Treat TB

TREAT TB Authorship Guidelines for TREAT TB Research Collaborations

These guidelines are intended to ensure that all research collaborators who participate in TREAT TB-related research activities have a clear understanding of the qualifications for and responsibilities of authorship of manuscripts submitted for publication, and to ensure that contributors to research activities are properly and fairly acknowledged for their work.

Definition of Authorship

Authorship requires that the following criteria have been met:

• Substantial participation in the conception and design of the research study or intervention, or in the analysis and interpretation of data or results;
• Substantial participation in the drafting or editing of the manuscript;
• Final approval of the version of the manuscript to be published; and
• Ability to explain and defend the study or intervention in public health or scholarly settings.

Order of Authorship

Generally, the order of authorship in the context of a multi-collaborator research model is determined by the intellectual output from each of the contributing authors. The researcher who makes the largest contribution, in terms of intellectual content, is entitled to appear as the lead author of the output, or may choose to assume any other position of his or her choice. Specifically, the lead author should meet the following criteria:

• Generated the original concept of the work to be documented;
• Performed the actual research study or field intervention (identified as the Primary Investigator);
• Analyzed and interpreted the data or supervised these processes; and
• Led the writing or actively supervised the writing of all or most of the manuscript.

If two or more authors equally meet the above requirements, the designation of lead author will be assigned to the person who a) played the more significant role in the implementation of the research study or b) wrote the largest portion of the manuscript text.

What Does Not Meet Standards of Authorship

A claim of authorship by or assignment of authorship to persons who may have been remotely associated with a research study but do not meet the aforementioned criteria is unethical and will not be accepted. The following are some examples of contributions to a research output which do not entitle the contributor to authorship:

• Participation only in data collection, conducting interviews, translation, and transcription;
• Provision of funding or physical resources to support the research study;
• Leadership of or membership in a research entity/organization under which the research was led or implemented; or
• Conceptualization of the research question/idea upon which an output was based, but without subsequent fulfillment of the authorship criteria.

Importance of Establishing the Order of Authorship

TREAT TB research activities are expected to be rooted in fairness and equity from their inception to publication, dissemination, and analysis of impact. At the outset of any TREAT TB-related research activity, all potential authors are expected to clearly establish and document agreement on the expected order of authorship. This documentation will be required before funding agreements supporting any TREAT TB-related research study will be executed. At the outset of the study, the lead author should discuss the outline of work to be done within the research activity and establish a tentative order of authorship. As studies progress, agreements regarding authorship may need to be revisited.

Research collaborators are expected to settle any disagreements over authorship in a collegial fashion, including the designation of the lead author. When disagreements cannot be settled internally among the members of a research collaboration, the matter will be forwarded to the attention of the Director of TREAT TB for resolution.