Policies & Procedures

Policy for Authorship on Scientific and Scholarly Publications

Effective Date: February 2002

Research and other scholarly publications, defined as articles, abstracts, presentations at professional meetings and grant applications, provide the main vehicle to disseminate findings, thoughts, and analysis to the scientific, academic, and lay communities. They represent an important factor in promotions, academic programs, and success in peer-reviewed grant applications. Authorship on research and other scholarly publications carries with it a large number of responsibilities for the planning, conduct and reporting of research results and the content and conclusions of other scholarly work.

The purpose of the following principles is to expressly define Washington University's policy on authorship of papers to safeguard this fundamental element of the scientific and scholarly process. This policy applies to authorship disputes of students, staff and/or faculty members.

Authorship should be restricted to those individuals who have met each of three criteria: (a) made a significant contribution to the conception and design or the analysis and interpretation of data or other scholarly effort, (b) participated in drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for content, and (c) approved the final version of the manuscript.
In the case of papers with multiple authors, the senior author (generally the first or last author) has the responsibility for: (a) including as co-authors all those who meet the three criteria defined in Part 1 of this Policy and excluding those who do not; and (b) obtaining from all co-authors their agreement to be designated as such, as well as their approval of the final version of the manuscript. Of course, any person can refuse to be a co-author if they elect to do so.
Co-authors assume full responsibility for all work submitted under their names and, as a co-author, acknowledge that they meet each of the three criteria for authorship as defined in Part 1 of this Policy.
Honorary or courtesy authorships are inconsistent with the principles of this Policy and, as such, are unacceptable.

Knowing, intentional or reckless violations of these principles are considered research misconduct as defined by the Washington University Research Integrity Policy and will be referred to the appropriate Committee on Research Integrity (CRI). The Research Integrity Policy can be found at: www.wustl.edu/policies/research.html.

The foregoing definitions do not deal with disputes regarding the order of authorship on papers. It is impossible for the University to define the order of authorship, nor would it be appropriate to develop any guidelines that should be used in agreeing upon this. Only the coauthors can make these informed judgments. Should disputes about the order of authors fail to be resolved, the chair or head of the department(s) should be consulted in an effort to resolve the dispute. Such complaints do not, in and of themselves, constitute research misconduct and, as such, they are not governed by the University Research Integrity policy.