Guidelines Regarding Authorship
The purpose of this document is to clarify the expectations of statisticians involved in the design, analysis, or reporting of research studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Specifically, it seeks to clarify expectations regarding authorship.
General guidance
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has made the following statement regarding authorship [1] :
Authorship Requirements. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. Authorship credit should be based only on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; and (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met.
Similar statements have been made by the Council of Science Editors [1] and the NIH [2, 3] . For a more complete consideration of the topic of authorship, we refer you to Macrina [4] and to the ICJME policies on authorship and contributorship [5].
In addition, the American Statistical Association, in its “Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice” states that statisticians have the following “Responsibilities in Publications and Testimony” [6] :
1. Maintain personal responsibility for all work bearing your name; avoid undertaking work or coauthoring publications for which you would not want to acknowledge responsibility. Conversely, accept (or insist upon) appropriate authorship or acknowledgment for professional statistical contributions to research and the resulting publications or testimony.
2. Report statistical and substantive assumptions made in the study.
3. In publications or testimony, identify who is responsible for the statistical work if it would not otherwise be apparent.
4. Make clear the basis for authorship order, if determined on grounds other than intellectual contribution. Preferably, authorship order in statistical publications should be by degree of intellectual contribution to the study and to the material to be published, to the extent that such ordering can feasibly be determined. When some other rule of authorship order is used in a statistical publication, the rule used should be disclosed in a footnote or endnote. (Where authorship order by contribution is assumed by those making decisions about hiring, promotion, or tenure, for example, failure to disclose an alternative rule may improperly damage or advance careers.)
Intellectual Property
at VCU
Virginia Commonwealth University’s policy on ownership of intellectual property may be found at http://www.research.vcu.edu/p_and_g/ippolicy.htm. It recognizes that “In higher education, the right of faculty and others to create and produce Copyrighted Works and to receive royalties generated from their use has long been recognized.” The intent of this document is to clarify the expectation that the faculty “shall retain all rights relating to publication, preparation of derivative works, distribution, and classroom use of works which they have prepared on their own initiative, including both papers published in scholarly journals or books, theses, and dissertations, ....” These copyrighted works are not created “as an assigned duty” nor do they make “make significant use of Univeristy facilities and resources”, under the definitions in this policy. As a result, works created by a project statistician are subject to copyright protection.
As early as possible, the responsibility of the various research collaborators should be discussed and authorship should be clarified. As all the parties are committed to the success of the project, most difficulties may be avoided. If not, the university policy also includes a section on dispute resolution (see http://www.research.vcu.edu/p_and_g/ippolicy.htm). The NIH also has recommended processes for authorship dispute resolution (see http://sourcebook.od.nih.gov/ethic-conduct/Authorship%20Dispute%20Resolution%20Panel.pdf).
Possible Exceptions
Payment or other compensation for statistical analysis does not exempt the statistician from authorship consideration. That is, if a statistician is paid or otherwise compensated, this has no bearing whatsoever on authorship.
Occasionally, the contribution of the statistician may be “trivial.” For example, a t-test is performed and the author is shown how to write it up. This, in and of itself, would not justify authorship. Both the researcher and the statistician may judge, in these cases, that authorship of the statistician is not expected. Specifically, statistical analysis is not usually “routine technical work.” Statistical analysis most commonly involves critical scientific considerations that bear directly on the soundness of the work and the clarity of the publication. So, the researcher and statistician should clarify their expectations, roles and responsibilities early.
Exception for thesis-only publication: The graduate student is the sole author of the document required by the Graduate School of Virginia Commonwealth University. Copyright for the thesis is thus registered by the graduate student. If the project statistician has been substantially involved in the research, then acknowledgement is expected in this document.
Position Statement
Typically, the project statistician may be involved in any of the following: clarifying the goals/purpose of the study, establishing the study design, specifying the variables used in analysis, establishing the statistical analysis plan, executing the statistical analysis, writing the first draft of the results section, creating tables and figures, and reviewing the full draft report. As such, the project statistician may have made a “substantial contribution” to the work, may have “drafted” or “revised” the documents, and it may be wise for the researcher to seek the project statistician’s “final approval of the version to be published”. And so, in conclusion the following expectation may be stated:
Expectation:
Since the project statistician typically meets all of the conditions for
authorship, authorship is expected.
Further information
This document was written by Al M. Best, Associate Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University. It solely reflects his understanding and is not the official policy of the University. He may be contacted by email: ALBest@VCU.edu or phone: 804-827-2045.
References
1. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Jama, 1997. 277(11): p. 927-34. jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/277/11/927. Also see: International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals. Available at: http://www.icmje.org.
2. Institute of Medicine Committee on the Responsible Conduct of Research, The responsible conduct of research in the health sciences. 1989, Washington, DC: National Academy of Science Press. www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=1388
3. NIH Committee on Scientific Conduct and Ethics, Guidelines for the Conduct of Research at the National Institutes of Health. 4th Edition. 2007. http://sourcebook.od.nih.gov/ethic-conduct/Conduct%20Research%206-11-07.pdf
4. Macrina, F., Authorship and Peer Review, in Scientific Integrity: Text and Cases in Responsible Conduct of Research. 2012. Amazon.com
5. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Ethical Considerations in the Conduct and Reporting of Research: Authorship and Contributorship. http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html
6. Committee on Professional Ethics, Guidelines for Statistical Practice. 1999, American Statistical Association. www.amstat.org/committees/ethics/