Authorship is a much-disputed issue that even senior researchers are not entirely clear about. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has provided a set of guidelines meant to help researchers decide whether a contributor qualifies to be an author or should be just be included in the acknowledgements section of a manuscript. According to these guidelines, an author should have:
- substantially contributed to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data
- drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content, and
- provided final approval of the version to be published.
Most biomedical journals now require authors to conform to ICMJE authorship guidelines and even ask for a detailed description of each author’s contribution.
In your case, the senior post-doc should be credited as a co-author because he has made significant intellectual contribution to your study by suggesting experiments and helping you analyze the data. However, contributors who only provide technical help, lab space, reagents, or writing assistance do not fulfill the authorship criteria and should not be included as authors. Thus, the contribution of your collaborator is not sufficient for him/her to be credited as an author; instead he/she should be duly thanked in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript. I would advise you to inform your advisor about the ICMJE guidelines. You could explain that your paper acceptance may be delayed if the journal editor is not convinced that all listed authors have contributed sufficiently.
Do you have any more queries regarding authorship? Write them in the comments below.
