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A Worksheet for Authorship of Scientific

Articles
ARTICLE JANUARY 1987
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A Worksheet for Authorship of Scientific Articles

Author(s): Robert H. Schmidt
Source: Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), pp. 8-10
Published by: Ecological Society of America
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and
tural crisis that everyone understands
that no one questions
is the crisis of profits.
have a strategy for coping with
Ecologists
that crisis, which is to develop ways of re
ducing material inputs to farming. This, and
not the ephemeral notion of sustainability, is
what we should be communicating to others,
and what we should be using in planning our
studies. After all, there is a revolution going
on, and like other revolutions it has a very
simple and practical idea at the heart of it. If
we concentrate on that idea, the idea of re
ducing conventional, costly inputs to agricul
ture, we will participate fully in the revolution,
and will enjoy the benefits, including sustain
ability, that are going to flow from it.
(Based on a talk given at the IV Interna
tional Congress
of Ecology, Syracuse,
NY,
15 August 1986.)

Cacek,

T.,

and

L.

L.

1986.

Langner.

The

economic
implications of organic farm
American
Journal of Alternative Ag
ing.
riculture 1(1):25-29.
1970. Biological conser
Ehrenfeld, D. W.
vation (p. 131). Holt, Rinehart and Win
ston, New York, New York, USA.
R.

Frisbie,

E.,

and

P.

IPM: Definitions
U.S.

agriculture.

L. Adkisson.

and current
Pages

41-51

1985.

in

status
in M.

A.

Hoy and D. C. Herzog, editors. Biologi

cal control in agricultural IPM systems.
Academic Press, New York, New York,
USA.
in reverse:
1986.
Extension
Rodale, R.
farmers lecture experts. The New Farm
8(6):26-29.
Ruttan, V. W. 1986. Increasing productivity
and efficiency inagriculture. Science 231 :
781.

Literature Cited

J. 1986. Many farmers are prosper

ing in New England. The Wall Street
Journal (12 February 1986):6.

Wong,

1985. Council gives farm prof

Anonymous.
itability top priority. Alternative Agricul
ture News 3(11) (November):2.
1986. Help FONE help you.
Anonymous.
The New Farm 8(1 ):30-35.
B?ttel, F. H., et al. 1986. Reduced-input ag
ricultural systems:
rationale and pros
American
Journal
of Alternative
pects.
Agriculture

David Ehrenfeld
Cook College
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08903

1(2):58-64.

A WORKSHEET

Inclusion as an author in a scientific publi

for
cation is important to many ecologists
reasons of prestige and advancement.
Pub
lications are a key factor in deciding on pro
at universities
motions
for many ecologists
Croll
and
Prados
1983,
(Jackson
1984). The
order of listed authors on a paper is assumed
to be an indication of the relative contribution
of each of the included authors.
Croll (1984), Kennedy
Day (1983:15-19),
(1985), and Jackson
(1986) reviewed con
in
temporary difficulties with decision-making
assigning authorship. Dickson et al. (1978)
proposed guidelines for determining inclusion
and ranking in authorship of a scientific pub
lication. They divided research investigations

FOR AUTHORSHIP OF SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES

into five areas: conception

(including fund
data
data analysis,
collection,
ing), design,
and manuscript
and recom
preparation,
mended that authors need to make, at a min
imum, a significant contribution inmanuscript
preparation and in at least one other area.
Authorship order was determined by a rank
ing of the number of areas in,which signifi
cant

contributions

were

made.

This paper details a method for assisting

in (1) deciding who is to be listed as an au
thor on a paper, and (2) the ordinal ranking
of authors listed on a paper. Of course, the
best procedure
for dealing with potential
is to deal
problems in assigning authorship
with the issue at the beginning of a study.

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status

project. Values
would
be between

of a worksheet
in a
for determining
the relative contributions
of participants
example
a natural cutoff for authorship
In this exapmle,
listed are percent
relative contributions.
C and D. Authorship
Technicians
ranking should be Leader A, Leader B, and Tech

nician

C. The

in parentheses

1.

Table

Format

and

research

number

Conception

is a multiplier

(see

Design

Data
collection

(1.0)

(1.0)

Investigator
Leader A
Leader B
Technician C
Technician
Column totals

50
50

040
040
0
100
100

in retrospect,

seem

unfair.

The

trend toward multiauthored papers may indi

cate how research is becoming increasingly
interdisciplinary. In these situations a method
for defining authorship roles becomes useful.
This simple technique should be a useful de
cision-making aid, especially for projects with
many researchers involved.
A general framework for a decision-making
worksheet, with an example, is given inTable
1. For each of the five parts of the research
investigation (as defined by Dickson), the rel
ative contribution of each participant is as
sessed.
For each part, total contributions
should equal 100%. When all contributions
have

been

assigned,

row

values

are

added,

resulting ina "score" of between 1 and 500.

The relative contribution of all participants can
then be assessed,
and a natural break be
tween subsets of scores on the lower end of
contributions can be used as a cutoff to de
lineate inclusion as an author. Scores can
then be ranked for order of authorship.
This technique has a number of assump
tions. First, it assumes
that each of the five
a
of
research
parts
investigation are weight
ed equally. In some situations, this may not
be

the

case.

For

example,

study

may

Data
analysis

re

quire minimal funding, the infrastructure of a

principal investigator's laboratory may be es
sential to a successful
project, or the data
set may be collected over several years. This
situation is easily dealt with by weighting the
unbalanced part with a multiplier. For exam

Writing

Total

(1.0)(1.0)

70
250
0 30 110
30 30100

0
20
0
0 40

100

100

roles can have

However, even preassigned
complications, especially when personnel on
a project change, or when responsibilities are
transferred. In addition, people often under
estimate the inputs required, especially time,
for the various contributions, making
initial
agreements,

for details).

(1.0)

90
10
DO

text

40

500 100

pie, all values in the "data collection" column

can be multiplied by 1.2, if data collection is
judged to have been 20% more important
than

the other

areas.

that all
Secondly, this technique assumes
contributions can be judged fairly and accu
rately. This may not always be the case; in
deed, itmay be that this technique would only
be necessary
for papers where it is difficult
to assess contributions. Two points are sug
gested for resolving this. Itmust first be rec
ognized that each contribution score is usu
ally

an

estimate,

and,

as

such,

has

some

error associated
it.
with
corresponding
Therefore, the difference of only a few points
between participant's scores is probably not
sufficient to rate relative contributions, and
other methods must be utilized to determine
authorship ranking (perhaps even the flip of
a coin). As the second point, a consensus
type survey system, such as the Delphi sys
tem (Schuster et al. 1985), may be useful as
an in-house tool for resolving difficult author
ship assignment problems, although it is rec
ognized that assigning authorship is rarely a
democratic

process.

How are contributions

assessed?
One
method that could be used is the actual time
(hours, days, years) put into each of the five
parts of the research investigation. A key
problem here is the importance of experi
ence. For example, how would you compare
a two-hour contribution to a project's design
from a person with 30 years of experience
with a two-hour contribution from a person
with little or no experience? Another method,
admittedly subjective, is an assessment of the
"importance" (relating to intellection) of con
tributions

in each

area.

Again,

type survey can be helpful

a consensus

in arriving at an
9

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The
acceptable and agreeable assessment.
development of some criteria for better as
sessment
of contributions
is needed. Time
should be minimized, while intellectual contri
bution should be maximized, yet it is easy to
visualize a project in which time is a real
measure

of effort.

Finally, there is a situation which involves

teams of workers
involved in one of the five
parts. A realistic example would be having
many workers assisting indata collection. Al
though the team's contribution may be large
(perhaps 100% of the data collection), the
relative contribution of each team member is
small. The "points" given to this team may
then be assigned to the team coordinator or
leader. There is some question whether a
"technician"

should

ever

be

a coauthor,

es

pecially ifhis or her sole responsibility is data

collection or data collection and analysis,
when the analysis
is limited to performing
routine operations rather than interpretation
(Dickson et al. 1978).
Itmust be repeated that this system for
determining authorship of scientific articles
should not replace consultation among au
it should be useful in delin
thors. However,
relative
individual
contributions when
eating
there are many, and it can help project co
ordinators or senior authors identify person
nel who have contributed in a significant way
to a study's conclusion. Authorship is a sym
bol that means
taking responsibility for the
contents of the paper (Jackson 1986). If the
responsibility is there, inclusion as a co-au
thor is appropriate. This worksheet should be
helpful in defining this responsibility.

Tomasi,

D.

P. Moyle,

R.

Anderson,

J. Tully,

Johnson,

T. Salmon.

and

LITERATURE CITED
Croll, R. P. 1984. The noncontributing au
thor: an issue of credit and responsibili
inBiology and Medicine
ty. Perspectives
27:401-407.
Day, R. A. 1983. How to write and publish
a scientific
ISI, Philadelphia,
paper.
Pennsylvania, USA.
Dickson,

J. D.,

R. N. Conner,

and

K. T. Adair.

1978. Guidelines for authorship of sci

entific articles. Wildlife Society Bulletin 6:
260-261.
Jackson,

C.

I.

1986.

in science.

Honor

ma Xi, New Haven, Connecticut,

Jackson,

C.

J. W.

I., and

Sig

USA.

Prados.

1983.

Honor in science. American Scientist

71 :

462-464.

Kennedy, D. 1985. On academic author

ship. American Council of Learned So
cieties, Office of Scholarly Communica
tions
and
Technology,
Scholarly
Communication Reprint 4:1-5.
Schuster,

E. G.,

S.

S.

Frissell,

E.

E.

Baker,

and R. S. Loveless, Jr. 1985. The Del

phi method: application to elk habitat
quality. United States Forest Service In
termountain Research Station Research
Paper INT-353.
Robert H. Schmidt
University of California
Hopland Field Station
4070 University Road
Hopland, CA 95449

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For helpful comments
C.

Shugart,

W.

Howard,

on this essay,
J. Aloi,

Ithank

R. Case,

T.

EDEX: ECOLOGICAL DATA EXCHANGE?A

We would like to plant a seed. We all know

that there exists a rapidly growing mass of
forest plot data in file drawers and/or com
puter files all over the world. In 1,10, or 100+
years, long after the demise of the current

PROPOSED

RESOURCE

owner, these data will be of enormous value

to ecologists/foresters
of that time in docu
To
menting long-term changes inecosystems.
shift from talking about it to doing it,we offer
data listed in the accompanying
catalog to

10

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