelines on criteria for authorship contained in the following documents:

• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations: Authorship Criteria
• Case Study from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): What constitutes authorship

Photo courtesy of photolib@hku.hk