Authorship Grids: Practical Tools to Facilitate Collaboration and Ethical Publication

Abstract

Publication of new findings and approaches in peer-reviewed journals is fundamental to advancing science. As interprofessional, team-based scientific publication becomes more common, authors need tools to guide collaboration and ethical authorship. We present three forms of authorship grids that are based on national and international author recommendations, including guidelines from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Committee on Publication Ethics, National Institutes of Health data sharing policies, common reporting guidelines, and Good Clinical Practice standards from the International Conference on Harmonisation. The author grids are tailored to quantitative research, qualitative research, and literature synthesis. These customizable grids can be used while planning and executing projects to define each author’s role, responsibilities, and contributions as well as to guide conversations among authors and help avoid misconduct and disputes. The grids also can be submitted to journal editors and published to provide public attribution of author contributions.