Promoting equity, inclusion, and efficiency: A team science approach to the development of authorship guidelines for a multi-disciplinary research team

Large research teams and consortia present challenges for authorship. The number of disciplines involved in the research can further complicate approaches to manuscript development and leadership. The CHARM team, representing a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional genomics implementation study, participated in facilitated discussions inspired by team science methodologies. The discussions were centered on team members' past experiences with authorship and perspectives on authorship in a large research team context. Team members identified challenges and opportunities that were used to create guidelines and administrative tools to support manuscript development. The guidelines were organized by the three values of equity, inclusion, and efficiency and included eight principles. A visual dashboard was created to allow all team members to see who was leading or involved in each paper. Additional tools to promote equity, inclusion, and efficiency included providing standardized project management for each manuscript and making "concept sheets" for each manuscript accessible to all team members. The process used in CHARM can be used by other large research teams and consortia to equitably distribute lead authorship opportunities, foster coauthor inclusion, and efficiently work with large authorship groups.

Addressing the vexed issue of authorship and author order: A discussion paper

AIMS

To review and discuss authorship and author order in the context of nursing and midwifery publications and to present a set of principles to guide and justify author order.

BACKGROUND

Variation in author order trends is evident across different authors, disciplines and countries. Confusion and conflict between authors give rise to important issues concerning ethics and collaboration and may delay publication. Lack of transparency in authorship practices also impedes judgements when individual contributions are used in support of employment, promotion, tenure and/or research funding applications.

DESIGN

Discussion paper.

DATA SOURCES

A literature search of BioMed Central, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), MEDLINE with Full Text and PubMed for original peer-reviewed papers published in English between 2007 - 2017, in the disciplines of nursing and midwifery.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING

Much is written about authorship practices across disciplines and countries. Despite existing authorship guidelines, author order remains an area of confusion and contention. Disputes about authorship and author order have the potential to cause distrust and breakdowns in research relationships, thereby disrupting nursing and midwifery scholarship and research. The main issues concern honorary and ghost authorship, authorship versus acknowledgement, confusion about collaboration, author order, research students as co-authors, equal author credit and the need for explicit guidelines.

CONCLUSION

Good communication and mutual respect are crucial to the authorship process. However, clear instructions are needed to guide decisions on authorship and author order. It is recommended that the "first-last-author-emphasis" be adopted uniformly internationally across nursing and midwifery research.

Launching Successful Beginnings for Early Career Faculty Researchers

Junior faculty follow a research path replete with challenges as they strive to create knowledge in their area of interest while balancing new responsibilities. Unlike graduate school, where students focus inward on personal development, junior faculty must add responsibilities in ways that hold them accountable as members of a university. This special article deals with three themes of interest to new junior faulty launching research programs: personal development, collaboration and team development within university settings, and funding advice. Strategies in these areas provide guidance on navigating early careers and finding success in the academic setting.

"Political co-authorships" in medical science journals

The issue of co-author relationships on medical sciences journal publications has become more pronounced as advances in technology have enabled collaboration across countries and institutions to occur much more efficiently. These relationships often have underlying political motivations and outcomes, including career advancement, attempting to increase prestige of a project, and maintaining research grants. Some authors may be listed as senior or honorary authors despite offering little or no contribution to the original research project. This may be done in an effort to enhance the gravitas of a research project, and attain publication in a highly regarded medical journal. The current review covers the topic of political co-authorship and germane literature and lists strategies to combat this phenomenon. Such co-authorship practices corrupt the integrity of the research process as they attempt to bypass the safeguard that medical journals and institutions have put in place to prevent fraud and falsification. A number of strategies have been proposed to combat the practice of co-authorship, but it may ultimately be an unavoidable feature of contemporary medical research publishing that is difficult to police. Clin. Anat. 30:831-834, 2017. © 2017Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Strategies to Build Authorship Competence Among PhD Students

Publication in refereed journals is an important responsibility of PhD-prepared nurses. Specialized writing skills are crucial for effective professional publication. The capacity to develop and publish articles is best learned during doctoral education. This Western Journal of Nursing Research Editorial Board Special Article addresses multi-dimensional strategies to develop authorship competence among doctoral students. The article outlines structured PhD program experiences to provide the context for students to develop authorship capacity. The authors identify multi-faceted faculty endeavors and student activities that are essential to foster authorship competence. Students who embrace opportunities to acquire authorship qualifications will be well prepared for their post-graduation role as stewards of the nursing discipline.

Individual motivation and threat indicators of collaboration readiness in scientific knowledge producing teams: a scoping review and domain analysis

This paper identifies a gap in the team science literature that considers intrapersonal indicators of collaboration as motivations and threats to participating in collaborative knowledge producing teams (KPTs). Through a scoping review process, over 150 resources were consulted to organize 6 domains of motivation and threat to collaboration in KPTs: Resource Acquisition, Advancing Science, Building Relationships, Knowledge Transfer, Recognition and Reward, and Maintenance of Beliefs. Findings show how domains vary in their presentation of depth and diversity of motivation and threat indicators as well as their relationship with each other within and across domains. The findings of 51 indicators resulting from the review provide a psychosocial framework for which to establish a hierarchy of collaborative reasoning for individual engagement in KPTs thus allowing for further research into the mechanism of collaborative engagement. The indicators serve as a preliminary step in establishing a protocol for testing of the psychometric properties of intrapersonal measures of collaboration readiness.

Normalizing Rejection

Getting turned down for grant funding or having a manuscript rejected is an uncomfortable but not unusual occurrence during the course of a nurse researcher's professional life. Rejection can evoke an emotional response akin to the grieving process that can slow or even undermine productivity. Only by "normalizing" rejection, that is, by accepting it as an integral part of the scientific process, can researchers more quickly overcome negative emotions and instead use rejection to refine and advance their scientific programs. This article provides practical advice for coming to emotional terms with rejection and delineates methods for working constructively to address reviewer comments.