Authorship rules on scientific publications at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering

General rules

A number of fundamental interdisciplinary arrangements are complied with concerning authorship on scientific publications:

• Within the research units there is an open communication culture on authorship on publications between supervisors, doctoral researchers, and everyone involved in research activities.
• Specific arrangements on authorship are made as early as possible when a research project or experiment is started, at least before writing of the publication begins. These arrangements take into account the commonly accepted rules for author positions in the discipline concerned. In joint consultation with all persons concerned a clear explanation will always be given as to why someone will or will not be mentioned on the publications.
• Each author on a publication has made a substantial contribution to the study, and has read and approved the text of the publication. On the other hand one needs to be attentive that everyone who has made a substantial contribution is also effectively mentioned as one of the authors.

Author contribution statements

Doctoral students are asked to indicate the contribution of each author in the research chapters of their doctoral dissertation.

• Example 1: Author contributions: AA performed the optimization of xxx, prepared the samples and analyzed the data. BB and CC performed the mass spectrometry of the samples. XX performed the phylogenetic analysis. YY and ZZ supervised the study and were involved in critical analysis of the data, manuscript corrections and discussion.
• Example 2: Author contributions: AA and BB performed the wet lab experiments. CC performed the RNA seq analyses of the samples. XX performed the microscopy. AA wrote the manuscript. YY and ZZ designed the experimental setup, supervised the study and were involved in critical analysis of the data, manuscript corrections and discussion.

Additional resources

• recommendations concerning scientific authorship made by the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)
• publication in Nature (2012) on this subject matter: Dance, A. (2012). Authorship: who’s on first? Nature 489, 591-593

Questions or problems concerning authorship on scientific publications may be reported to the Faculty’s contact person on this matter, Prof. Luc Tirry.