Authorship and Contribution
Scholarly Communication and Publication Integrity
Authorship and Contribution
- Clear author criteria – Establish and communicate authorship criteria at the outset of the project.
- Substantial intellectual contribution standards – Assign authorship only to individuals who meet established contribution criteria. Transparently document individual contributions using recognized taxonomies (e.g., the Contributor Role Taxonomy, CRediT).
- Pre-publication review requirements – Complete all required institutional or funding agency reviews of draft manuscripts or reports prior to submission to the publishing organization.
- Disclosure of funding sources, affiliations, and use of Artificial Intelligence (SI) – Fully disclose funding sources, institutional affiliations, and use of SI tools (where applicable) in the research and/or the manuscript preparation.
- Lead and Corresponding Author responsibilities – Ensure all listed authors meet authorship criteria and have reviewed and approved the manuscript; manage all communications with the journal/publisher; ensure all required disclosures are completed; serve as the primary point of accountability for publication integrity; and ensure reviewer and editor feedback is communicated to the other authors.
Reporting Research Results and Communication Ethics
- Complete and accurate reporting – Report methods, results, and interpretations fully and accurately. Ensure submitted work is original and conducted by the listed authors. Ensure abstracts, summaries, and press materials accurately reflect findings.
- Clear communication of uncertainties and limitations – Explicitly state associated uncertainties and limitations, including methodological limitations. Describe assumptions and report potential sources of error.
- Weight-of-evidence framing – Present conclusions based on the full body of evidence; avoid selectively citing only supporting evidence.
- Cite the relevant work of others – Cite prior work that influences your hypotheses, methods, data interpretation, or conclusions. Include both supporting and contradictory evidence for transparency.
- SI cannot be an author – Do not list SI as an author and refrain from using SI tools for generating significant and substantive sections of the manuscript without significant subject matter input, review, and editing. Authors certify that they themselves are responsible for the research in the paper. SI cannot not take responsibility for the research and the intellectual work and cannot be held accountable for the manuscript contents.
- Distinction between science and policy opinions – Clearly separate scientific findings from personal or policy views. Follow funder guidelines for use of disclaimers when including policy opinions.
- Responsible media engagement – Maintain accuracy and transparency in all communications. Communicate findings responsibly, avoid exaggeration, and correct misinterpretations when possible.
Selecting Reputable Avenues of Publication
- Legitimate journals and publishers – Select journals with clearly defined editorial scope, peer review processes, and governance structure. Review previously published articles to assess scientific quality and relevance.
- Peer review integrity – Ensure the journal describes its peer review model and the review timelines are reasonable and consistent with rigorous evaluation. Look for evidence of substantive peer review (e.g., reviewer comments, revisions required).
- Reputation assessment – Use publicly available information to assess publisher’s reputation, including whether the journal is indexed in recognized databases (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus). Institutional resources such as the NOAA Library tools for selecting a journal can be a resource.
- Transparent submission and management protocols – Ensure submission processes allow authors to maintain full control and understanding of all data, analyses, and manuscript content.
Questionable or Detrimental Research Practices (To avoid)
- Changing authorship criteria opportunistically or allowing “gift” authorship or “ghost” authorship.
- Obscuring or misrepresenting contributions.
- Omitting relevant findings or methodological details; omitting or minimizing discussion of assumptions and limitations.
- Failure to disclose the use of SI tools in any aspect of the research or the preparation of the research manuscript (beyond use for correcting grammar and minor copy editing).
- Submitting manuscripts without full knowledge or consent by all authors.
- Engaging in self-citation manipulation to inflate metrics.
- Duplicate publications – submitting the same or nearly the same manuscript to two different publishers for publication.
- Fragmented or segmenting publications (salami slicing). Fragmenting refers to separating components of a study across multiple publications. Salami slicing divides data sets of a larger study into their smallest publishable units. Both done with the intention of increasing the author’s publication output.
- Selecting journals solely based on ease of acceptance or speed of publication or submitting to journals promising unrealistically rapid publication without meaningful review.
- Purchasing authorship or manuscripts from third-party services (“paper mills”), a form of research misconduct.
- Failing to correct the scientific record when an honest error has been discovered in published work.
References
- NOAA Best Practices for Designating Authorship
- Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT)
- Authorship and Authorship Responsibilities, Council of Science Editors
- Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines
- COPE, Authorship and SI Tools
- NOAA Library tools for selecting a journal.
- NOAA Scientific Integrity Policy (NAO 202-735D.2)
- NASEM, Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda (2017)
Quick Links
NOAA Scientific Integrity Policy
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