Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR)

• Author: An individual who has made substantial intellectual contributions to a scientific investigation, usually through participation in drafting, reviewing, and/or revising the manuscript for intellectual content.
• Authorship: The ability to publicly take responsibility for the contents of the project (e.g., being sufficiently knowledgeable about the project to be able to present it in a formal forum).
• Collaborative Research: Equal partnership between two academic faculty members who are pursing mutually interesting and beneficial research, or ii. research involving investigators of differing stature, funding status, and types of organizations or institutions.
• Data: Information collected for reference and analysis.
• Data Ownership: Refers to both the possession of and responsibility for information.
• Plagiarism: To steal and pass off the ideas or words of another as one’s own; literary theft.
• Presentation: A demonstration or display of a project and project findings.
• Publication: A structured and controlled means of communicating research results.

Lead Author

• Assumes overall responsibility for the manuscript and often serves as the managerial and corresponding author.
• Is not necessarily the primary investigator.

Co-Authors

Authors included in the project that are not the lead author.

Acknowledgements

Individual(s) who may have made some contribution to a publication, but who do not meet the criteria for authorship, including:

• Staff
• Editorial Assistants
• Medical Writers
• Others

The order of authorship should be based on the degree of importance of each author’s contribution to the project. This is a collective decision among the authors in a group.

Generally, examples of substantive contributions of authors include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Aiding in the conceptualization of the hypotheses.
• Designing the methodology of the investigation.
• Significantly contributing to the writing of the manuscript.

These activities are not (alone) sufficient grounds for authorship:

• Entering information into databases.
• Collecting data (running subjects, collecting specimens, distributing and collecting questionnaires.)

Faculty-student collaborations should follow the same criteria to establish authorship. Mentors must exercise great care to neither award authorship to students who contributions do not merit it, nor deny authorship and due credit to the word of students.

Forms of unacceptable authorship include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Ghost Authorship: occurs when a written work fails to identify individuals who made significant contributions to the research and writing of that work.
• Guest Authorship: granted out of the appreciation of respect of an individual, or in the belief that expert standing of the guest will increase the likelihood of publication, credibility, or status of the work.
• Gift Authorship: credit offered from a sense of obligation, tribute, or dependence, within the context of an anticipated benefit, to an individual who has not contributed to the work; also known as honorary authorship.

In the case of an authorship dispute (i.e. disagreement over authorship and order of authors), it is the responsibility of the group to resolve the problem. If a resolution cannot be reached, any concerned party from the group is encouraged to contact the Office of Research Integrity.