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Reflections on Determining Authorship Credit andAuthorship Order on Faculty-Student Collaborations
Mark A. Fine and Lawrence A. Kurdek
The purpose of this article is to explore the process ofdetermining authorship credit and authorship o rder oncollaborative publications with students. The article pre-sents hypothetical cases that describe relevant ethical is-sues, highlights ethical principles that could provide as-sistance in addressing these dilemma s, and makes rec-ommen dations to faculty who collaborate with studentson scholarly projects. It is proposed that authorship creditand order decisions should be based on the relative schol-arly abilities and professional contributions of the collab-orators. Furthermore, it is recommen ded that both facultyand students participate in the authorship decision-makingprocess early in the collaborative endeavor.
Sholarly activity is an expected and rewarded en-terprise for many professionals (Keith-Spiegel &Koocher, 1985). In academ ic settings, decisions re-garding promotion, tenure, and salary are heavily influ-enced not only by the number of publications in peer-reviewed journals but also by the number of first-authoredpublications (Costa & Gatz, 1992). Similarly, in appliedsettings, professionals with strong publication records a reoften considered to have more competence and expertisethan their less published counterparts.Clearly, authorship credit and authorship order arenot trivial matters. Because of the importance of author-ship credit , dilemmas may arise when more than oneperson is involved in a scholarly project. In this article,we specifically address collaborative efforts between fac-ulty and undergraduate or graduate s tudents . The im-portance of authorship in the faculty-student researchcontext was underscored by Goodyear, Crego, and John-ston (1992), who found that authorship issues were amon gthe "critical incidents" identified by experienced re-searchers in faculty-student research collaborations.The purpose of this article is to contribute to thediscussions regarding the determination of authorshipcredit and order of authorshipin the faculty-studentresearch context. There are six parts to the article. Toprovide a con text for the discussions, the first pa rt p resentsfour hypothetical cases. Because the final authorship de-cisions in these cases are based o n consid erations reviewedlater in the article, the cases end before the final decisionswere determined. The second part reviews availableguidelines for determining authorship credit and order.The third part describes ethical issues related to author-ship credit and authorship order when faculty and stu-
dents collaborate. Th e fourth p art of the article highlightsseveral ethical principles that may provide assistance inresolving authorship dilemmas. The fifth part providestentative recommendations for faculty who collaboratewith studen ts on scholarly projects. The final part revisitsthe four hypothetical cases with our opinions regardingwhat authorship decisions would have been appropriate.Hypothetical CasesCase IA student in a clinical psychology doctoral program con-ducted dissertation research at a practicum site. The ini-tial idea for the study was developed between the prac-ticum supervisor (a psychologist) and the student. Thedissertation committee was composed of the chair, whowas a psychology faculty member in the student's grad-uate departmen t; the practicum supervisor; and anotherpsychology faculty m emb er in the same dep artm ent. Afterthe dissertation was approved, the chair of the com mitte eraised the possibility of writing a journa l article based onthe dissertation. The student agreed to w rite the first andsubsequent drafts of the manuscript, the committee chairagreed to supervise the writing process, and the practicumsupervisor agreed to review drafts of the paper. On initialdrafts, the student, practicum supervisor, and committeechair were first, second, and third authors, respectively.However, after numerous drafts, the student acknowl-edged losing interest in the writing process. The com-mittee chair finished the manuscript after extensivelyreanalyzing the data.Case 2An undergraduate student asked a psychology memberto supervise an honors thesis. The student proposed atopic, the faculty member primarily developed the re-search methodology, the student collected and enteredthe data, the faculty member conducted the statisticalanalyses, and the student used part of the analyses for thethesis. The student wrote the thesis under very close su-pervision by the faculty member. After the honors thesiswas completed, the faculty member decided that datafrom the entire project were sufficiently interesting toGary R. VandenBos served as action editor for this article.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to M arkA. Fine, Psychology Department, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH45469-1430, or Lawrence A. Kurdek, Psychology Department, WrightState University, Dayton, OH 45435.
November 1993 American PsychologistCopyright 1993 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0O03-O66X/93/S2 00Vol. 48, No. 11. 1 141-1147
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warrant publication as a unit. Because the student didnot have the skills necessary to write the entire study fora scientific journal, the faculty member did so. The stu-dent's thesis contained approximately one third of thematerial presented in the article.Case 3A psychologist and psychiatrist collaborated on a study.A student who was seeking an empirical project for amaster's thesis was brought into the investigation afterthe design was developed. The student was given severalarticles in the content area, found additional relevant lit-erature, collected and analyzed some of the data, andwrote the thesis under the supervision of the psychologist.After the thesis was completed, certain portions of thestudy, which required additional data analyses, werewritten for publication by the psychologist and the psy-chiatrist. The stude nt was not asked to contribu te to writ-ing the journal article.Case 4An undergraduate s tudent completed an honors thesisunder the supervision of a psychology faculty member.The student chose the thesis topic and took initiative inexploring extant measures. Because no suitable instru-ments were found, the student and the faculty memberjointly developed a measure. The student collected andentered the data. The faculty member conducted the sta-tistical analyses. The student wrote the thesis with thefaculty member's guidance, and few revisions were re-quired. Because the student lacked the skills to rewritethe thesis as a jour nal article, the faculty m em ber wrotethe article and the stu dent was listed as first author. Basedon reviewers' comments to the first draft of the manu-script, aspects of the study not included in the thesisneeded to be integrated into a major revision of themanuscript.Available Guidelines for DeterminingAuthorship Credit and OrderIn each of the four hypothetical cases described above,decisions regarding authorship credit and order were re-quired. Until the last decade, there were few publishedguidelines that provided assistance in this decision-mak-ing process.As an initial guideline, the Am erican PsychologicalAssociation's (APA's) Ethics Committee (1983) issued apolicy statement on authorship of articles based on dis-sertations. The statement indicated that dissertation su-pervisors should be included as authors on such articlesonly when they made "substantial contributions" to thestudy. In such instances, only second authorship was ap-propriate for the supervisor because first authorship wasreserved for the student. The policy also suggested thatagreements regarding authorship be made before the ar-ticle was written.This policy statement was important because it rec-ognized that dissertations, by definition, represent originaland independent work by the student. Given the creative
nature of the student's dissertation, an article that he orshe writes based on th at dissertation should have the stu-dent identified as first author. The faculty supervisor, atmost, deserves second authorship.Although this policy statement was helpful, it didnot clearly define the key term substantial contributions.Furthermore, because the policy statement applied onlyto dissertation research, it did not provide guidance forfaculty who engaged in collaborative projects with stu-dents outside of dissertations.Current guidelines for making decisions regardingauthorship credit and order are presented in the APAEthical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct(1992), which supersedes the 1983 policy. The APA codehas a section relevant to the determination of authorshipon scholarly publications. Section 6.23, PublicationCredit, states(a) Psychologists take responsibility and credit, including au-thorship credit, only for work they have actually performed orto which they have contributed.(b) Principal authorship and other publication credits accuratelyreflect the relative scientific or professional contributions of theindividuals involved, regardless of their relative status. Merepossession of an institutional position, such as Department Chair,does not justify authorship credit. Minor contributions to the re-search or to the writing for publication are appropriately acknowl-edged, such as in footnotes or in an introductory statement.(c) A student is usually listed as principal author on any mul-tiple-authored article that is based primarily on the student'sdissertation or thesis.Although this section is clearer and more detailed thanthe comparable section in previous versions of the EthicalPrinciples o f Psychologists, it fails to provide com prehen -sive guidance to faculty who publish with students. Inparticular, terms such as professional contribution andminor contribution are unclear and, as a result, are opento different interpretations (Keith-Spiegel & Koocher,1985). In the absence of clear guidelines regarding au-thorship credit and authorship order on faculty-studentcollaborative publications, disagreements may occur, andone or both parties may feel exploited.Ethical Issues Involved in DeterminingAuthorship Credit and Order onFaculty-Student Collaborative ProjectsThe ethical dilemmas that arise when faculty collaboratewith students on work worthy of publication stem fromthe unique nature of the faculty-student relationship. Al-though collaboration between two professionals can occuron an egalitarian basis, collaboration between faculty andtheir students is inherently unequal. By nature of theirdegrees, credentials, expertise, and experience, man y fac-ulty supervise students. Supervisors are responsible notonly for facilitating the growth and development of su-pervisees but also for portray ing supe rvisees' abilities ac-curately to others. For example , faculty m ay write lettersof recommendation for their supervisees, evaluate theirwork, assign grades, or give critical feedback to represen-
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tatives of their undergraduate or graduate programs.Thus, faculty who function as supervisors must balancethe potentially competing duties of fostering the growthof their trainees and presenting them to others in a fairand accurate manner.We believe that there are two potential ethical di-lemmas in faculty-student collaborations. The first di-lemma arises when faculty take authorship credit thatwas earned by the student. M any of the authorship-relatedcritical incidents identified in the Good year et al. (1992)and Co sta and Gatz (1992) studies concerned faculty tak-ing a level of auth orship credit tha t was not deserved andnot giving students appropriate credit. As one might ex-pect, Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, and Pope (1991) foundthat faculty respondents perceived "accepting undeservedauthorship on a s tudent 's published pa per" as unethical.The second dilemma occurs when students aregranted undeserved authorship credit. There are threereasons why this dilemma is an ethical one. First, a pub-lication on one's record that is not legitimately earnedmay falsely represent the indiv idual's scholarly expertise.Second, if, because he or she is now a published author,the studen t is perceived as being mo re skilled than a peerwho is not published, the student is given an unfair ad-vantage professionally. Finally, if the student is perceivedto have a level of competence that he or she does notactually have, he or she will be expected to accomplishtasks that m ay be outside the student's range of expertise.How often do faculty give students the benefit of thedoubt with respect to authorship on collaborative pub-lications? Although w e are aware of many instances whensupervisors engaged in this practice, systematic em piricalevidence related to th e prevalence of this practice is rare.Twenty years ago, Over and Smallman (1973) found that"distinguished psychologists" had reduced rates of first-authored papers in the years following receipt of APAScientific Contribution Awards. Zuckerman (1968) hadsimilar findings in a study of Nobel laureates. Recently,Costa and Gatz (1992), in a survey of faculty and studentsasked to assign publication credit in hypothetical disser-tation scenarios, found that higher academic rank andmo re teaching ex perience were positively related to facultygiving students more authorship credit.
One explanation of this positive relation between fac-ulty experience and granting students high levels of au-thorship credit is that senior faculty are more likely thanjunior faculty to be sought after for research consultationby students and new faculty. However, it is also possiblethat they may be more generousperhaps overly soingranting students authorship because publication pressureshave lessened for them . Interestingly, Costa an d Ga tz foundthat faculty were more Likely than students to give the studentauthorship credit in the hypothetical scenarios.Ethical Principles in DeterminingAuthorship Credit and O rder onFacu lty-Student Collabo rative ProjectsThree ethical principles are relevant to ethical dilemmasthat arise with regard to authorship on faculty-student
collaborative projects: beneficence, justice, and paren tal-ism. These principles, from which ethical codes (e.g., theEthical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct)are developed, may provide guidance when the codesthemselves are inadequate (Kitchener, 1984).To be beneficent is "to abstain from injuring othersand to help others further their important and legitimateinterests, largely by preventing or removing possibleha rm s" (Beaucham p & W alters, 1982, p. 28). In the con-text of the authorship issue, beneficence implies that su-pervisors should help students further their careers byincluding them as authors when their contributions areprofessional in nature. In our opinion, to avoid harmingstudents and others in the long run, beneficence impliesthat faculty should grant students authorship credit andfirst author status only when they are deserved.Justicethe second ethical principlerefers to theethical duty to treat others fairly and to give them whatthey deserve: "A n individual has been treated justly whenhe has been given what he or she is due or owed, whathe or she deserves or can legitimately claim " (Beauch amp& W alters, 1982, p. 30). The principle of justice is often
interpreted to infer that one should treat another un-equally only if there is a morally relevant difference be-tween them (Beauchamp & Walters, 1982). In the au-thorship setting, if students are not considered to bemeaningfully different from professional colleagues, thenthey should be awarded authorship credit and order onthe sam e basis as those of nonstu den t colleagues. However,if one makes the contrasting assumption that s tudentshave less power and competence than nonstudent collab-orators, then justice would be served by giving studentsdifferential treatment.Parentalismthe final ethical principlerefers to"treatm ent that restricts the liberty of individuals, without
their consent, where the justification for such a ction iseither the prevention of some harm they might do tothemselves or the production of some benefit they mightnot otherwise secure" (Beauchamp & Walters , 1982, p.38). Parentalistic actions are generally considered to bemost appropriate when they are directed toward personswho are nonautonomous (i.e., lack the capacity for self-determination; Beaucham p & W alters, 1982). Thus, theappropriateness of parentalistic behavior in the authorshipcontext depends on the student's level of autonomy.A supervisor who is acting parentalistically mightalone decide the level of authorship credit a student re-ceives. Even if students are consulted in the decision-making process, supervisors may use their power to in-fluence the nature of the decision and discount studentinput. Parentalism is also relevant to the issue of whenauthorship credit is decided. When the supervisor makesthe decision after the work is completed, the studentmakes his or her contributions w ithout knowing the extentof authorship that he or she will receive. Thus , even whenthe supervisor does not consult the student in the decision-making process, later decisions are m ore parentalistic thanthose rendered before the work has been completed.
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Recommendations for DeterminingAuthorship Credit and OrderHow do the princ iples of beneficence, justice, and paren -talism, in aggregate, provide guidance in determining au-thorship credit and order? To answer this question, weargue that two separate aspects of the authorship deter-mina tion procedure need to be considered: (a) the processof how collaborators decide who will receive a given levelof authorship credit for specified professional contribu-tions and (b) the outcome resulting from the decision-making process. In this section, recomme ndations in eachof these two areas are proposed.Process RecommendationsAs noted earlier, the principle of justice dictates tha t su-pervisors should treat students unequally only if there isa meaningful difference between them. With particularreference to the authorship decision-making process, weargue that faculty an d studen ts are not meaningfully dif-ferent because faculty and studentsparticularly grad-uate s tudentshave the autonom y, rationality, problem-solving ability, and fairness to mutually decide on au-thorship credit. Therefore, we propose that both facultyand students should have the opportunity to participatein the process of determining authorship credit. In ad-dition, we argue that it is inappropriate for supervisorsto assume a parentalistic stance in this process.
Our position should not be misinterpreted to indi-cate that faculty and students a re equals in power, status,compe tence, and expertise. There are typically substantialdifferences between the m in these areas. Rather, we believethat faculty and students are both sufficiently autonomousto m utually decide on w hat level of autho rship credit willbe awarded to each collaborator for specified professionalcontributions.Several specific recommendations follow from theproposition that both faculty and students should mean-ingfully participate in the authorship decision-makingprocess:1. Early in the collaborative endeavor, the supervisorshould provide the student with information related tohow authorship decisions are made, the nature of profes-sional and nonprofessional contributions to publications,the mean ing of authorship credit and order, and the im -portance of both parties agreeing on what contributionswill be expected of each collaborator for a given level ofauthorship credit. This information will provide the stu-dent with the knowledge necessary to exercise his or herautonomy and to choose whether to participate in theauthorship determination process.2. Th e supervisor an d student should assess the spe-cific abilities of each pa rty, the tasks required t o com pletethe scholarly publication, the extent of supervision re-quired, and appropriate expectations for what each col-laborator can reasonably contribute to the project.3. On the basis of this assessment, the collaboratorsshould discuss and agree on what tasks, contributions,and efforts are required of both parties to warrant au-
thorship and to determine the order of authorship (Shaw-chuck, Fatis, & Breitenstein, 1986). Although they willnot prevent disagreem ents from arising, such discussionsmay reduce their likelihood.This recommendation is consistent with the notionof informed consent, which governs the development ofagreements between psychologists and clients and betweenresearchers and participants (Keith-Spiegel & Koocher,1985). If authorship expectations are clearly establishedand agreed on early in the collaborative process, both thesupervisor and the student have given their informedconsent to participate in the project (Goodyear et al1992).Although we are not necessarily advocating the useof signed informed consent forms, we see nothing inprinciple that would argue against their use. After all,written consent agreements are often developed by ther-apists and clients, researchers and subjects, and professorsand students engaged in independent studies. In fact, ina similar vein, APA has considered requiring authors ofsubmitted papers to include an "a uthorship paper," whichwould require authors to agree in writing to the use of
their name on the paper and to the placement of theirname in the listing of authors (Landers, 1988). If suchforms are not used, we advocate making the agreementas clear as possible.It should be recognized that some students maychoose not to participate in the authorship decision-makin g process and may defer to the supervisor. As longas the stude nt has been prov ided w ith sufficient infor-mation regarding authorship-related issues and has beenencouraged to participate in this process, we believe thatthe student's choice should be respected. In such cases,the supervisor may appropriately make decisions regard-ing authorship credit and order without student input.4. Agreements regarding authorship credit and ordermay n eed to be rene gotiated for two reasons. First, schol-arly projects often take unexpected turns that necessitatechanges in initial agreements made in good faith. Second,ma ny m anusc ripts need to be revised substantially beforethey are accepted for publication. These revisions mayrequire additional professional contributions beyondthose necessary for the completion of the initial draft ofthe manuscript. Thus, when such revisions are required,the supervisor and student should reexam ine their originalagreement a nd determ ine whether it needs to be modified.Outcome RecommendationsWe argue that the principles of beneficence and justicejustify the use of a "relative standard" for determiningauthorship credit. According to this stance, there shouldbe a varying standard for the level of professional con-tribution that is required to attain a given level of au-thorship credit. Because collaborators differ in theirscholarly expertise, their competence to contributeprofessionally to scholarly publications should be viewedas lying along a contin uum . On one end of the contin uumare collaborators who have limited competence in schol-arly activities and w ho require intensive supervision. On
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the other end are collaborators who have considerablecompetence in scholarly endeavors and who function in-dependently.On the basis of the principle of justice, we advancethe potentially controversial position that the level ofcontribution expected of a collaborator should dependon where he or she falls on this competence continuum.For the same level of auth orshi p credit, one should expectgreater professional contributions from collaborators whohave more competence than from those who have lesscompetence. When those who initially had less compe-tence increase their levels of expertise, they should beexpected to make more substantial professional contri-butions for the same level of authorship credit. This isconsistent with the generative aspect of faculty-studentcollaborationto provide s tudents with experiences thatwill eventually allow them to conduct independent schol-arship and to assist future students.Where do students fall on the competence contin-uum? Of course students, as a group, are less competentin scholarly endeavors than faculty are. However, thereare im por tan t individual differences in students' abilities.Some students function quite independently and haveconsiderable talent in one or more areas related to schol-arly activity. Othe rs have less expertise and requir e inte n-sive supervision. The key implication of this position isthat, for the same level of authorship credit, justice isserved by expecting relatively less of less competent col-laborators than of more competent ones.For example, a senior faculty member engaged in acollaborative project with an undergraduate psychologymajor should be expected to make more complex dataanalysis decisions than the stud ent. However, if the stu dentparticipated in the development of the research design,in the process of making data analysis decisions, and inthe interpreta tion of the findings, within the limits of thestudent's limited expertise, his or her contributions shouldbe considered professional and should be recognized withauthorship credit. As the student's comp etence grows withincreased coursework and experience, he or she shouldbe expected to make greater contributions for the samelevel of authorship credit.Therefore, we propose that faculty and students usea relative standard to determine authorship credit andorder. However, we underscore the important point thatin all cases when students are granted authorship, theircontributions must be professional in nature. Our oper-ational definition of professional is discussed below.Several specific recommendations follow from theuse of a relative standard for determining authorshipcredit and order:1. To be included as an author on a scholarly pub-lication, a student should, in a cumulative sense, make aprofessional con tribution that is creative and intellectualin nat ure , that is integral to comp letion of the paper, andthat requires an overarching perspective of the project.Examples of professional contributions include devel-oping the research design, writing portions of the manu-script, integrating diverse theoretical perspectives, devel-
oping new conceptual models, designing assessments,contributing to data analysis decisions, and interpretingresults (Bridgewater, Bornstein, & Walkenbach, 1981;Spiegel & Keith-Spiegel, 1970). Such tasks as inputtingdata, carrying out data analyses specified by the super-visor, and typing are not considered professional contri-butions and may be acknowledged by footnotes to themanuscript (Shawchuck et al., 1986).Fulfillment of one or two of the professional tasksessential to the comp letion of a collaborative publicationdoes not necessarily justify authorship. Rather, the su-pervisor and studentin their discussions early in thecollaborative processmust jointly decide what combi-nation of professional activities warrants a given level ofautho rship credit for both parties. By necessity, there willbe some variation in which tasks warrant authorshipcredit across differing research projects.Particularly in complex cases, Winston's (1985)weighting schema procedure may be useful in determin-ing which tasks are req uired for a given level of auth orshi pcredit. In this procedure, points are earned for variousprofessional contributions to the scholarly publication.The number of points for each contribution varies de-pending on its scholarly importance, with research designand report w riting assigned the m ost points. A contribu tormust earn a certain num ber of points to earn authorshipcredit, and the individual with the highest number ofpoints is granted first authorship. This procedure has theadvantage of helping all parties involved to carefully ex-amine their respective responsibilities and contributions.However, in our opinion, it cannot be used in all casesbecause of collabora tor differences in scholarly ability a ndbecause the im porta nce of various professional tasks dif-fers across projects. With modification (i.e., a weightingof points earned based on each collaborator's level ofscholarly competence), it could be appropriate for therelative standard position that we advocate.2. Authorship decisions should be based on thescholarly im portan ce of the professional c ontribution andnot just the time and effort made (Bridgewater et al.,1981). In our o pinion, even if considerable tim e and effortare spent on a scholarly project, if the aggregate contri-bution is not judged to be professional by the criteriastated above, authorship should not be granted.
3. Although this may be another controversial po-sition, we believe that au thorship decisions should not beaffected by whether students or supervisors were paid fortheir contributions or by their employment status (Brid-gewater et al., 1981). In our opinion, it is the nature ofthe contribution tha t is ma de to the article that determ ineswhether authorship credit is warranted and not whetherparticipants received compensation for their efforts. Webelieve that financial remuneration is not a resource thatcan serve as a substitute for authorship credit.4. As is often advocated when psychologists are con-fronted with ethical dilemm as (Keith-Spiegel & Koocher,1985), we advise supervisors to consult with colleagueswhen authorship co ncerns arise. Furthermo re, supervisorsshould encourage their students to do the same, whetherNovember 1993 American Psychologist 1145
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with faculty or with student peers. With the informal in-put generated from such consu ltations, it is possible thatnew light will be shed on the issues involved and thatreasonable and fair authorship agreements will result.5. If the supervisor and student cannot agree, evenafter consultations with peers, on their authorship-relateddecisions, we recommend, as do Goodyear et al. (1992),the establishment of an ad hoc third party arbitrationprocess. Whether this mechanism should be establishedat the local, state, or national level is unclear. Ethics com-mittees, institutional review boards (IRBs), unbiasedprofessionals (Shawchuck et al., 1986), or departmentalcommittees composed of faculty and students (Goodyearet al., 1992) are possible candid ates for such an arbitrationmechan ism. Th e imp ortant point is that, given that bothparties are considered to be equal contributors to thisaspect of their work together, disputes need to be settledby outside parties. In such cases, arbitrators may findWinston's (1985) method helpful, because it requires asystematic review of all contributors' scholarly contri-butions (Shawchuck et al., 1986).The Four Cases RevisitedIn this final section, we return to the four hypotheticalcases described at the outset of the article. First, we presentour views on when authorship discussions should takeplace and then we offer our opinions regarding what au-thorship decisions are defensible in each case.In Case 1, the discussion regarding auth orshi p creditand order should ideally have taken place during the de-velopment of the thesis proposal but should certainly haveoccurred after the decision was made to a ttemp t to publishthe results. Th e clinical supe rvisor should also have beenincluded in these deliberations. Similarly, in Cases 2 and4, the discussion should have occurred during the initialstages of planning the honors project and no later thanwhen the decision was made to submit a version of thethesis to a peer-reviewed journal. In Case 3, in additionto there being a need for the psychiatrist and supervisorto form an agreement regarding authorship credit, thestudent should have been a part of further authorshipdeliberations when brought into the project. Finally, inCase 4, the student should have been consulted when therevisions recommended by the reviewers were receivedby the faculty member.
Given the ethical considerations discussed in thisarticle, what authorship decisions seem defensible in thesecases? In Case 1, the student deserved authorship giventhe professional nature of his contribution: He partici-pated in generating the idea, developing the research de-sign, writing the proposal, collecting data, and produ cingseveral drafts of a manuscript. The more difficult decisionis whether the student deserved first authorship, giventhat he lost motivation toward the end of the writing pro-cess and the paper was finished by the faculty memberwho served as dissertation committee chair. In our opin-ion, the appropriateness of the student receiving first au-thorship depends on whether the collaborators believedthat first authorship would be retained by the student if
he did not fulfill the agreed-upon responsibilities. Simi-larly, the level of authorship credit received by the clinicalsupervisor depends on the extent to which he madeprofessional contributions to the article as specified inthe original agreement.In Case 2, the student deserved authorship creditgiven that she generated the topic, participated somewhatin the design of the study, and wrote the paper for her
honors project. Does she deserve first authorship? In ouropinion, the ethical appropriateness of the student beingfirst autho r revolves around whether she had the interest,motivation , and skill to expan d her honors thesis so as toincorporate the complexity of the entire project. If shehad the desire and commitment to do so, and thereforeassumed responsibility for most components of the writ-ing task, the supervisor had th e ethical obligation to helpher through this process and she would be listed as firstauthor. If she had neither the interest nor the inclinationto participate in this additional writing task, then it wouldbe ethically appropriate for the supervisor to be identifiedas first author and the student as second author. In thislatter instance, a footnote to the manuscript might beincluded that indicated that part of the article was basedon the student's undergraduate honors thesis.Case 3 presents a somewhat different dilemma. Didthe student's contribution warrant authorship credit? Thestudent did not participate in the generation of the re-search idea or design, he was given a great deal of assis-tance in conducting a literature review, and he did notparticipate in writing the manuscript for possible publi-cation. Therefore, he was lacking in these areas of profes-sional contribution. On the other hand, he gathered someadditional literature, participated in some data analysisdecisions, and w rote drafts of his thesis. These efforts wereprofessional in nature.Although further data analyses were conducted bythe supervisor and the writing of the manuscript wascompleted by the supervisor and the psychiatrist, our po-sition is that the student deserved third authorship. Al-though his participation was minimal, his contributionswere, in a cumulative sense, professional. Furthermore,he functioned up to his relatively low level of scholarlycompetence.Case 4 underscores the need for supervisors and stu-dents to recognize that their agreement may need to bereevaluated as the review process unfolds. The studentclearly deserved au thors hip because she generated th e re-search topic, participated in the design of the study andthe development of assessments, andgiven her relativeinexperiencerequired surprisingly little supervision. Webelieve that the student should have been contacted whenthe reviews were available and should have been given anopportunity to participate in the revision process. If shedid so, our position is that she would still deserve firstauthorship.ConclusionCollectively, these cases illustrate the po tential com plex-ities involved in determining authorship credit and order
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on faculty-student collaborative publications. In addition,they highlight our position that supervisors cannot expectas much from students as from experienced professionalcolleagues.We hope that the issues raised, principles reviewed,and recommendations made in this article will help fac-ulty engage in the process of mak ing in conjunctionwith their s tudentsappropriate authorship decisions.We encourage faculty to give the appropriate amount ofattention to the important issue of authorship throughearly, thorough , and systematic discussions leading to ex-plicit agreements with their students.REFERENCES
American Psychological Association Ethics Committee. (1983, February).Authorship guidelines for dissertation supervision. Washington, DC:Author.Beauchamp, T, & Walters, L. (1982). Contemporary issues in bioethics(2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Bridgewater, C. A., Bo rnstein, P. H., & Walkenbac h, J. (1981). Ethicalissues in the assignm ent of publication cred it. American Psychologist,36 , 524-525.Costa, M. M ., & Gatz , M. (1992). Determination of authorsh ip creditin published dissertations. Psychological Science, 3, 354-357.
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