Authorship Guidelines for Manaaki Taha Moana These Guidelines apply to all publications and public outputs from the Manaaki Taha Moana research programme, including but restricted to: monographs, reports, journal articles, books, conference papers, software and so forth. Authorship is a serious issue as provides a permanent record of who did the research and their relative contribution to the piece of research in question. This is becoming more important in the universities and in other New Zealand research organisations where we are increasingly being scrutinised in terms the quantity and quality of our research outputs. The suggested guidelines are for listing people as authors:
Inclusive List of Authors. To be consistent with the Project Principles/Kaupapa and our
interdisciplinary team based approach, the list of author should be inclusive rather than exclusive. This is because in projects of this character many people often contribute to the publication, and rarely is it just one individual. Recognition of All Contributions in the Research Lifecycle. Everyone who has contributed to the final product should be included, not necessarily just restricted to the authors of the final manuscript. This includes every who materially contributes to the research from the inception of the original research idea, through to its execution and to final write up and publication. Authorship therefore may legitimately be claimed for: o Conceiving the original idea o Research/Science Leadership which is particularly important when there is a complicated research project that requires much integration/co-ordination o Literature Reviewing that contributed to the publication o Methodological or experimental design o Data analysis o Data interpretation o Theoretical interpretation o Other interpretations such as cultural perspectives and policy implications o Design and conceptualisation of the Manuscript o Writing some or all of the Manuscript o Internal critical review of draft the Manuscript and re-drafting Authorship cannot be claimed legitimately for: o Routine tasks such as formatting/word processing, preparing graphics (eg, drawing graphs), routine data collection (eg doing e.coli tests on water samples) and so forth. These ‘routine’ contributions can however be listed in the acknowledgement, along with the name of the funders and external reviewers.
o “Gift” authorship. This is for naming a person who doesn’t meet the above criteria –eg, the Head of an Academic Dept. This reasonably common practice in some research institutions and research cultures. Descending Order of Contribution. The authors should be listed in descending order of importance in terms of there contribution to the publication. Normally the person that wrote most of the manuscript should go first, but this isn’t necessarily the case. The person who goes as the first author would normally need to be able to defend and present the findings of the publication publicly –this is particularly important in Manaaki Taha Moana. If it is difficult to list authors in terms of descending order of contribution, then the first author is listed with the rest in alphabetical order. With this practice of alphabetical ordering, if possible, this should be explicitly pointed out in the publication. The principle of quid pro quo, should be applied only rarely –that is, when it is difficult to decide relative order of contribution or first authorship, this is ‘shared around’ so that by the end of the research programme matters are equitable. Consent. Researchers will not add or delete authors names from the publication without their consent. An author can delete their name from the publication if they do not agree with the contents of the publication, and they are free to write a rebuttal or counter-view elsewhere for publication. Process of Deciding Authorship. The question of authorship and order of authors should be as appropriate be discussed amongst all potential authors, in light of above guidelines. The final decision should be made by the Science Leader of Manaaki Taha Maoana, in direct consultation of the Primary/Leading Author.
Murray Patterson, Science Leader, Manaaki Taha Moana 31/3/2011