Research and Authorship Guidelines
The collection storage and use of research data obtained through
personal, intra, or extra-mural funds must follow certain guidelines
consistent with the ethical conduct of research. Ideally these steps
should include at least the following points which should be
documented and retained in the files of the project. The Principal or
Co-Principal investigator should assume responsibility for developing
procedures for documenting and retaining these records and for
training all members of the project team on the implementation of
these procedures and the responsibility of each project team member in
implementing and complying with these procedures and guides.
1. The research questions being addressed, a detailed set of
methods for collecting data, including the inclusion and exclusion
criteria for subjects, methods of sampling should be described.
2. Procedures need to describe in detail procedures used to protect
human subjects and all approvals from Hospitals, Universities,
agencies and all single and multiple project assurances as demanded by
Federal and State agencies must be on file. All changes and
modifications to protocols must be dated and approvals from the University
Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (UCRIHS)
and site IRB's must remain on file
3. All data collection documents and codebooks must be on file and
accessible to all project participants. All data must be retained for
the time period specified by the granting agency and data destruction
must be consistent with agency guides.
4. Data storage of data must be in a manner consistent with the
codebooks and organized so that all staff and approved others may
access the data for use as defined by the PI and in agreement with the
research staff.
5. Copyrighted or patented information deriving from data collected
must be approved through the appropriate university committees.
These requirements are consistent with current university documents
on research data and follow procedures set down by granting agencies
and the University. These statements should be tested against those
contained in the MSU Research Handbook of 1985; the University
Research Council on Guidelines on Data Management.
January 15, 1998
(For all academic units which have not adopted their own written
policies)
1. Authorship - A person claiming authorship of a scholarly
publication must have met the following four criteria:
a. substantial participation in conception and design of the
Study, or in analysis and interpretation of data;
b. substantial participation in the drafting of the manuscript or
in the substantive editing of the manuscript;
c. final approval of the version of the manuscript to be
published;
d. the ability to explain and defend the study in public or
scholarly settings.
(note: these criteria follow closely those recommended by several
professional associations. See especially the International Committee
of Medical journal Editors, Annals of Internal Medicine 1988;
108:258-65.)
2. Acknowledgment - Contributions that do not justify authorship
should be acknowledged separately in the notes to the manuscript.
These may include general supervision of a research group; assistance
in obtaining funding, or technical support.
3. "Honorary Authorship" - A claim of authorship by, or
assignment of authorship to, persons who may have been associated in
some way with a study but do not meet the four criteria in item 1 may
constitute an unethical research practice.
4. Graduate Student Authorship -"Faculty should be especially
aware of their responsibility to safeguard the rights of graduate
students to publish the results of their research." (MSU
Research Handbook, 1985, p. 16, section 4.3.1.)
5. Senior Author and Order of Authorship - The Senior Author is
generally defined as the person who leads a study and makes a major
contribution to the work. Senior authorship should be established by
all of the authors at the outset of a project, preferably in a written
memorandum of understanding. This memorandum of understanding should
reference the authors' agreement to abide by their departments' policy
on authorship or these University Guidelines on Authorship. At the
outset of the study the Senior Author should discuss the outline of
work and a tentative Order of Authorship with the study participants.
As projects proceed, agreements regarding authorship may need to be
changed. It is the responsibility of the Senior Author to assure that
the contributions of the study participants are properly recognized.
6. Disputes Over Authorship - Disagreements over authorship, (e.g.,
who has a right to be an author or the order of authorship) should be
resolved by the Senior Author in collegial consultation with the other
authors. When resolution cannot be reached by this process, the Senior
Author should arrange with his or her Chairperson for arbitration by a
knowledgeable and disinterested third party acceptable to all the
authors. If the authors cannot agree on a mutually acceptable
arbitrator, then the Vice President for Research shall appoint an
arbitrator. During the arbitration process all the authors are
expected to refrain from unilateral actions that may damage the
authorship interests and rights of the other authors.
7. Accountability - Every author listed on a publication is
presumed to have approved the final version of the manuscript. Each
author is responsible for the integrity of the research being
reported.
8. Plagiarism - The word plagiarism is derived from the
Latin plagliarius, an abductor, and plagiare, to steal.
The expropriation of another author's text, and the presentation of it
as one's own, constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism, in turn, constitutes
misconduct in scholarship under University policies and procedures.
Plagiarism in scholarly projects should be reported to one's
Chairperson, Dean or the University Intellectual Integrity Officer.
(American Historical Association, Statements on Standards, 1993,
p. 13)
9. Distribution - This policy should be widely distributed,
especially to each new faculty, graduate student and research staff
member in academic units.
Notice in the MSU Research Handbook and the MSU Faculty Handbook
that: Financial records, supporting documents, statistical records,
and all other records pertinent to an award [including research data]
shall be retained for a period of three years from the date of
submission of the final expenditure report or, for awards that are
renewed quarterly or annually, from the date of the submission of the
quarterly or annual report, as authorized by the Federal awarding
agency. (OMB circular A-11O)
Notice in the MSU Research Handbook, that by law the University
owns research data collected by its faculty, staff and students using
University facilities and funds provided or administered by the
University. However, by policy the University delegates to the PI the
authority and responsibility to control data, and guarantees to
co-investigators a right of access to data.
Recommend that all departments create data management guidelines
based on the standard promulgated in their own disciplines by
professional associations or leading journals.
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