Lecture 4 .

How to list authorship and references

Prof. Jilong Shen, Ph.D

Department of Parasitology AMU ， Key Laboratory of Zoonoses Anhui
 1. Authorship
• Authorship represents a researcher’s
contribution to science

• Used to judge academic value and

assigning reward
 Vancouver Group positive author definition

• It was referred to as a standard issued by

the Intl Commit Med J Edt (known as
Vancouver Group) 17 years ago

Which confirmed the authorship in cover

letter or signed statement and
• confirm that you qualify as an author.
 An author should contribute to:
• (1) conception and design or analysis and
interpretation of the data;
• (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for
important content;
• (3) final approval of the version to be submitted
and published
• (4) taking responsibility for any part of the paper
critical to its conclusions
Funding or data collection
or general supervision does not justify authorship

No contribution...
 Regrettably 25% of the authors contributed
nothing to the published work!

Shortly after that , Vancouver Group definition was

abandoned

• The conference of “authorship” in biomedical science

held in Nottingham, UK, 1996 abandoned the definition

• Instead, the concept of Contributorship was raised

 An example of Contributorship
---- an author should:
• （ 1 ） carry out the experiment, help in data
analysis
(2) contribute to paper writing
• （ 3 ） involve the design, implementation,
and data analysis
（ 4 ） involve in the execution of the
experiment (trial), biochemical interpretation,
data management and analysis, and quality
assurance of the assay
• Generally, researchers take some items
of both standards
 Unfortunately:

• 1/3 of the US postdoctoral fellows are

happy to list someone as an author who
did not deserve it.
• This has potential to provide someone with
the opportunity of falsification

Plagiarization? No!
• Do not name the “Ghost Authors” in the list of
authors who had unacknowledged contribution
to your work
• Do not believe that inclusion of his/her name will
make publication more likely.

Undeserved
rewards!
• The order of authorship should be a joint
decision of the co-authors
• Medline limits the number of authors (below 24
plus the corresponding author, 25 totally)
• Do not confuse the author/contributor with
acknowledgement
• Decide who is the author before you start
study (because authorship disputes arise
when the work is completed and a paper
has been written) He should…

boss
Let’s pay great respect to those scientists…

（ who were listed in the authors but lost their lives in anti-
Ebola at Kenema Government Hospital, Kenema, Sierra
Leone ）
 2. Acknowledgements:

• Appears at the title page footnote or as an

appendix to the text (most commonly)
• Infer Endorsement
• A written (sometimes oral) permission is
necessary from the person acknowledged
by name , because readers may infer
his/her endorsement of the data and
conclusions
• Many journals expect the source of funding for the
research:financial or material support ( the nature of support
should be specified)
• State if there is any conflict of interest (according to the
instructions to the authors)
• List the funding body(ies) and any commercial links
• Give thanks to any person who enabled the study to
proceed but not achieve the authorship
(e.g., your colleague, technician, nurse, statistician,
and those who gave you assistance in providing
samples, materials, or polishing language)

I appreciate…
• Technical help (acknowledged in a
seperate paragraph)
• Relationships that pose a conflict of
interest
• 1. funding source (s)

2. Any personal assistance in materials and

methods, comments, and language polishment
Examples
 3. How to write references
• References are foundation on which your work is
built (where?)
• And background that justifies the research you
have done (why?)
• Collect your Ref. before you start research
project (when?)
• Avoid investing months’ even years’ time to
discover your findings that have been confirmed
in previous studies (what?)
 Referencing your paper
• After you complete your research, and your
literature search, you will finally reach the stage
of writing.
• Refer to the previous works by placing markers
in the text that refer to references cited in the
Ref. list at the end of your manuscript, to explain
• why you did the research
• what methods you used
• What is (are) the key finding(s) you have
obtained when compared with the work of others
 Searching the literature
• Search from the electronic bibliographic
databases
• Simple, quick, sophisticated, (sitting at a
computer in a few minutes can complete
your search that previously required many
hours in a library through reading the
large volumes of Index Medicus
 Medline
Many databases are available but two most
widely used are Medline and EMBASE

• Medline (United States National Library of

Medicine) covers all fields of medicine and
health, contains 11million citations from
about 5400 journals
 EMBASE
• EMBASE (Excerpta Medica database
produced by Elsevier science) has more
European emphasis than Medline, useful
for searching non-English citations,
particularly valuable in psychiatry,
pharmacology, and biomedical
engineering.
 Common databases
• Cochrane Library (for clinical trial)
• AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine Database);
• ASSIA (Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts)
• BNI (British Nursing Index
• HMIC (Health management Information Consortium)
• CINAHL(Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health
Literature) for searching nursing
• …….
• Seek advice of librarian
 PubMed
• most widely used search interface
• Gives access to a free, easy, search
version of the Medline Database provided
by the US National Library of Medicine:
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez)
Only provides one bibliographic database:
Medline
 OvidSP
• Offers access to a wide range of
bibliographic databases: Medline,
EMBASE and PsycINFO
• The interface is more complex than that of
PubMed
• But it is a powerful and sophisticated
search tool
• Seek advice of your local library
Type keywords, authors’ names, or the title of the paper

e.g. Ebola vaccine

PubMed search
• An abstract can be displayed
• Sometimes, abstract is not available
• Both PubMed and OvidSP offer the facility
to View, save ,print, or email, even save
the references in a format that can be
exported to references management
software, such as EndNote
Using search box given by a journal homepage

• Entering a topic of interest will result in a

list of relevant articles, if full-text, however,
is available depends on the local
subscription unless the journal is freely
accessible

• For instance:
 Always remember:
• Read the original publications rather than
the citations because 78% of citations are
“cut and pasted” from a secondary source!

The only way to know what the paper says is to read it.
 Search papers by reading review
articles
• Sometimes, no matter how hard you make
your literature search, you will miss some
references
• Read one or two review articles that may
provide gateway to the literature you want.
• If your careful search gives rise to a large
number of references, this may indicate
that your field of interest is complex
• Ask for help from the expert or librarian
 Managing your references
• Storing the papers in alphabetical order by the
topic of interest ( I preferably use), or by the
name of first author
• Use reference management softwares:
• Frequently used: EndNote or Reference
Manager (both are produced by Thomson
Reuters)
• You may import citations from PubMed into your
software (ask your colleagues for
troubleshooting)
 Follow the publication of others

• References format varies from journal to

journal
• Examine the format of your references
follow the instruction for authors or
• publication of other researchers (I prefer to
use) of the journal to which you plan to
submit the manuscript.
• Limit the number of references (comparable to
the length of IMRAD sections)
• Reference format:
• Vancouver format 1997 edition (references are
numbered consecutively as they appear in the
text, in Arabic numerals in brackets)
• Example:
Consecutive numbering of references in the text

Vancouver format
Vancouver
format

Consecutive numbering of references as they

appear in the text
 Harvard format
• References are cited in the text by giving
the name of first author and the year of
publication in brackets, in the bibliography
at the end, references are listed in
alphabetical order by author).
• Example:
Harvard
format
 Harvard
format

Alphabetical
order of the
author’s name
 Cited journal article
• Surnames and initials of authors.
• Full title of paper.
• Title of journal (italic).
• Year of publication;
• Volume Number (bold letter):
• First and last page numbers of article
• Example:
Shen JL, Wang L, Zhang AM. Strain of
Chinese 1 genotype of Toxoplasma gondii
induces immune response bias in murine
model. Parasites and Vectors. 2012;
18:273-278.
References
 Language
Fluent
Simple and direct
Precise
scientific
No much additive word
 Basic Requirements

To be professional

Keep consistency

Avoid any mistake

 Approaches to Improve
Writing Ability

Literature reading:
“Only through reading thousands of books can one
write fluently” ( 读书破万卷，下笔如有神）
Practice more
Revision by others:
“ In the company of three one always can find a
teacher”. （三人行，必有我师）
Paper Example