Clear, transparent, and timely communication for fair authorship decisions: A practical guide

Authorship conflicts are a common occurrence in academic publishing, and they can have serious implications on the careers and well-being of the involved researchers, as well as the collective success of research organizations. In addition to not inviting relevant contributors to co-author a manuscript, the order of authors, as well as honorary, gift, and ghost authors are all widely recognized problems related to authorship. Unfair authorship practices disproportionately affect those lower in the power hierarchies – early career researchers, women, researchers from the Global South, and other minoritized groups. Here we propose an approach to preparing author lists based on clear, transparent, and timely communication. This approach is aimed to minimize the potential for late-stage authorship conflicts during manuscript preparation by facilitating timely and transparent decisions on potential co-authors and their responsibilities. Furthermore, our approach can help avoid imbalances between contributions and credits in published manuscripts by recording planned and executed responsibilities. We present authorship guidelines which also include a novel authorship form, along with the documentation of the formulation process for a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary center with more than 250 researchers. Other research groups, departments, and centers can use or build on this template to design their own authorship guidelines as a practical way to promote fair authorship practices.