From: tostbye@uwovax.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: WANTED: "Offical" rules of authorship
Organization: University of Western Ont, London
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 14:16:06 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.133758.7921@unixg.ubc.ca>, keith@msmri.med.ubc.ca writes:
> Does anybody know of any rules and/or guidelines for authorship 
> written or endorsed by a recognized organization.  Such organizations
> would include funding agencies, research journals, universities, 
> governmental bodies, professional associations or any other 
> appropiate bodies.
> 
> Any information on how the rules and/or guidelines are enforced, 
> if at all, would also be appreciated.  If there 
> is enough interest I will post a summary of any e-mail I receive.
> 
> 
> Keith S Cover
> Physics, UBC
> Vancouver, BC
> Canada
> keith@msmri.med.ubc.ca 
> 
An International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has developed a
document named "Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to bio-
medical journals". All the 'big' medical journals follow these
requirements (JAMA, New England J of Medicine, BMJ, Lancet etc.)

The document deals with formatting and layout, but also about more
substantive matters. The following is the section "Authorship". The
full document can be found in: NEJM 1991; 324(6): 424-8.

---------
AUTHORSHIP
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. The
order of authorship should be a joint decision of the coauthors. Each
author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public
responsibility for the content.
Authorship should be based only on substantial contributions to
(a) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to
(b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual
content; and on
(c) final approval of the version to be published.
Conditions (a), (b), and (c) must all be met. Participation solely in the
acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship.
General supervision of the research group is also not sufficient for 
authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusion msut be
the responsibility of at least one author. A paper with corporate (collective)
authorship must specify the key persons responsible for the article; others
contributing to the work should be recognized separately (see Acknowledgements)
Editors may require authors to justify the assignment of authorship.
--------
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
At an appropriate place in the article one or more statements should specify:
(a) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship.
such as general support by a departmental chairman
(b) acknowledgement of technical help
(c) acknowledgement of financial and material support, specifying the
nature of the suppport;
(d) financial realtionships that may pose a conflict of interest.
Persons who have contributed intellectually to the paper but whose
contributions do not justify authorship may be named and their function or
contribution described - for example "scientific adviser", "data collection"
or "participation in clinical trial". Such persons must have given their
permission to be named. Authors are responsible ofor obtaining written
permission from persons acknowledged by name, because readers may infer their
endorsement of the data and conclusions.
Technical help should be acknowledged in a paragraph separate from those
acknowledging other contributions.
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