Authorship is the currency of an academic career for which the number of papers researchers publish demonstrates creativity, productivity, and impact. To discourage coercive authorship practices and inflated publication records, journals require authors to affirm and detail their intellectual contributions but this strategy has been unsuccessful as authorship lists continue to grow. Here, we surveyed close to 6000 of the top cited authors in all science categories with a list of 25 research activities that we adapted from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) authorship guidelines. Responses varied widely from individuals in the same discipline, same level of experience, and same geographic region. Most researchers agreed with the NIH criteria and grant authorship to individuals who draft the manuscript, analyze and interpret data, and propose ideas. However, thousands of the researchers also value supervision and contributing comments to the manuscript, whereas the NIH recommends discounting these activities when attributing authorship. People value the minutiae of research beyond writing and data reduction: researchers in the humanities value it less than those in pure and applied sciences; individuals from Far East Asia and Middle East and Northern Africa value these activities more than anglophones and northern Europeans. While developing national and international collaborations, researchers must recognize differences in peoples values while assigning authorship.
Research is only half the work; the other half is writing and publishing. Your research is incomplete until you publish your data.[1] Publishing is necessary but insufficient: others must cite your work.[2] Writing well and preparing a coherent story will help your paper get past the first hurdle in the publishing process –the copy editor. The second hurdle is the editor, who checks if it is suitable for the journal, and reviews the abstract, conclusions, and references.[3] The final hurdle is the reviewers, who devote more time to validate the hypotheses, results, and interpretation. Rejection rates across journals are increasing.[4] Science copy editors send one out of five submissions to the editors, and their overall rejection rate is 93 %. The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering rejects close to 3 out of 4 papers researchers submit. Write better so journals accept your papers and researchers cite them.
Q7 We cite other researchers to recognize their contribution, educate, and establish the foundation of the research. References should balance recent breakthroughs with past contributions. Between 2011 and 2014, Nature published over 3200 articles and letters that referenced 113 000 papers. What is the average age of the references in these papers (the difference between the year Nature published the paper and the year the cited article was published)?[1]
4
6
bold-italic8
10
12
Q8What are the minimum requirements for co-authorship? [1,2] i) conceive and design the study (or parts of it) ii) collect and analyze data iii) interpret data iv) draft the article v) revise parts of it vi) approve the final version vii) agree to be accountable for the resultsOther combinations of correct answers:
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.