Resource of the Week #125: Some Revised Criteria for Authorship

Hello again.

When a journal article results from research by a group of people, which group members qualify to be listed as authors? Over the years, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has addressed this question.

Last month, the ICMJE released a revised set of criteria for authorship. The criteria appear in the document “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals”. Former versions of this document, dating back to 1979, were titled “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals”.

The newly listed criteria for authorship are as follows:

“Authorship requires:

• Substantial contributions to: the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”

The first 3 criteria are essentially the same as before. The fourth criterion is newly added.

“Authorship involves not only credit for the work but also accountability,” states an announcement of the new ICMJE recommendations. The announcement and recommendations include discussion of the criteria.

What do you think of these criteria? To express your views, please provide a comment below.

Until the next post—

Barbara