Pardee Center Authorship Guide

Authorship is an important issue in research and policy because it assigns both credit and accountability for intellectual contributions to products arising from work performed, whether they are written publications, models, or datasets. Credit for contributions is essential to career development within academia as well as within professional fields of research and analysis. It is especially relevant for early career researchers, because it is a key determinant of career advancement, can involve decisions that are not clear-cut, and can be subject to social dynamics including power relationships.<br><br>This document is intended to serve as a guide to Pardee Center staff to help develop a shared understanding of the criteria for authorship, the process of determining authorship, and how disagreements on authorship might best be resolved. No set of guidelines can, by itself, establish norms, determine appropriate authorship in all situations, or resolve all disputes. However guidelines can provide a basis for developing such norms and shared understandings over time. The document is informed by both common practices in other fields and institutions, as well as by the particular circumstances of the Pardee Center. It therefore applies not only to authorship of peer-reviewed publications (for example scientific journal articles), but to all substantive publications of the Center, including reports for clients and working papers.<br><br>In this guide we first propose a set of standards for determining contributions that merit authorship and discuss how these standards apply to typical projects (and associated publications) at the Pardee Center. We then describe key considerations for deciding author ordering and other ways of recognizing contributions to publications. We also discuss a number of suggestions for the process of determining authorship. We conclude with short descriptions of hypothetical authorship situations intended to help clarify this guidance.