AUTHORSHIP AND PUBLICATION

William R. Brinkley,Ph.D
brinkley@bcm.tmc.edu
713-798-5263

What’s at stake?
Integrity and trust
Reputation in your profession
Grant support
Jobs and promotions
Intellectual property
Who owns the data?
AUTHORSHIP AND PUBLICATION

Decisions:
When is it time to publish?
Authorship: Who will the principle author, coauthors
and in what order on the manuscript? Who should not
be an author.
What journal?
General or specialty journal
Brief note or full paper?
Impact factor
Speed of publication
Book chapter, review articles
 AUTHORSHIP AND
PUBLICATION
PROCESS:
SUBMITTING AUTHORS

JOURNAL OFFICE
MANAGING EDITOR

REVIEWERS (2-3)

MANAGING EDITOR(Decisions:
accept, revise, reject)
 Deciding on Authorship
"Each author should have participated sufficiently in the
work to take public responsibility for the content. This
participation must include : (a) conception or design, or
analysis and interpretation of data, or both; (b) drafting the
article or revising it for critically important intellectual
content; and (c) final approval of the version to be
published. Participation solely in the collection of data
does not justify authorship." British Medical Journal 291,
722 (1985).
 Criteria for Authorship
Council of Science Editors

• Design
• Supervision
• Resources
• Material
• Data Collection
• Analysis&/or Interpretation
• Literature Search
• Writing
• Critical Review
 Criteria forAuthorship
Contributions that may NOT justify authorship by
themselves can be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments
section. These include
• technical help
• financial and material support
• administrative support
• clerical or editorial contributions
 Peer Review
The following could constitute a conflict of interest in peer
review
• Reviewing a manuscript/grant from a PI at the same
institution
• A potential personal financial gain or loss based on
your decision
• A direct scientific advantage based on your review
• Holding a competitor's manuscript unduly long to delay
publication
• Using information gained in a confidential review to
further your own research
 Peer Review
A peer reviewer is expected to
• have sufficient expertise to evaluate the submission
• provide a timely review
• maintain confidentiality of the review process
 Peer Review
An author/principal investigator is expected to
• submit original work that has not been previously
published (unless clearly cited)
• submit accurate data
• provide appropriate attribution to the work of others
• share materials after publication
 SYMPOSIUM BAYLOR COLLEGE OF
MEDICINE----June 2005

Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, Seoul National Univ.

Korea. Published in SCIENCE, 2005
 2005--- South Korean scientists develop first
human embryonic stem cell lines (hESCs) claimed
to be customized to match injured or sick patients

2006 ---CLAIM
CHALLENGED---PAPER
WITHDRAWN FROM SCIENCE—SOUTH
KOREANS RESEARCHERS ADMIT THAT
DATA WAS FAKED----DIS-HONORED
 Woo Suk Hwang and G. Schatten

Dr Schatten was the whisleblower, but he was also

the co-author on the Science paper—is he at
fault?
 What would you do?
Bob Powell, a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry, has just
completed a manuscript detailing the results from the first
project in which he had taken a leading role. The focus of
his project has been to discern the ways in which humans
metabolize sulfites, a class of chemicals commonly used to
preserve wines and dried fruits. Although he had
developed the rough outlines of the project on his own, he
owes much to individuals both inside and outside his lab.
As he is writing up the paper, he deliberates on making the
following people coauthors to recognize their contribution
to the work. Who should be coauthors?
 What would you do?
Author or NOT?
A colleague at another university, a toxicologist specializing
in food additives, shared with Bob his unpublished work
on the in vivo activity of sulfites, information that allowed
Bob to choose the ideal animal model for the experiment--
the Abyssinian field mouse.
 What would you do?
Author or NOT?
A friend of his, who happened to be a wildlife specialist,
provided Bob with much advice on rearing and
maintaining a colony of Abyssinian field mice such that he
would have a stable pool of animal subjects.
 What would you do?
Author or NOT?
A highly experienced technician in the lab gave Bob advice
on modifying an assay he had been using, which finally
allowed him to measure successfully sulfite metabolites in
mouse urine. This technician also assisted in writing up
the methods section of the paper.
 What would you do?
Author or NOT?
The number of assays that Bob had to conduct was quite
sizable and more than he could manage on his own, given
other demands of the project Thus, an undergraduate
college student collected most of the urine samples and
conducted the assays yielding the data.
 What would you do?
Author or NOT?
A senior researcher in a neighboring lab who took an interest
in Bob’s career offered to review the initial drafts of Bob’s
paper. By the end of the writing process, this researcher
had helped Bob outline the paper, suggested a few
additional experiments that strengthened the paper’s
conclusions, and made a number of editing changes in the
penultimate draft that enhanced the paper’s clarity.
 What would you do?
Jim Gibbons is a respected investigator in the area of HIV
infection. His laboratory is currently trying to develop
new peptide-based reagents for inhibiting the initial
interaction of the virus with T-cells. The work is
progressing well, and he and his postdoc, Helen Andrews,
are finishing off the final experiments showing that
bacitracin, a small peptide antibiotic, is a potent inhibitor
of this interaction. Dr. Gibbons received a manuscript in
the mail from the editor of a prestigious journal asking him
to review a manuscript that had just been submitted to the
journal.
 What would you do?

The first page of the manuscript bore the title, "Bacitracin

is a potent inhibitor of HIV infection of T-cells." The
authors were unknown to Dr. Gibbons and were located at
a different institution.
 What would you do?
A. Review the manuscript. After all, Gibbons is an
eminently qualified reviewer
B. Hold the manuscript as long as possible while you finish
your manuscript
C. Return the manuscript to the journal – after reading it.
D. Return the manuscript to the journal – without reading it.
E. Contact the author and advise him of the situation.
 When does a scientific
discovery become public
domain?
• On the date the discovery is first presented in a public
forum as a poster, seminar or talk.
• On the date of acceptances as an abstract for a national
meeting?
• When it is written in a thesis or dissertation and
accepted by your Graduate Program and Dean?
• When the dissertation is accepted by the school’s
library and entered into the library’s official catalog?
• On the date the paper is finally and formally accepted
for publication by a professional journal?