authorship criteria, Nov 2002, S. M. Kosslyn p. 1 of 2
Criteria for Authorship
Stephen M. Kosslyn
John Lindsley Professor of Psychology
Harvard University
A substantial creative contribution in one or more of the following phases of
research is sufficient in my lab to warrant inclusion as an author of the paper
reporting the experiment(s). A lesser creative contribution warrants an
acknowledgement in the footnote of the paper. I determine whether someone
deserves either of these credits, and determine the ordering of authors, by
counting up each person's contribution to each phase. As noted below, I assign a
larger weight to the first and last phases, and to any other phase that requires
special expertise or creativity (e.g., data analysis, in some cases).
In my lab, we consider 6 criteria, and weight them as follows; often the "points"
at each stage are divided among several people. If a person *contributes
creatively* at any of these phases, that is enough to qualify him or her for an
acknowledgment or as a co-author, depending on the magnitude of the
contribution. Moreover, the "replaceability criterion" leads us to ask whether one
person's contributions could just as easily have been made by others; if not (i.e.,
if the person would have been difficult to replace), that contribution is weighted
more highly.
The point totals of each phase should be agreed upon in advance; some projects,
for example, use standard designs (e.g., "Stroop") or analyses (e.g., correlations),
in which case the number of points for that phase should be reduced.
The following are "default" point values, with a total of 1000. The total points for
each phase is divided among authors in proportion to their contribution in that
phase of the project. In my lab, if someone contributed more than 0 but less than
10% of the total number of points, they are acknowledged in the footnote. If
they contributed at least 10%, they are an author, and the ordering of authorship
is determined by the relative number of points.
1. The idea (250 points): Without the idea, nothing else happens. If the idea grew
out of a discussion, all who contributed get "credit"--but perhaps not equally so, if
one or more people were primarily responsible for the insights leading to the
best way to pose the question to be answered by the research and the logic of
the design.
2. The design (100 points): The details of the design include counterbalancing
issues, control conditions, whether a within-subjects or between-subjects design
is used, and so on. A bad design later will render the results useless, so this is a
critical step.
3. The implementation (100 points): Someone must implement the design into
actual materials, devise instructions, and so on. To the extent this is simple
boilerplate (a variation on well-developed methods using available materials),
this step may be given much less weight (perhaps only 5 points). Typically the
