Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.

If I have a paper to write, I usually invite the research team right in the beginning. Each one will take different topics that interest them. We also decide the authorship and decide the tasks. That way everyone is clear with what they are supposed to do. In my research career I have seen many unfair practices including giving a prominent author position to their spouses even if they have not contributed. Now that I do my own research I have learned to be very fair, decide everything in the beginning, and give appropriate credit to all including my students. It is always better to be transparent. This maintains the morale of the team and respect you a great deal.

Hope this helps.

Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.

If I have a paper to write, I usually invite the research team right in the beginning. Each one will take different topics that interest them. We also decide the authorship and decide the tasks. That way everyone is clear with what they are supposed to do. In my research career I have seen many unfair practices including giving a prominent author position to their spouses even if they have not contributed. Now that I do my own research I have learned to be very fair, decide everything in the beginning, and give appropriate credit to all including my students. It is always better to be transparent. This maintains the morale of the team and respect you a great deal.

Hope this helps.

@Susie: what a great contribution! Thank you. I totally agree with you. Let me also say that the examples you have stated, give me hope!

But I think that, sometimes, it may not be that simple. For instance, if your team has 4 researchers, all equally contributing, how do you choose who goes first, second and so on? And what if you are publishing a poster of a research project, let us say, with 10 researchers as authors?

I also think that methods such as alphabetical order are still very common (ordered by the last name, by the first... and in this cases it depends on who's the boss and who is the "favourite" or the one that "needs" the most).

Hi Helia,

In my opinion, equal levels of contribution cannot occur.

There are different levels of contribution in terms what the task is -- intellectual or execution of someone's scientific ideas.

The first author is usually is the main person with creativity and critical thinking and solely in charge of the manuscript until it gets published.

The second author is mainly the person who conducts statistical analysis and writes most of the paper. So this person is is executing the work based on the first author's idea. The third author who usually has the role of perhaps major editing and further suggestions to fine tune the paper. The forth one if any probably assisted the team or the second author in the analysis. So these four individuals together produced this particular paper.

In my line of work, it is the placement of the authorship-- fist, second.. that is given a weighted score (first author preferred) in assessing the merit of scholarly activity which is also used for promotion and tenure.

Obviously critical thinking skills are weighed the highest rather than someone who executes your ideas in the form of statistical analysis. Hope this helps clarify different levels of contribution. Just like some are born scientific thinkers and some are good with numbers and statistics. I see this clear distinction in people so it is not that difficult to assign roles matching with their abilities. Hope this helps.

here are some guidelines from ICMJE:

http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html

Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.

When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name.

Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. The NLM indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript; it also lists the names of collaborators if they are listed in Acknowledgments.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.

Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.