disclosure statement research paper

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• AEA Journal Policies
• Disclosure Policy

Disclosure Examples

The aea believes that it is in the authors' best interest to disclose potential conflicts of interest. disclosure is author-, and paper-specific; a specific relationship may be relevant for one of an author’s papers, but not for another..

In cases of uncertainty regarding whether to disclose a particular relationship, a guiding principle should be the answer to the question: "Would I or my institution or a reasonable person be embarrassed if I had not disclosed this relationship and it was subsequently discovered by a journalist, colleague or university administrator?" If the answer to this question is "yes," the relationship should be disclosed.

In the following, we provide some examples to help clarify the policy. Some of these examples draw on the disclosure policy of the NBER, which is similar to the AEA’s. We encourage authors to visit the NBER website for a list of additional examples.

Nothing to Disclose

Q: I have nothing to disclose. Do I still need to include a disclosure statement?

A: YES. The AEA policy requires one to state explicitly that she or he does not have a conflict of interest. A disclosure statement in such a case might read:

“The author declares that (s)he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper”.

Proprietary Data

Q: The data used in my research are proprietary. They were obtained from an institution (firm, government, non-profit organization, etc.) that has requested to review the results of the study prior to their dissemination to ensure that the confidentiality of the data is not unintentionally compromised. Do I need to disclose this review requirement?

A: YES. Even if the purpose of the review is to ensure that the author does not disclose confidential information, the author should explicitly state in the disclosure statement that the data agreement involves a request for review of the findings prior to their release.

Prior Consulting

Q: The data used in my study are proprietary. They were obtained while I served as a consultant for a company four years ago. I have not consulted for this company since then. Do I need to disclose this consulting arrangement?

A: YES. Given that the consulting arrangement resulted in in-kind compensation, in the form of access to the data you are using in the current paper, you should disclose the consulting relationship in your statement.

Prior Industry Affiliation

Q: I have served as a consultant for the pharmaceutical industry on several occasions, but not within the past three years. The paper I submitted analyzes competition in the pharmaceuticals sector, but the project was not funded by a private firm, neither is it related to any consulting arrangements I currently have with firms in this industry. Should I disclose my consulting relationship with the industry?

A: Though formally you are not obliged to disclose relationships that ended more than three years ago, good judgment would suggest disclosing financial relationships that could be construed as affecting your objectivity. In this case, many readers would likely consider the information on your consulting relationships relevant, so we would encourage you to disclose it. Specific firm names are not necessary.

Prior Employment

Q: I used to be employed by an oil company 10 years ago, but I have had no relationship with this company since then. My paper concerns environmental issues. Shall I disclose my prior affiliation with the company?

A: Formally, the AEA policy does not require disclosure of relationships beyond the horizon of three years. However, good judgment would suggest disclosing your past employment in this company, especially if your paper concerns sensitive environmental issues.

Religious Beliefs

Q: I have submitted a paper on family planning. Do I need to disclose my religious beliefs?

A: NO. Personal beliefs do not need to be disclosed. The AEA policy is specifically focused on disclosure of “conflicts of interest” that arise because of potential financial/material gains for the researcher.

Foundation Funding

Q: During the past three years I have received funding from a foundation that has a pro-market ideology. My paper examines the effects of marginal tax rates on desirable outcomes, but was not funded by this foundation. Do I need to disclose the funding I have received from this foundation even though it is was not related to the current project?

A: YES. The foundation would constitute an “interested party”; you should disclose your relationship even if the funding was not for this specific paper.

Funding for Other Projects

Q. During the past three years, I have received funding from an aid agency or NGO or foundation that favors particular approaches to economic development over others. My paper is relevant to the effectiveness of one of these approaches, but was not funded by any of these institutions. Do I need to disclose the funding I have received for other projects?

A. YES. The aid agency, NGOs, and foundations would fall into the category of having “a financial, ideological, or political stake related to the article” (based on point (2) of the AEA policy) or having “policy positions, goals, or financial interests relate to the article” (based on point (3) of the AEA policy).

Stock Holdings

Q: I hold stock worth more than $10,000 in companies in a specific sector and my paper concerns issues specific to that sector. Shall I disclose my holding?

A: If the stock is held through a mutual fund or another diversified intermediary, there is no need to disclose the holding. However, if the stock is held directly or through a narrowly focused fund, we would encourage you to disclose it. Please consult the NBER website for additional examples.

Spouse Profession

Q: My spouse is a medical doctor and my paper is related to health care policy. Do I need to disclose my spouse’s profession?

A: If the study’s findings have no direct effect on your spouse’s earnings, there is no reason for disclosure. If your spouse would be directly affected by the policy you analyze or s/he is involved in health care reform, then disclosure is necessary.

Q: My spouse is a hedge fund manager and my paper examines high frequency trading. Do I need to disclose my spouse’s profession?

A: If your spouse’s fund is not involved in high frequency trading, there is no need for disclosure. If, on the other hand, the fund does high frequency trading and your study’s findings may generate financial benefits for those involved in high frequency trading, you should disclose your spouse’s affiliation.

Other Cases

Q: What should I do in a case that is not specifically covered or is ambiguous?

A: The AEA policy is still evolving and is likely to be reviewed in the future. When something is on the border, it would seem prudent to disclose it rather than not.

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What are Conflict of Interest Statements, Funding Source Declarations, Author Agreements/Declarations and Permission Notes?

Many Journals request that the Author(s) supply them with one or more of these items at initial submission stage.

Please note:  Most journals require a formal format for these items. A generic form can be found further down this page.

To create one of these items, you're required to:

• Have located a journal to submit to.
• Have checked the Guide for Authors for that journal (sometimes a sample form is provided for you to download and complete).

If these are part of journal requirements, it'll be listed at the 'Attach File/Upload Files' step during the submission process.

Journals may request one or more of the following be uploaded as part of your submission:

An  Author Agreement  is a statement to certify that all authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript being submitted. They warrant that the article is the authors' original work, hasn't received prior publication and isn't under consideration for publication elsewhere.

A  Conflict of Interest or Competing Interest  is defined as a set of conditions in which professional judgment concerning a primary interest, such as the validity of research, may be influenced by a secondary interest, such as financial gain. See the  Competing Interests Factsheet  for more information.

A  Declaration of Interest  (sometimes called a Disclosure Statement) is a notification from the author that there's no financial/personal interest or belief that could affect their objectivity, or if there is, stating the source and nature of that potential conflict. To prevent ambiguity, authors must state explicitly whether potential competing interests do or don't exist, so you may be asked to provide one, even if no competing interests exist.

• Many Elsevier journals use our Declaration Tool helps authors step-by-step through the process of preparing well-considered and ICMJE-compliant Please watch this short video on  how to use the Declaration Tool in Editorial Manager .
• Many medical journals follow  ICMJE Recommendations . For these titles, you can download the  ICMJE COI form , complete it and save it on your computer, then submit the completed form to the journal along with your manuscript.

Please refer to each journal’s guide for authors for information on how to provide a Declaration of Interest statement for that journal.

A  Funding Source Declaration  contains a declaration of any funding or research grants (and their source) received in the course of study, research or assembly of the manuscript.

A  Permission Note  is a statement that permission has been received to use any material in the manuscript such as figures etc. which isn't original content. See Elsevier's  Permission Guidelines  for more information.

When in doubt, always consult with your professor, advisor, or someone in a position of authority who can guide you to the right course of action.

Still have a question? We can help! When contacting us via the option at the bottom of this page, please just enter your details, and select contact reason  'Open Access'  in the drop down on the form, to start a session with one of our representatives. We appreciate you providing us all the information, as much as possible when initiating the chat. This will ensure our agents to swiftly respond to your query.

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Competing Interests

Authors are requested to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work. Disclosure of interests provides a complete and transparent process and helps readers form their own judgments of potential bias. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate.

Interests that should be considered and disclosed include, but are not limited, to the following:

Funding:  Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number) and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript.

Employment:  Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if applicable).

Financial interests:  Stocks or shares in companies (including holdings of spouse and/or children) that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication of this manuscript.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so one possible practical guideline is the following: "Any undeclared financial interest that could embarrass the author were it to become publicly known after the work was published."

Non-financial interests: In addition, authors are requested to disclose interests that go beyond financial interests that could impart bias on the work submitted for publication such as professional interests, personal relationships or personal beliefs (amongst others). Examples include, but are not limited to: position on editorial board, advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships; writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relations; and so forth. 

Primary research articles require a disclosure statement. Review articles present an expert synthesis of evidence and may be treated as an authoritative work on a subject. Review articles therefore require a disclosure statement.Other article types such as editorials, book reviews, comments (amongst others) may, dependent on their content, require a disclosure statement. If you are unclear whether your article type requires a disclosure statement, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Please note that, in addition to the above requirements, funding information (given that funding is a potential conflict of interest (as mentioned above)) needs to be disclosed upon submission of the manuscript in the peer review system. This information will automatically be added to the Record of CrossMark, however it is not added to the manuscript itself. Under ‘summary of requirements’ (see below) funding information should be included in the ‘ Declarations ’ section.

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and included in a section entitled “ Declarations ” before the reference list. Other declarations include Funding, Conflicts of interest/competing interests, Ethics approval, Consent, Data and/or Code availability and Authors’ contribution statements.

Should the information already be mentioned somewhere else in the manuscript, for example under Methods & Materials, please make sure to repeat that information on this page.

Please see the various examples of wording below and revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

When all authors have the same (or no) conflicts and/or funding it is sufficient to use one blanket statement.

Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript. See also Authorship Principles. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject submissions that do not meet the guidelines described in this section.

Disclosure Statement

Also known as a conflict of interest statement, a disclosure statement is the authors’ opportunity to confirm that their article does not have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations or people working with them (including their employer).

Many journals require authors to submit a disclosure statement with their article, and this disclosure statement is often published within the article text.

Disclosure statements should be tagged as a section within the <back> element. The section element should be assigned an attribute @sec-type="COI-statement”. This special section usually has a title like “Disclosure Statement”.

For example:

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Ethics menu, disclosure of financial interests in presentations/publications (for researchers).

When presenting their research, researchers are expected to disclose financial interests or relationships with outside entities that could bias – or appear to bias – the design, conduct or reporting of the research.  Disclosure provides transparency about any apparent, existing or potential financial conflicts of interest. 

Below are sample statements that may be used in presentations, publications or other media for disclosing financial interests that may create or appear to create a conflict of interest.  Sometimes, the financial interest is held by the researcher’s significant other and/or dependent children.  For all examples below, “researcher” may be replaced with a reference to the researcher’s significant other or dependent children, as appropriate.

Generally speaking, disclosure statements should identify the following:

• The individual with the financial interest;
• The financial interest and/or entity creating the actual or potential conflict; and
• The relationship between the financial interest and the research being presented.

As the examples below illustrate, disclosure may be prudent - or even required by the university - in cases where there is no current direct relationship between the financial interest and the research being presented. 

When a researcher and the university have approved a management plan or entered into other agreements to minimize or mitigate any real, apparent or potential financial conflicts, researchers may enhance their disclosure statement with a reference to the existence of the plan or agreement.  

The statements below do not reflect the universe of all types of outside financial interests or relationships that should be disclosed.  Contact Research Compliance Services with questions or concerns about requirements and standard practices regarding disclosing financial interests when presenting research.

Disclosing ownership/equity interest of an outside entity

When the researcher owns/is part owner of an entity – private or non-profit – that provides goods or services related to the researcher’s institutional responsibilities, the researcher should identify the company name, briefly explain what it does, and explain how the company is related to the research. 

Template: [Person with conflict] owns/is part owner of (company name).  (Company name, what it does, and description of how the company and research are/are not related.)

Example of potential conflict: Dr. Doe has an equity interest in ACME Inc.  ACME Inc. develops water purity testing devices.  ACME Inc. may potentially benefit financially from the research findings on filtration systems presented here. 

Example of no current relationship between the financial interest and the research: Dr. Doe has an equity interest in ACME Inc.  ACME Inc. develops water testing devices.  The research findings on filtration systems presented here are not related to any products or services currently provide by ACME Inc. 

Disclosing compensation from outside entity

When the researcher receives compensation from an entity – private or non-profit – for work related to the researcher’s institutional responsibilities, the researcher should identify the company name, briefly explain what it does, and explain how the company is related to the research. 

Template:  [Person with conflict] is a paid consultant for (entity name).  (Entity name, what it does, and description of how the entity and research are related.)

Example of existing or potential conflict: The author of this paper, Dr. Doe, has received compensation from ACME Inc. for consulting services related to the potential for scientific advancements to improve the durability of its products.  ACME Inc. develops and sells products that stand to be improved by the research results presented here.

Example of no current relationship between the financial interest and the research: The author of this paper, Dr. Doe, has received compensation from ACME Inc. for consulting services related to the potential for scientific advancements to improve the durability of its products. The research being reported here is unrelated to any of ACME Inc.’s current products or services.

Disclosing a management role

When the researcher serves in a paid or unpaid management role – e.g. member of advisory board, board of directors member, Chief Scientific Officer – for a private or non-profit entity related to the researcher’s institutional responsibilities, the researcher should disclose their role and the entity name, briefly explain what it does, and explain how the entity is related to the research.  

Template: [Person with conflict] has an affiliation with (explain affiliation, e.g. serve as an unpaid consultant for, am chief scientific officer for, volunteer on board of directors, etc.) (entity name).  (Description of what the entity does, how the entity and research are related.)

Example of existing or potential conflict:  Dr. Doe, the primary investigator of the assessment research being reported here, serves on the Board of Directors of Helping Services USA, a non-profit that advocates the use of and provides assessments for the detection and diagnosis of early learning disabilities.  Helping Services USA provides the assessment featured in the research here.

Example of no relationship between the financial interest and the research: Dr. Doe, the primary investigator of the assessment research being reported here, serves on the Board of Directors of Helping Services USA, a non-profit that advocates the use of and provides assessments for the detection and diagnosis of early learning disabilities.  Helping Services USA does not currently advocate for or provide the assessment featured in the research here.

Disclosing receipt of royalties or other income for intellectual property (IP)

When the researcher receives royalties or other income from intellectual property (IP) that is involved in or may otherwise be impacted by the research, the researcher should disclose the financial interest in the IP and its relationship to the research. 

Template:  [Person with conflict] receives royalties for intellectual property that is subject to evaluation or improvement through the research presented here.

Example of existing or potential conflict: The assessment that is the subject of this research is commercially available and published through Assessments, Inc. Dr. Doe receives royalties for sales of the assessment.

Example of no relationship between the financial interest and the research: The assessment that is the subject of this research is commercially available and published through Assessments, Inc. Dr. Doe does not receive any royalties for sales of the assessment.

Research is supported (financially or otherwise) by outside entity

When the research is funded or otherwise supported by an outside entity, the researcher should disclose the entity’s support of and relationship to the research.

Template:  The research findings (or, some or part of the research) discussed/presented were supported by (name of entity).  (Description of what the entity does, how the entity and research are related.)

Example: The research project findings discussed here were supported by funding from ACME Inc.  ACME Inc. sells products related to this research.

Disclosure of the University of Oregon’s financial interest in the research

When the University of Oregon has a financial interest in the research, the researcher should disclose the University’s financial relationship to the research.

Template:  The University of Oregon has (explain financial interest, e.g. ownership in, intellectual property rights, etc.) and may financially benefit from this research.

Example:  The University of Oregon owns the intellectually property rights in the assessment being evaluated in this research and may financially benefit from the outcome of the research.

• Insights blog

What is a conflict of interest?

Understand what a conflict of interest is, and get to know some examples.

A conflict of interest can also be known as ‘competing interest’. A conflict of interest can occur when you, or your employer, or sponsor have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with them, that could influence your research.

When you submit your paper to a journal , full disclosure is required. The journal editor will firstly use this information to inform their editorial decisions. Then they will publish such disclosures to assist readers in evaluating the article. Or, the editor may instead decide not to publish your article on the basis of any declared conflict of interest.

You can declare the conflict of interest in your cover letter or on the manuscript submission form in the journal’s online peer-review system.

Conflict of interests can be financial or non-financial in nature. To maintain transparency, any associations which can be perceived by others as a conflict of interest must also be declared.

What are the benefits of open access publishing?

There’s increasing pressure on researchers to show the societal impact of their research. Open access can help your work reach new readers, beyond those with easy access to a research library.

Some examples of financial conflicts of interests include:

Employment or voluntary involvement

Collaborations with advocacy groups relating to the content of the article

Grants from an entity, paid to the author or organization

Personal fees received by the authors as honoraria, royalties, consulting fees, lecture fees, or testimonies

Patents held or pending by the authors, their institutions, funding organizations, or licensed to an entity, whether earning royalties or not

Royalties being received by the authors or their institutions

Stock or share ownership

Benefits related to the development of products as an outcome of the work

Examples of non-financial conflicts of interests:

Receipt of drugs, specialist equipment, tools, computer programs, or digital applications

Access to data repositories, archival resources, museum collections, by an entity that might benefit, or be at a disadvantage financially or reputationally from the published findings

Holding a position on the boards of industry bodies or private companies that might benefit, or be at a disadvantage financially or reputationally from the published findings

Writing assistance or administrative support from a person or organization that might benefit, or be at a disadvantage from the published findings

Personal, political, religious, ideological, academic and intellectual competing interests which are perceived to be relevant to the published content

Involvement in legal action related to the work

Important : if there are no competing interests to declare, authors should include a statement to the article to confirm that there are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Sponsorship of clinical trials

Authors employed by pharmaceutical companies or other organizations which sponsor clinical trials must declare this as a competing interest.

Authors should adhere to the  Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies (GPP3) , which provides guidance to ensure responsible and ethical standards are maintained.

Taylor & Francis journals will not publish articles advertising commercial products.

Disclosure statement

You should also include a relevant disclosure statement with the text of your article. You can do this in conjunction with any acknowledgments and details of funders.

Conflict of interest: sample disclosure statements

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and my ethical obligation as a researcher, I am reporting that I [have a financial and/or business interests in] [am a consultant to] [receive funding from] (delete as appropriate) a company that may be affected by the research reported in the enclosed paper. I have disclosed those interests fully to Taylor & Francis, and I have in place an approved plan for managing any potential conflicts arising from [that involvement].

This research is sponsored by [company A] and may lead to the development of products which may be licensed to [company B], in which I have a business and/or financial interest. I have disclosed those interests fully to Taylor & Francis, and have in place an approved plan for managing any potential conflicts arising from this arrangement.

If there is no disclosure, we will then publish the following statement: “ No potential competing interest was reported by the author(s). ”

Did you know that competing interest declarations, acknowledgments and notes on contributors are all openly available to view on all articles on Taylor & Francis Online? This ensures transparency of key information and helps potential readers to evaluate articles more easily.

Further reading

Taylor & Francis Editorial Policies

Ethics for authors

Ethics for editors

• Research Resources

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• Research Conflict of Interest

Disclosure in Publications, Presentations, and Grant Proposals

Demonstrating transparency and objectivity in research is important for higher education, academic journals, and professional organizations in order to maintain credibility and influence. When an RCOI Management Plan is in place, its purpose is to mitigate a potential or perceived research conflict of interest by describing a set of controls and transparency requirements, but it does not eliminate it. The potential research conflict of interest (real or perceived) exists for as long as the significant financial interests and/or outside activities generating it are in place. Therefore, it would be incorrect for an individual with an RCOI Management Plan to say or consider that they "do not have a conflict of interest" simply due to RCOI disclosure to the University or having an active RCOI Management Plan.

Sponsoring agencies, research journals, professional societies, and conference presentations may have general or specific rules for recognizing potential research conflicts of interest. These can be broadly based disclosure requirements or specific to the subject matter. In instances where a potential RCOI may impact (or be perceived to impact) an activity with these organizations or their processes, individuals must disclose their RCOI in accordance with the requirements of their approved Management Plan in addition to the requirements of these organizations.  Sometimes, disclosures require judgment on a case-by-case basis depending on the relationship between the activity (proposal submission, planned publications, etc.) contemplated and its relevance to the individual's RCOI. For example, in the case of submitting proposals to sponsoring agencies, since the RCOI Committee is not reviewing all proposals submitted by researchers with Management Plans, the initial assessment is the responsibility of the individual with the RCOI to consider the content, specific aims, and collaborators of the proposal in order to determine if an RCOI disclosure must be made to the granting agency according to their rules and requirements. This assessment must take place independently for each proposal since the determination is specific to the project and its subject matter. The RCOI Committee can provide assistance if the faculty member is unsure about the relatedness or need for disclosure. However, in this instance; judgment is based on the substance of the proposal and its potential relevance to the RCOI, and by no means is the potential conflict absolved or no longer in existence simply because a Management Plan is in place.

Therefore, it is important that authors, editors, and reviewers provide full disclosure to mitigate or eliminate perception of any financial or personal gain that may be obtained through research described in publications, presentations, or grant proposals. Many publications and organizations have specific requirements and standards for disclosure of related financial interests and board service relationships. 

When to Provide Disclosure

When a potential research conflict of interest exists and a disclosure is required in publications, presentations, and grant proposals, it must be provided in cases of real  and perceived RCOIs:

• Real Research Conflicts of Interest:  Real RCOIs include significant financial interest, IP, or other relationships that could potentially bias the research being reported in the publication/presentation. Service on a board such as CEO or President of a company is considered a financial interest. These RCOIs could be possible in cases of outside employment, being a consultant, ownership in a private company, income from intellectual property, board service, or similar relationships/interests of your spouse and/or dependents.
• Perceived Research Conflicts of Interest:  Any of the interests or relationships described above, if they could be perceived to be related to your UTA research or responsibilities. If the outside activities are focused on or working with an outside entity that focuses on products or research that could be perceived by a reasonable person to be related to what you do at UTA, then a disclosure should be provided in the publication/presentation to alleviate the potential RCOI and provide transparency. 

How to Provide Disclosure

• Publications:  In publications, you must comply with the RCOI disclosure policies of the publisher or journal. If the publisher/journal does not have an explicit policy on disclosing conflicts of interest, you should provide disclosure whenever possible in order to provide full transparency and protect the integrity of your work. See "Example Disclosure Statement" below for guidance; however, the statement may need to be altered in order to fit the context or guidelines of the particular journal. 
• Presentations:  In presentations, you must provide a disclosure statement in your presentation for any real or perceived RCOIs as defined above. See "Example Disclosure Statement" below for the minimum information to be included. You may add additional details as you deem necessary. 
• Grant Proposals: In grant proposals, you must disclose your RCOI in accordance with the requirements of your approved Management Plan in addition to the requirements of the granting agency. The RCOI Committee does not review proposals submitted by all researchers with Management Plans. The initial assessment is the responsibility of the individual with the RCOI to consider the content, specific aims, and collaborators of the proposal in order to determine if an RCOI disclosure must be made to the granting agency in accordance with their rules and regulations.

Example Disclosure Statement

[Dr. /Mr. /Ms. name] has a potential research conflict of interest due to a financial interest with company [name of entity]. A management plan has been created to preserve objectivity in research in accordance with UTA policy. 

Office of Regulatory Services

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Other research transparency standards and disclosures for journal articles

APA Journals recommend or require the following additional research transparency standards for articles.

Author contributorship

Funder information

Sample demographics

COG statements

Data transparency

Positionality statements

Other disclosures

⁠APA follows a contributorship rather than an authorship model, meaning that authors are not only those who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study.

See APA Ethics Code Standard 8.12a and the seventh edition of the Publication Manual :

Authorship is reserved for persons who make a substantial contribution to and who accept responsibility for a published work. Individuals should take authorship credit only for work they have performed or to which they have substantially contributed (APA Ethics Code Standard 8.12a, Publication Credit). Authorship encompasses, therefore, not only those who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study. Substantial professional contributions may include formulating the problem or hypothesis, structuring the experimental design, organizing and conducting the statistical analysis, or interpreting the results and findings. Those who so contribute are listed in the byline. Lesser contributions, which do not constitute authorship, may be acknowledged in the author note (see Section 2.7; see also a taxonomy of authorship in the natural sciences called at CRediT). Lesser contributions may include such supportive functions as designing or building the apparatus, suggesting or advising about the analysis, collecting or entering the data, modifying or structuring a computer program, recruiting participants, and obtaining animals. Conducting routine observations or diagnoses for use in studies does not constitute authorship. Combinations of these (and other) tasks, however, may justify authorship.

Some APA journals have adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to automate author contributions statements in their published articles. CRediT is a high-level taxonomy comprised of 14 roles that describe each author’s specific contribution(s) to the scholarly output. Authors can select more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one person.

The taxonomy also allows for a broader and more representative acknowledgment of the work of researchers who may otherwise not be represented or credited.

Funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures

The seventh edition of APA’s Publication Manual instructs authors to provide funder and conflict-of-interest information in the author note. Authors should disclose even interests that could potentially be perceived as conflicts.

To add a further layer of transparency, many editors ask authors to provide a statement attesting that there is no potential perceived conflict of interest.

Sample demographics and generalizability

APA Style JARS recommend describing sample populations in detail, and many editors instruct authors to include this information, along with a discussion of the generalizability of findings, in the Method and/or Discussion sections of their articles, as well as in the abstract, where it is more easily found.

Constraints on Generality statements

Constraints on Generality (COG) statements are meant to identify and justify target populations for reported findings—clarifying which aspects of a study should be preserved in a direct replication, noting characteristics contributing to the effect as well as characteristics they think were irrelevant. Authors use this section of the article to specify the target populations and constraints for not only participants but materials, procedures, and historical and temporal context and verify the completeness of the description by saying “we have no reason to believe that the results depend on other characteristics of the participants, materials, or context.”

In 2019, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine formed the Committee on Reproducibility and Replicability in Science and drafted 10 recommendations , among which was a recommendation that a discussion of the expected constraints on generality, such as which methodological features the authors think could be varied without affecting the result and which must remain constant, be included.

Data transparency statements

The seventh edition of APA’s Publication Manual asks authors to disclose whether the manuscript is based on data also used in a previously published report or a doctoral dissertation and to acknowledge the publication of related reports in the author note. Some editors ask for this information to be provided with submitted manuscripts; others ask for formal data transparency statements describing how the research question and variables reported in the manuscript differ or do not differ from previous reports.

Positionality statements intend to address potential author bias by transparently reporting how the identities of the authors relate to the research/article topic and to the identity of the participants, as well as the extent to which those identities are represented in the scientific record. In their recent study on racial inequalities in psychological research, Roberts, et al. (2020) advocated for the use of positionality statements as a means of transparently addressing potential bias, clarifying the authors’ social identities in relation to the target populations, and to encourage authors to collaborate with diverse teams and co-authors.

Other research disclosures

Some editors are asking authors for specific statistical reporting—and some ask authors to verify that they have included the information in a disclosure section.

Some examples of required reporting include:

• Sample size, power, and precision (including determination of sample size, including power analysis, or methods used to determine precision of parameter estimates, and explanation of any interim analyses and stopping rules employed).
• Full methods for empirical studies, including all manipulations, measures, and eventual data exclusions.
• All levels of all independent variables for all predictors or manipulations relevant to the target research question, whether successful or failed.
• All dependent variables or measures collected for the target research question.
• The total number of excluded observations and the reasons for making those exclusions.
• Exact p values, effect sizes, and 95% confidence intervals, or an explanation of why this was not possible.
• Indicators of clinically significant change for results of interventions.
• All decisions that were data-dependent (e.g., deciding when to stop data collection, what observations to exclude, what covariates to include, and what analyses to conduct after rather than before seeing the data).

Where these exist, these and other requirements are outlined in each journal’s instructions to authors.

Continue reading about how APA supports openness and rigor in psychological science, from data sharing to replications, preregistration, APA Style JARS, and more.

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• Publication ethics and research integrity: policy guidelines for authors

We all want to ensure that the research you publish with us meets strict quality guidelines. Your reputation, and ours, depends on it. So does the reputation of your research institution on the global stage.  

Here you will find guidance on policies that help us achieve this, and what we ask of you to comply with them. We also recommend taking a look at the guidelines provided by The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)  

Declaration of conflicting interests

If you’ve received research funding, or been paid for attending a talk related to your work, these may be interpreted as competing interests. You should declare anything relevant, and we’re here to help you to do so easily by providing sample wording for typical scenarios.

What do authors need to declare? How should authors make this declaration? What do Editors need to declare?

Funding statements

All research articles need a funding statement, so here’s a quick guide to writing one.

Writing a funding statement Industry-funded articles

Ethics approval and informed consent statements

Guidance on preparing ethics statements in support of research findings, with multiple examples of scenarios and statements to get you started.

Studies involving humans Studies involving animals Studies not involving humans or animals Global research ethics and inclusion

Sage follows COPE and ICMJE guidance on the declaration of conflicts of interest by authors, reviewers, and editors. A conflict of interest is defined as any direct or indirect interest that might influence the reading, assessment of or conducting of the research reported in the submission. Any interests within a five-year period prior to beginning the research are considered relevant, although authors must disclose interests outside this time frame if they may have influenced the research. 

What do authors need to declare?

Authors are required to disclose any direct or indirect interests that relate to their submission to any Sage journal so that the editor, reviewers and readers may be able to make informed judgements about any potential bias in the research process, writing or publication. The following interests may present a conflict and should be declared upon submission: 

Financial Interests

• Grants from a funding agency, a commercial entity or any type of payment to authors from organisations that are likely to benefit financially from the research  
• Employment with or affiliation to an organisation that has an interest in the research and/or is likely to benefit from its publication and dissemination  
• Stocks, shares, patents or patent applications or other forms of financial holdings that are likely to benefit from the publication and dissemination of the research  
• Consulting fees, reimbursement or any other payments made to authors for conducting the research  
• Close relatives who may financially benefit from the publication and dissemination of the research  

Non-financial

• Affiliation to an organisation that will have an interest in the outcome such as members of a research advisory board, steering or advisory committees, associations or honorary affiliations  
• Membership of organisations or scientific societies that undertake advocacy work  
• Ideology, beliefs, thoughts, faith relevant to the research topic  
• Activism or other advocacy work related to the research   
• Political leanings or legal action relevant to the research or its potential outcome   
• Research competition, previous personal disagreements, close working relationships with editors, editorial board members  
• Editorial responsibilities or membership of the editorial board of the journal  

How should authors make this declaration?

Your declaration of conflicting interests it should be added under the heading ‘Declaration of conflicting interests’ after any Acknowledgments and before Funding, Notes and References. Please see the  submission guidelines  for more information. If there are no conflicting interests, we’ll publish this statement: ‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.

In your Contributor Agreement you will be asked to certify that:

• All financial support is acknowledged in your article.
• Any commercial or financial arrangements related to your article have been discussed with your Editor, who will advise whether details should be declared.
• You have not signed an agreement with any sponsor that might compromise the impartial reporting of data.

Submissions will be evaluated fairly and will not necessarily be rejected when any conflicting interests are declared. If a relevant conflict that was not declared by authors becomes apparent at any time during the peer review or publishing process, the Editor reserves the right to reject the submission. Sage will follow COPE guidelines for any conflicts that come to light post-publication.  

What do Editors need to declare?

All Editors are required to declare any conflicts of interest that may impact the peer review and decision-making process. If a conflict arises, an alternative member of the Editorial board must be appointed and the Editor with the conflict must recuse themselves from the decision-making process. These conflicts include financial and non-financial interests listed above.

• If the Editor is based at the same institution as the authors or has previously conducted research with them in the last three years, they should recuse themselves from the peer review and decision-making process.  
• Journal Editors or members of the editorial board submitting their research to their own journals may do so and must declare their involvement with the journal as a conflict of interest. Where applicable, the Journal Editor or Editorial Board member must recuse themselves from the peer review process. The Journal Editor must appoint another member of the Editorial board who will invite two or more subject experts to evaluate the manuscript.   
• Guest Editors may submit their research to a special issue or special collection they are leading and must declare a conflict of interest upon submission. Where Guest Editors are involved in peer review and final decisions, their submissions will be handled by an alternate member of the editorial board or the Journal Editor.   

Sage Editorial Staff 

All Sage editorial staff are required to declare their employment at Sage as a conflict of interest in any submission they send to a Sage journal. These submissions are treated as any other submissions within the journal.

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All research articles need a funding statement, so here’s a quick guide to writing one. It should appear under the heading ‘Funding’ after any Acknowledgments and Declaration of conflicting interests, and before Notes and References.

This should comprise the text in bold in the example below, followed by the full name of the funding agency, and the grant number in square brackets:

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number xxx].

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by commas, multiple agencies by semicolons.

What if your research was supported indirectly by grants available to your institution, but not to you personally? In this case, simply include this statement:

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note: If you have any concerns that the information you give may compromise your anonymity prior to the peer review process, you can choose to wait until you submit your final accepted manuscript.

Industry-funded articles

We can only consider industry-funded articles if funding is fully declared within the manuscript, together with any role in the design of the study or in the analysis and interpretation of data played by the funder.

Both direct and indirect funding must be declared, whether funding is in full or in part. Indirect funding includes organisations associated with the research and/or authors receiving funding from one of the industries below, or any industry where the funder could be seen to have a vested interest in the results of a study.

Industries include but are not limited to:

• Pharmaceuticals
• E-cigarettes

Failure to declare industry-specific funding can lead to the rejection of your article at submission, or retraction of the whole article if the oversight comes to light after publication.

How do we make sure that we maintain high ethical standards in publishing? By including clear statements in support of results reported in articles. Here is guidance, with examples of sample statements, for:

Studies involving humans

All studies involving humans, for example including patients, their samples, data or any other study involving human participants must be evaluated by a suitably qualified research ethics committee prior to undertaking the research in line with the Declaration of Helsinki .

All studies involving people, whether patients or research participants, must be evaluated by a qualified research ethics committee prior to undertaking the research in line with the Declaration of Helsinki .

Ethics statements should be included in the methods section of all relevant submissions (unless the journal you’re submitting to publishes them under a separate heading – the journal’s submission guidelines will make this clear) and must include the name and location of the review board, approval number and date, as in the examples below.

Ethics approval statements

These examples can be used If ethics approval was obtained:

This study was approved by the XXXX Research Ethics Committee (approval no. XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY.

This study received ethical approval from the XXXX IRB (approval #XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY.

Examples of ethics approval statements suitable for different scenarios:

The XXXX Ethics Review Committee at XXXX University approved our interviews (approval: XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY. Respondents gave written consent for review and signature before starting interviews.

This study received ethical approval from the XXXX IRB (approval #XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY. This is an IRB-approved retrospective study, all patient information was de-identified and patient consent was not required. Patient data will not be shared with third parties.

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXXX (no. XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY, with the need for  written informed consent waived. 

This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted on Month DD, YYYY. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) at XXXX acted as the central IRB, whose review was accepted by all participating institutions’ IRBs (Ref. XYZ123). The central IRB determined that this research involved minimal risk and approved a waiver for informed consent.

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXXX University (Ethics Code: XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY. All participants provided written informed consent prior to enrolment in the study. This research was conducted ethically in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

The ethics review committee of the XXXX University approved this study on Month DD, YYYY. Number: XYZ123. Date: Month DD, YYYY. Written informed consent for inclusion in this research was obtained from the patients prior to surgery.

The experimental protocols were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the XXX University (No. XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY. All research activities complied with ethical regulations and were performed in accordance with regulations of each hospital. Informed consent to use histopathological samples and pathological diagnostic reports for research purposes was obtained from all patients prior to surgery. They were given the option to refuse to participate by opting out.

These examples can be used if ethics approval and patient consent were waived:

The Ethics Committee of the XXXX waived the need for ethics approval and patient consent for the collection, analysis and publication of the retrospectively obtained and anonymised data for this non-interventional study.

The study was approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency. According to Danish legislation, neither ethics  approval nor patient consent is required for registry linkage studies [23].

Case reports

Ethical approval to report this case (or case series) was obtained from *name of ethics committee or institutional review board (approval number/ID)*.  

Our institution does not require ethical approval for reporting individual cases or case series.

Patient or participant consent

In all cases, it’s important to state that consent has been granted to use any personal information, and how that consent has been gathered. Informed consent includes three key components:  

• Communication of information  
• Comprehension of information  
• Voluntary participation

For research articles, you need to state in the methods section whether the participants provided written or verbal informed consent. This statement should include whether the participants provided consent to conduct the study, publish the study, and have their photos or other images used . If information has been anonymized, that should be clearly stated too. If you are publishing on an open access basis, patients or participants must be aware that the article will be available to anyone with an internet connection.

The American Psychological Association (APA) recommends that for those who are legally incapable of giving informed consent, researchers should:  

• Provide an appropriate explanation  
• Seek the individual's assent  
• Consider the person’s preferences and best interests  
• Obtain appropriate permission from a legally authorized person, if such a substitute consent is permitted or required by law  

If the law doesn’t permit or require a legally authorized person to provide consent, you’ll need to show that you’ve taken reasonable steps to protect the individual's rights and welfare.   Participants should be informed about:  

• The purpose, duration, and procedure of the research  
• Their right to decline to participate and how to withdraw from the research along with the possible consequences  
• Factors that may be expected to influence their willingness to participate, such as potential risks, discomfort, or adverse effects  
• Prospective research benefits and incentives for participation  
• Limits of confidentiality  
• Whom to contact for questions about the research and research participants’ rights.  

You can access Sage’s Participant Consent Form here . Authors should not submit completed consent forms alongside the manuscript files unless specifically requested to do so, owing to potential legal/privacy issues with sending and receiving confidential information. Instead, they should confirm in the relevant section of the – e.g. manuscript – text that the individual(s) or their proxy has provided written informed consent for the publication of this information in the present work.

Informed consent for ethnographic research  

Ethnographic research requires similar ethics approvals from an International Review Board or independent local, regional, or national review body as well as participant consent to conduct and publish the research. Consent should obtained before the research is conducted and it should be part of the project design, implementation, and other parts of the research process. Consultation with groups or communities affected by the studies and consideration of their input on the study design should happen throughout the entire research period. If consent is not obtained before the study perhaps because of the research context, process, or researcher/participant relations, you can seek to obtain it retroactively if necessary.  

Participants should also understand that there is a possibility that confidentiality might be compromised, despite best efforts. This is especially important to note for small communities where participants may be more easily identifiable.

Examples below if consent was obtained:

1.      Written informed consent

The study was approved by the XXXX (Ethical Clearance Reference Number: XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY. All participants provided written informed consent prior to participating.

Written informed consent was obtained from a legally authorised representative for anonymised patient information to be published in this article.

2.      Verbal informed consent

Informed consent was obtained verbally before participation. The consent was audio-recorded in the presence of an independent witness.

3.      Patient consent for studies involving minors

Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardians/next of kin.  

4.     Patient or participant consent for use of images including faces

Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

If patient consent was not obtained:

Informed consent for information published in this article was not obtained because [please state the reason].

Studies involving animals

All studies involving animals, particularly vertebrate animals, must be evaluated by a qualified animal ethics or welfare committee. Ethics statements should include the name and location of the reviewing committee, approval number and date, as in these examples:

Protocols for animal experiments were approved by the Animal Experimental Ethics Committee of the XXXX University (Approval no. XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY, in compliance with the National Institutes of Health guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals.

All animals were cared for in strict accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Publication No. 85-23, revised 1996), and the experimental design was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXXX (Approval no. XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY.

If IACUC approval was obtained you can use the example below:

The XXX Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approved the experimental procedures used in this study (approval no. XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY.

An example on animal welfare:

All animal housing and experiments were conducted in strict accordance with the institutional Guidelines for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals at [insert name of institution where the research was conducted and/or where the author is based].

Studies not involving humans or animals

These statements can be used in situations where a study did not involve human or animal participants as well as non-research articles such as reviews:

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal participants.

There are no human participants in this article and informed consent is not required.

Global research ethics and inclusion

If your article reports on global research, you should follow the TRUST Code . We recommend including a statement in your methods section describing how your work adheres to the Articles in the Code. Some journals may require a statement under the separate heading ‘Global research ethics and inclusion’ at the end of your article. This should cover the following:

• Confirm that the research has local relevance and has been designed and conducted in collaboration with local communities. Note that contributors meeting the requirements of authorship as per the ICMJE Guidelines must be listed as authors. Sometimes research is conducted in low- and middle-income countries in partnership with researchers from higher income countries. In these cases it is expected that local researchers are listed in first and/or last authorship positions to reflect the significant contribution they will have made. Joint first and/or joint senior authorship is an option here.
• Confirm that local ethics review was sought and if not, explain the reasons why.
• Where research involvement presented any kind of risk to participants e.g. discrimination, incrimination or risk to personal health and safety, describe the special measures taken to ensure their safety and wellbeing that were agreed with local partners.
• Explain how communication was tailored to the requirements of local participants to ensure that informed consent was freely given, and any feedback on findings was comprehensible to local communities. Describe how any potential cultural sensitivities were explored in advance.
• Confirm that all research was conducted to the highest possible ethical standards, regardless of the requirements of the local setting.

We also recommend the guidance provided by Consensus statement on measures to promote equitable authorship in the publication of research from international partnerships (Morton, B. et al, 2022) .

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A Disclosure Form for Work Submitted to Medical Journals : A Proposal From the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

• 1 Secretary, ICMJE; Executive Editor, Annals of Internal Medicine
• 2 Representative and Associate Director for Library Operations, National Library of Medicine
• 3 Chief Scientific Editor, Deutsches Ärzteblatt (German Medical Journal) & Deutsches Ärzteblatt International
• 4 Editor in Chief, JAMA and the JAMA Network
• 5 Executive Managing Editor, JAMA and the JAMA Network
• 6 Editor, Revista Medica de Chile (Medical Journal of Chile)
• 7 Editor in Chief, New Zealand Medical Journal
• 8 Editor in Chief, The BMJ (British Medical Journal)
• 9 Editor, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Coordinator, WHO Press
• 10 Editor in Chief, Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences
• 11 Editor in Chief, Journal of Korean Medical Science
• 12 Editor, The Lancet
• 13 Deputy Editor, The Lancet
• 14 Editor in Chief, Annals of Internal Medicine
• 15 Assistant to the Editor, Special Projects, New England Journal of Medicine
• 16 Scientific Editor in Chief, Ugeskrift for Laeger (Danish Medical Journal)
• 17 Editor in Chief, New England Journal of Medicine
• 18 Representative and Past President, World Association of Medical Editors

Many factors, including professional and personal relationships and activities, can influence the design, conduct, and reporting of the clinical science that informs health care decisions. The potential for conflict of interest exists when these relationships and activities may bias judgment. 1 Many stakeholders—editors, peer reviewers, clinicians, educators, policy makers, patients, and the public—rely on the disclosure of authors’ relationships and activities to inform their assessments. Trust in the transparency, consistency, and completeness of these disclosures is essential.

Ten years ago, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) adopted the “ICMJE Form for the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest” as a uniform mechanism for collecting and reporting authors’ relationships and activities that readers might consider relevant to a published work. 2 The goal was to avoid the confusion (and often ensuing controversy) created when journals vary in how they collect and report this information. We believe a uniform disclosure form has been helpful, but problems remain. First, the software supporting the current form is increasingly problematic, making its use difficult or impossible for an increasing number of authors. More important, however, is that many authors and readers misunderstand, misapply, or misinterpret the disclosures.

Although some individuals violate the public trust by purposefully hiding relevant relationships and activities, we believe most authors are committed to transparent reporting and consider it as vital to the advancement of clinical science. Nonetheless, disagreement, confusion, and controversy regarding authors’ disclosures arise when opinions differ over which relationships and activities to report. An author might not report an item that others deem important because of a difference in opinion regarding what is “relevant,” confusion over definitions, or a simple oversight. Some authors may be concerned that readers will interpret the listing of any item as a “potential conflict of interest” as indicative of problematic influence and wrongdoing, a concern often raised regarding the requirement to report publicly funded grants. For their part, some readers fail to recognize that their own relationships and activities influence how they assess the work of others and what they deem to be a “conflict” for others or themselves.

We propose several changes to the ICMJE disclosure form to help address these issues. First, words matter. Despite including the word “potential,” a form entitled “…for the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest” may imply that any relationship or activity listed represents a problematic influence or wrongdoing. The proposed new title, “The ICMJE Disclosure Form,” aims to dispel that interpretation and potential stigma. Second, we no longer ask authors to decide what might be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest. Authors disclose their relationships and activities so that readers can decide whether these relationships or activities should influence their assessments of the work. Further, to avoid omissions—inadvertent or purposeful—we now provide a checklist of relationships and activities for authors to complete.

We welcome feedback about the proposed new form, which is available with a link to provide comments at http://www.icmje.org . We will consider comments received by April 30, 2020, before finalizing and adopting a revised version. In the interim, the extant “ICMJE Form for the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest” will remain in use and available as a downloadable PDF at our website.

In a further step to avoid inconsistencies and omissions, and to help ease the disclosure process for authors, some journals will change the mechanism by which disclosures are collected. Authors are required to provide disclosures to multiple entities (eg, to academic institutions, continuing education providers, guideline and other committees as well as medical journals). Disclosing information repeatedly, with varying reporting requirements, formats, and definitions, is frustrating for authors and contributes to problematic and controversial discrepancies across disclosures. The ICMJE will therefore accept disclosures from web-based repositories. These enable authors to maintain an inventory of their relationships and activities and create electronic disclosures tailored to the requirements of entities such as ICMJE, without having to reenter information repeatedly.

ICMJE will accept disclosures from repositories that meet the following criteria: collection and reporting of relationships and activities consistent with ICMJE requirements; no fees for individuals to enter, store, or export their data; provision of disclosures to journals electronically as well as an option for journals without a digital interface; and compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

One currently available repository that is consistent with these criteria is Convey ( http://www.convey.org ), but we encourage the development of other repositories as necessary to meet regional, linguistic, and regulatory needs. A template that enables authors to create disclosures that emulate the extant “ICMJE Form for the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest” is already available at the Convey platform, and some of our journals have begun to collect author disclosures electronically in this way. This template will be updated to conform to the new ICMJE Disclosure Form when it is finalized, and all ICMJE journals can begin accepting disclosures in this manner. Ultimately, the currently employed PDF-based ICMJE form will be unavailable.

While no approach to disclosure will be perfect or foolproof, we hope the changes we propose will help promote transparency and trust. We look forward to your feedback.

Corresponding Author: Darren B. Taichman, MD, PhD, 190 N Independence Mall W, Philadelphia, PA 19106-1572 ( [email protected] ).

Published Online: January 27, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.22274

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Note: This article is being published simultaneously in Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ (British Medical Journal), Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Deutsches Ärzteblatt (German Medical Journal), Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences, JAMA, Journal of Korean Medical Science, The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, New Zealand Medical Journal, Revista Medica de Chile (Medical Journal of Chile), and Ugeskrift for Laeger (Danish Medical Journal) .

Disclaimer: Dr Sahni’s affiliation as representative and past president of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) does not imply endorsement by WAME member journals that are not part of the ICMJE.

See More About

Taichman DB , Backus J , Baethge C, et al. A Disclosure Form for Work Submitted to Medical Journals : A Proposal From the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors . JAMA. 2020;323(11):1050–1051. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.22274

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Examples of Publication Disclosure Statements for Conflict of Interest

Journals and entities sponsoring meeting, symposia or conferences have varying standards for reporting financial relationships relating to your institutional responsibilities. However, you should always acknowledge those relationships when publishing or presenting data from your research or relating to the topic of your  publication of presentation. The following are examples of disclosure statements. If you use one of the examples, you should modify it to fit your specific relationship.

Example 1 The author(s) of this [publication, presentation or poster] has research support from [Source of research funding] and also [holds stock in; serves on an advisory board for; serves on the Board of Directors of, received an honorarium from] [name of entity]. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by Stony Brook University in accordance with its policy on objectivity in research.

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Authorship and contribution disclosures

Henry sauermann.

1 ESMT Berlin, Berlin 10178, Germany.

2 Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.

3 National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Carolin Haeussler

4 University of Passau, Passau, Germany.

Associated Data

Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/3/11/e1700404/DC1

Supplementary Text

fig. S1. Team members and their respective contributions (schematic).

fig. S2. Distribution of the count of contributions by position (teams of six).

fig. S3. Count of contributions by team size.

fig. S4. Share of authors who fulfill ICMJE authorship criteria.

table S1. Summary statistics for Study 1.

table S2. Authorship positions and contributions.

table S3. Authorship and contributions for teams with 2, 6, and 10 authors.

table S4. Incidence of alphabetical authorship.

table S5. Authorship position and corresponding author status.

table S6. Corresponding author status and contributions.

table S7. Predicted likelihood of particular contributions and predicted contribution counts.

table S8. Author contributions by position and team size.

table S9. Types of contributions by position and team size.

table S10. ICMJE authorship criteria fulfilled by position and team size.

table S11. Summary statistics for Study 2.

table S12. Regression analyses of survey responses on general opinions regarding contribution statements.

table S13. Regression analyses of survey responses on specific articles.

table S14. Illustrative responses to the question “Why would you not pay more attention to contribution statements?”

table S15. Illustrative responses to the question “Do you have any other comments on this topic that you would like to share? How do you think contribution statements could be improved?”

table S16. Authorship positions and contributions controlling for quantity and quality of previous publications.

table S17. Authorship positions and contributions using data from papers in the top 10% of article impact (citations).

References ( 36 – 38 )

What do contribution statements on articles tell us that author order does not—and how can they be improved?

Most scientific research is performed by teams, and for a long time, observers have inferred individual team members’ contributions by interpreting author order on published articles. In response to increasing concerns about this approach, journals are adopting policies that require the disclosure of individual authors’ contributions. However, it is not clear whether and how these disclosures improve upon the conventional approach. Moreover, there is little evidence on how contribution statements are written and how they are used by readers. We begin to address these questions in two studies. Guided by a conceptual model, Study 1 examines the relationship between author order and contribution statements on more than 12,000 articles to understand what information is provided by each. This analysis quantifies the risk of error when inferring contributions from author order and shows how this risk increases with team size and for certain types of authors. At the same time, the analysis suggests that some components of the value of contributions are reflected in author order but not in currently used contribution statements. Complementing the bibliometric analysis, Study 2 analyzes survey data from more than 6000 corresponding authors to examine how contribution statements are written and used. This analysis highlights important differences between fields and between senior versus junior scientists, as well as strongly diverging views about the benefits and limitations of contribution statements. On the basis of both studies, we highlight important avenues for future research and consider implications for a broad range of stakeholders.

INTRODUCTION

Scientific research has become the domain of teams, yet rewards and sanctions are still directed at individual scientists ( 1 – 4 ). Therefore, external stakeholders such as scientific peers, potential collaborators, tenure committees, and funding agencies need information on who did what and which team member deserves how much of the credit. Historically, the primary mechanism to obtain this information has been to infer contributions from authors’ presence and position on the byline ( 5 , 6 ). However, there are widespread concerns that authorship conveys insufficient information, especially given the increasing size of teams and specialization of team members ( 6 – 9 ). In response to these concerns, a growing number of journals now require that teams disclose which authors made which contributions ( Table 1 ). Yet, many stakeholders continue to use authorship order as the primary proxy for authors’ contributions, raising the question of how the information content of contribution disclosures compares to that of authorship order. Moreover, we need a better understanding of how authors decide on contribution statements and how authors as well as readers think about the value—and limitations—of these statements. In addition to being of interest in their own right, these insights may point toward important implications for using and improving contribution disclosures.

Journals with the 15 highest 2014 impact factors in the category “multidisciplinary sciences” (source: Journal Citation Reports/Web of Science). Journal policies as of August 2017.

*This information was accurate at the time of submission.

Here, we first conceptualize the total value of a team member’s substantive contributions to a project as consisting of various components. By comparing author order and contribution disclosures on more than 12,000 articles in the biological and life sciences, we then show what information about these components can be inferred from authorship order and from currently used contribution disclosures. We also quantify the risk of error when using conventional approaches to interpreting author order and show how this risk increases with team size and for certain types of authors. Although explicit contribution statements provide important complementary information, they cannot—in their current form—substitute for author order. We complement this analysis with insights from a large-scale survey of more than 6000 authors on papers that include contribution statements across a broader range of fields. The survey data support many of the findings from our bibliometric analysis. Moreover, they provide additional quantitative and qualitative evidence on the process by which contribution statements are written and used. Both studies highlight important challenges and concerns regarding contribution statements. They also suggest a number of improvements to journal policies as well as the need for future research and discussions about the use and impact of contribution disclosures.

CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Authorship as an aggregate indicator.

Scientists consider multiple factors when deciding which individuals to include as co-authors and where to place them on the byline ( 6 ). Hence, authorship aggregates information on a number of different aspects, and different types of external observers face the challenge of extracting the particular information they need. Some observers seek information on the specific types of contributions made by a co-author (for example, conceptualization versus data analysis), which is helpful when searching for collaborators with particular competences or investigating the source of problems and misconduct ( 8 ). Others are interested in the overall “value” of an author’s contributions and the resulting share of credit and recognition this author should receive ( 2 , 10 ). As described in more detail in the Supplementary Materials, we conceptualize the overall value of an author’s contributions as reflecting four components: (i) the count or breadth of contributions made, (ii) the particular types of contributions, (iii) the level of involvement in particular contributions, and (iv) the importance of different contributions for achieving project objectives (fig. S1). Author order may allow partial inferences about all four components; currently used contribution statements provide explicit information primarily on the first two. Although most readers are interested in authors’ substantive contributions, authorship decisions are also influenced by social dynamics that exacerbate the challenge of inferring actual contributions ( 7 , 8 ).

In the following Study 1, we examine how well author order predicts the number and types of contributions made by co-authors—the two elements typically captured in explicit contribution statements. This analysis reveals what information about these aspects of contributions can be inferred from author order, what errors are likely when making these inferences, and how much additional information is provided by explicit contribution statements. At the same time, the analysis may point toward important components of the value of contributions that are reflected in author order but not in currently used contribution statements, such as the level of an author’s involvement in a particular type of contribution.

STUDY 1: RESULTS FROM BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Measuring contributions.

We analyze data from articles published in PLOS ONE between 2007 and 2011. PLOS ONE is considered by some to be a leader in requiring contribution disclosures ( 11 ) and has an impact factor in the top quartile in its field. The journal publishes research primarily in the biological and life sciences, the domain in which discussions around authorship and contribution disclosures are most active ( 6 , 8 , 12 ). To address the concern that PLOS ONE publishes a smaller share of high-impact papers than more selective journals such as Science or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ), we also performed our analyses using the top 10% of papers in terms of average annual citations, with very similar results (see the Supplementary Materials). Because the division of labor in very large teams may not be comparable to that in typical teams and to facilitate the analysis, we focus on papers with 2 to 14 authors.

PLOS ONE data provide a novel opportunity for quantitative analysis because the journal requires that articles disclose the types of contributions made by each co-author using predefined categories (conceived the idea, performed experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, analyzed data, and wrote the paper), as well as an open-ended field for “other” contributions. For comparison, Table 1 provides an overview of the top 15 interdisciplinary sciences journals and their respective approaches to contribution disclosures. Eleven of the journals require contribution statements. PLOS ONE , PeerJ , and Science collect information using predefined categories of contributions, although Science does not disclose these data routinely. Other journals use open-entry fields but often mention in their instructions contributions similar to those used by PLOS ONE . All journals with contribution disclosures focus on whether or not individual authors were involved in different types of contributions [components (i) and (ii) in our conceptual model], and no journal systematically discloses the level of authors’ involvement in a particular contribution or the importance of contributions for project success [components (iii) and (iv)].

Although contribution statements published on papers may also be shaped by factors other than actual contributions, Study 1 is based on the premise that contribution statements are highly correlated with actual contributions and can thus serve as a meaningful proxy ( 8 , 12 , 13 ). Study 2 generally supports this view while also providing novel insights into potential social dynamics. We partly address confounding effects of social factors using controls and robustness checks discussed below.

Author order and contributions

Table S1 shows summary statistics. Figure 1 visualizes the shares of authors in a particular author position who made a particular contribution, focusing on teams with six members (the median team size). First authors made the broadest range of different contributions (average, 3.77), followed by last authors (3.03) and middle authors (ranging from 2.50 to 1.80). Figure 1 also shows differences in the particular contributions made. For example, 94% of first authors in teams of six were involved in analyzing data, 87% in performing experiments, 86% in writing the paper, and 78% in conceiving the study. In contrast, 89% of last authors conceived the study, 85% wrote the paper, 64% analyzed data, and 23% performed experiments. Middle authors listed earlier (that is, second or third position) tend to be more involved in empirical activities than those listed later (that is, fourth or fifth position), but they are similarly likely to be involved in conception or writing. Regression models that use teams of all sizes and control for detailed scientific field as well as affiliation in single versus multiple laboratories (table S2) show that the differences between first, last, and middle authors are qualitatively the same as in Fig. 1 . At the same time, these differences partly depend on the size of the team, highlighting the need to take team size into account when interpreting author positions (table S3). Expanding on the analysis of individual contributions, we also examined which combinations of contributions tend to be made by authors in different positions. We find that first authors are more likely to have conceived&written&analyzed as well as performed&analyzed than middle and last authors. Last authors are more likely to have conceived&written than first or middle authors (table S2, models 8 to 10).

Teams with six authors. For example, 78% of first authors conceived (blue segment), 87% performed (brown), 27% provided materials (green), 94% analyzed (orange), 86% wrote (turquoise), and 5% contributed “other” (red). Summing these percentages (377%) shows that the average first author made 3.77 different contributions.

The information content of authorship order may be different when authors are listed alphabetically ( 14 ). Only 7.04% of papers in our sample use alphabetical authorship, consistent with the notion that alphabetical authorship is the exception in the biological and life sciences. Even the observed cases of alphabetical authorship may reflect a contribution-based assignment, where alphabetical order emerges by chance (that is, an author has made the most contributions and also happens to have the name with the earliest letter in the alphabet). Consistent with this idea, table S4 shows that the rate of alphabetical order declines markedly with team size and does not differ from what would be expected if alphabetical order emerged simply by chance from a contribution-based assignment of positions (the number of possible permutations of x different names is x !). For example, 50.58% of articles with two authors use alphabetical authorship, which is not significantly different from the 50% predicted by chance. Models 11 and 12 in table S2 show that papers using alphabetical and non-alphabetical author order show similar differences in the count of contributions between first, middle, and last authors. These regressions are estimated using only articles with fewer than six authors because alphabetical authorship is virtually nonexistent in larger teams (table S4). Together, author order provides similar information on contributions in the biological and life sciences even when authors are listed alphabetically.

Authors can also be designated as “corresponding author.” We find that 32% of corresponding authors were also first authors, 9% were middle authors, and 59% were last authors (table S5). Corresponding authors made an average of 3.47 contributions, significantly ( P < 0.01) more than noncorresponding authors (2.28). This higher contribution count largely reflects greater involvement in conceiving the study and in writing the paper (table S6). Being designated as corresponding author is associated with a significantly greater count of contributions even for a given author position, and this effect is most pronounced for corresponding authors who are also middle authors (table S6, models 8 to 10).

Reliability of author order as indicator of contributions

The previous analysis suggests that author position allows useful inferences about author contributions, consistent with common practice. However, these inferences are only probabilistic and will often be wrong. This is most obvious with respect to the types of contributions: Assuming that contribution statements are a reasonable proxy for actual contributions, our observation that 80% of first authors are reported to have conceived the study (table S1) suggests that inferring this contribution from first authorship will be incorrect roughly 20% of the time. The error rate will be lowest when inferring contributions that are typically made by a very large (or very small) share of the authors in a particular position. The error rate will be highest when inferring contributions that are made by roughly half of the authors in a particular position. For example, 49% of middle authors are involved in data analysis, and inferring that a middle author was involved in data analysis will be correct only about half the time. Although this example uses raw sample means, the implied error rates are largely the same if we use predicted probabilities of having made particular contributions from regressions that control for field and other factors (table S7).

To explore how reliably author order informs about the breadth of authors’ involvement in the project, fig. S2 shows the distribution of the count of different contributions for first, last, and middle authors in teams of six. We find considerable heterogeneity even for the same author position. For example, although 22.69% of first authors make five or six contributions, 45.44% make four contributions and 31.88% make only three or fewer contributions.

Finally, we examine how reliably author position informs about authors’ contributions relative to each other. We start from two empirical “conventions” observed earlier ( Fig. 1 and table S2): First authors typically have broader involvement in the study than last authors, and last authors have broader involvement than middle authors. We then examine how many papers with at least three authors deviate from these conventions. We find that 45.59% of papers deviate from at least one of the two conventions, whereby 15.94% deviate in that first authors have a lower count of contributions than last authors, and 30.32% deviate in that last authors have a lower contribution count than at least one middle author.

Taken together, authorship order provides some information about the underlying number and types of scientists’ contributions. However, the required inferences will often be wrong, suggesting that explicit contribution disclosures provide important additional information. In the next analysis, we examine whether the correspondence between author order and stated contributions differs by team size, possibly reflecting differences in teams’ organization but also the increasing complexity of aggregating different aspects of individuals’ contributions into unidimensional authorship order (fig. S1).

Figure S3 shows that the count of contributions decreases with team size for first and middle authors but remains largely stable for last authors. This result holds when we control for detailed scientific field and other project attributes (tables S8 and S9). The lower contribution count of first authors in larger teams reflects a lower likelihood of being involved in all of the different activities. For middle authors, the lower count of contributions in larger teams reflects that they are less likely to be involved in conception, analysis, and writing; their likelihood of performing experiments remains stable across team size (table S8).

Team size also has implications for the reliability of author order as an indicator of contributions. Figure 2A shows that the SD of the contribution count increases with team size for first authors, suggesting more error when estimating the breadth of first authors’ contributions in larger teams. This measure is more stable across team size for middle and last authors. Figure 2B shows the share of teams deviating from the “convention” that first authors have a higher count of contributions than last authors and last authors have a higher count of contributions than middle authors. This share increases from 31.66% in teams of 3 to 57.87% in teams of 14, largely reflecting an increasing likelihood that one of the middle authors made a broader set of contributions than the last author. Overall, author order is less reliable as an indicator of the breadth of authors’ contributions in larger teams.

( A ) SD of the count of contributions, by position and team size. ( B ) Share of articles deviating from conventions regarding count of contributions, by position and team size.

Inclusion as an author

What contributions can be inferred from the fact that a person is listed as an author on the paper at all? The submission instructions of many journals, including Science and PLOS ONE , refer to the authorship requirements established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) ( 15 ). The ICMJE was founded in 1978 by editors of leading medical journals to develop guidelines for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work. It is also intended to establish best practices and ethical standards. According to the ICMJE, authorship requires that an individual fulfills all four of the following criteria: (i) substantial contribution to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (iii) final approval of the version to be published; and (iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Although we cannot explore the last two requirements, we can explore whether authorship at least reflects the contributions highlighted in requirements (i) and (ii) (see Materials and Methods for details). Consistent with previous work using smaller samples ( 6 , 12 ), we find that for a large share of authors (47.66%), authorship does not reflect the contributions stated in the ICMJE guidelines, primarily because they were not involved in writing. This share is highest among middle authors (64.5%) but is nontrivial also among first authors (11.6%) and last authors (12.3%). Moreover, this share is higher in larger teams ( Fig. 3 , fig. S4, and table S10).

STUDY 2: RESULTS FROM AUTHOR SURVEY

Study 1 provides insights into the relationship between author order and contribution statements and highlights potential errors when using the former to infer the latter. However, bibliometric data provide little insight into how contribution statements are written, what benefits and challenges scientists see, and how statements might be improved. To gain deeper insights into these issues, we analyze more than 6000 responses from a survey of corresponding authors on papers published in two journals that require contribution disclosures: PLOS ONE and PNAS . Details on the sampling and survey methodology are provided in Materials and Methods.

One part of the survey was designed to gather information on respondents’ opinions about contribution statements, as well as their impression of common practices in their fields. In a second part of the survey, we asked specifically about the paper on which the respondent was a corresponding author, and we included the paper title and publication date in the survey to facilitate respondents’ recall. We first provide descriptive results, supplemented by an econometric analysis that examines the statistical significance of observed differences in a multivariate regression context. We then draw on open-ended responses to provide additional insights into perceived benefits and challenges of contribution statements, as well as potential improvements. We note that all survey responses are from corresponding authors and are thus not necessarily representative of team members in general.

Quantitative Analysis

Perceived informational value of contribution statements.

Study 1 suggests that contribution statements provide important information that cannot be inferred from author order. To assess whether this claim is consistent with scientists’ perceptions, we asked respondents “Compared to author order, how much information do you feel contribution statements give to readers about the following,” specifying four aspects: “The particular types of contributions made by a co-author (e.g., author contributed to experiments and writing),” “A co-author’s share of effort toward particular contributions relative to other co-authors (e.g., author did 80% of the writing),” “How important a co-author’s contributions were for the success of the project,” and “The share of ‘credit’ the co-author should get for the paper.” Respondents answered on a three-point scale anchored by “Less information than author order” (coded as 1), “About the same” (2), and “More information than author order” (3).

Means greater than two indicate that respondents perceive contribution statements to be more informative with respect to these aspects of contributions (table S11). Consistent with our earlier conjectures, however, the extent of this advantage depends on the particular type of information: Although a large majority of respondents felt that contribution statements provide more information than author order about the types of contributions made (60.71% versus 23.36% who saw no difference and 15.93% who perceived author order to be more informative), only 33.87% of respondents felt that contribution statements provide more information about deserved credit (versus 40.55% who saw no difference and 25.59% who perceived author order to be more informative). Figure 4 shows that these qualitative patterns hold across fields. At the same time, regressions show that perceived informational advantages of contribution statements tend to be higher in the physical and social sciences than in the bio/life sciences, perhaps reflecting that the norms regarding the “meaning” of author positions are less defined in the former fields, making explicit contribution statements relatively more informative (table S12, models 1 to 4).

Ratings with respect to types of contributions ( A ), share of effort ( B ), importance of contributions ( C ), and share of credit ( D ).

In a related question, we asked “Overall, how much information do you feel typical contribution statements provide readers above and beyond the information provided by author order?,” with responses scored on a four-point scale ranging from “No additional information” to “A lot of additional information.” More than 90% of respondents perceived at least some additional information, with roughly 40% seeing considerable or a lot of additional information. The regressions show no significant field differences (table S12, model 5) but significantly higher value perceived by junior compared to senior scientists.

Perceived value of additional detail

Our conceptual discussion and Fig. 4 suggested that although contribution statements provide explicit information about the types of contributions made, they are less informative about individuals’ level of involvement in particular contributions or about the importance of the contributions made. We explored how useful this information would be by asking respondents “In addition to knowing whether a co-author has made a particular contribution at all, how useful would you find knowing ‘What share of each contribution was made by the co-author (e.g., 80% of writing)’ and ‘How important different types of contributions were for the success of the project.’” Respondents rated both items on four-point scales ranging from “Not useful” to “Extremely useful.” Whereas 20.68% of respondents would find information on shares of effort not useful, 46% would find it somewhat useful, 27.46% very useful, and 5.87% extremely useful. The results for additional information on the importance of contributions are quite similar, with 20.32% finding it not useful, 42.79% somewhat useful, 29.53% very useful, and 7.35% extremely useful. The regressions show few field differences, but junior scientists would find both types of information significantly more useful than senior scientists (table S12, models 6 and 7).

Who decides and agrees on contribution statements?

The informational value of contribution statements depends not only on their format but also on the process by which they are decided. Although a large body of previous work has examined the determinants of authorship decisions ( 6 ), little is known about how contribution statements are written. Hence, we asked respondents to think specifically about the focal paper on which they were a corresponding author. We then asked “Which co-authors were involved in discussing the final contribution statements?,” with options involving “All co-authors discussed,” “Some but not all co-authors discussed (please specify who),” “No discussion (corresponding author just submitted),” and “I don’t remember.” In a second question, we asked “Which co-authors explicitly approved the final contribution statements (e.g., verbally or by email)?,” providing equivalent response options.

The results suggest that 43.47% of papers had all authors involved in discussing contribution statements, whereas 35.59% of papers had several but not all authors involved ( Fig. 5 ). The open-ended entries suggest that these were primarily first and last authors. In 20.94% of papers, the corresponding author decided on the contribution statements alone. Rates of explicit approval are significantly higher: All authors approved statements on 69.85% of papers, some authors approved on 14.25% of papers, whereas no other team members approved statements on 15.90% of the papers (that is, the corresponding author submitted without others’ explicit approval).

Authors who discussed statements ( A ) and authors who explicitly approved statements ( B ).

We estimate multinomial logit regressions for these two variables, with “All co-authors” as the omitted category of the dependent variable. These regressions show that compared to the bio/life sciences, papers in the other major fields are significantly more likely to have all authors involved in the discussion (table S13, model 1). However, the involvement in the form of explicit approval differs little between fields (table S13, model 2). We find strong differences by team size: The larger the team, the higher the likelihood that not all team members were involved in discussing and approving the contribution statements.

Importance of contribution statements

A potential concern when interpreting contribution statements is that they do not “matter” as much as authorship and are completed without much thought by corresponding authors just to fulfill journal requirements. Somewhat mitigating this concern, the previous analyses suggest that respondents do see considerable value in contribution statements and that statements reflect discussions between, and approval by, large shares of the team members. To further examine this issue, we also asked respondents “How important was it for you where you appear on the contribution statements?” using a four-point scale ranging from “Not at all important” to “Extremely important” as well as the option “I don’t remember.” Among those respondents who did remember (98.86%), only a small minority (13.87%) indicated that their statements were not at all important to them, 34.29% found them somewhat important, 32.29% found them very important, and 19.54% found them extremely important. Thus, most corresponding authors seem to take contribution statements quite seriously.

Model 3 of table S13 shows that contribution statements were less important for corresponding authors in the physical sciences than for those in the other fields. We also find large differences by status of the respondent: Junior scientists assign significantly higher importance to their contribution statements than senior scientists.

Guest and ghost contributorship

The literature on authorship has highlighted undeserved authorship (“guest authorship”) or unjustified exclusion of individuals who contributed to a project (“ghost authorship”) as important problems ( 16 ). To explore how much a similar concern may apply to contribution statements, we asked “In general, how common do you think the following are among teams publishing in PLOS ONE ( PNAS )?,” including “Senior authors are not listed with contributions they have made,” “Junior authors are not listed with contributions they have made,” “Senior authors are listed with contributions they have not made,” and “Junior authors are listed with contributions they have not made.” Note that we asked about respondents’ general perceptions of others’ practices in a particular journal rather than about their own practices to reduce social desirability bias ( 17 ). Of course, responses do not necessarily reflect the true incidence of certain behaviors but rather respondents’ estimates of these behaviors. Figure 6 shows that “ghost” contributorship is considered quite rare, although it is perceived as less rare for junior contributors.

Incidence of ghost contributorship (authors not listed with contributions they have made) by senior authors ( A ) and junior authors ( B ). Incidence of guest contributorship (authors listed with contributions not made) by senior authors ( C ) and junior authors ( D ). By seniority of respondent.

Models 8 to 11 in table S12 show that estimates regarding the incidence of “guest” and “ghost” contributorship differ little between fields. Consistent with Fig. 6 , however, junior scientists believe that seniors are advantaged (more guest and fewer ghost contributorships), whereas seniors believe that juniors are advantaged. Although we cannot compare these perceptions to actual rates, the considerable differences in junior and senior scientists’ perceptions point toward potential sources of tensions and conflict that deserve study in future work.

Use of contribution statements when evaluating others

We showed above that scientists see considerable informational value in contribution statements. Does this perception translate into a frequent use in addition to, or perhaps even instead of, author order? To examine this question, we asked respondents “Assume you are asked to evaluate a postdoctoral researcher who has co-authored a paper that includes contribution statements. How much weight would you give to: ‘His/her author position (e.g., first, middle, last author)’ and ‘His/her contribution statements.’” The four-point scale for these two items was anchored by “No weight” and “Great weight.” Note that we specified the role of the person to be evaluated (postdoctoral researcher) because criteria may differ depending on who is being evaluated and to ensure consistency across respondents.

Table S11 shows that, on average, respondents would continue to evaluate others primarily based on author position rather than contribution statements; this holds across all fields as well as for junior and senior respondents. When comparing the two ratings for each individual, 45.41% of respondents would give greater weight to author position, 36.91% would give the same weight to both, and 17.68% would give greater weight to contribution statements. This continued emphasis on author order is consistent with our earlier argument that author order conveys information that is not captured in contribution statements, including levels of effort and the importance of contributions. With respect to differences across subsamples, regressions show that respondents in the physical and social sciences would place lower weight on author position than those in the bio/life sciences, whereas physical scientists would place greater weight on contribution statements. Junior scientists would place smaller weight on author order and greater weight on contribution statements than senior scientists (table S12, models 12 and 13).

Comparing responses from PLOS ONE and PNAS authors

Given the different history and status of PNAS and PLOS ONE , we also examine how responses to journal- and article-specific questions differ between respondents from the two journals. Table S11 shows only small differences with respect to the share of papers on which all authors were involved in discussing contribution statements (44% in PLOS ONE versus 42% in PNAS ) and in approving statements (68% versus 72%). The importance assigned to contribution statements by the corresponding authors does not differ (table S13, model 3). When asked about the perceived incidence of guest/ghost contributorship in the respective journals, PNAS respondents are somewhat more concerned about ghost contributorship of senior authors than PLOS ONE authors, but there are no differences with respect to the other types of perceived guest/ghost contributorship in the two journals (table S12, models 8 to 11). Together, these comparisons raise our confidence in the results from Study 1: Although Study 1 is based on data from PLOS ONE only, the survey gives no indication that contribution statements play a significantly different role—or are less reliable—in PLOS ONE than in higher status journals, such as PNAS . Nevertheless, future work that directly replicates Study 1 using data from other journals would be highly desirable.

Qualitative insights: Open-ended questions

To supplement the quantitative measures, we also asked respondents two open-ended questions that provide additional qualitative insights. A first question was directed only at respondents who indicated that they would give no or only some weight to contribution statements when evaluating a postdoctoral researcher (see above). This question asked “Why would you not pay more attention to contribution statements?” More than 2000 respondents answered this question. All respondents received a second question at the end of the survey: “Do you have any other comments on this topic that you would like to share? How do you think contribution statements could be improved?” More than 1400 respondents provided additional comments in response to this question. Although a formal analysis of these data is beyond the scope of this paper, we list a number of illustrative responses in tables S14 and S15. We selected responses pertaining to areas or ideas that appeared particularly salient in the body of responses, but we emphasize that the listed responses are not necessarily representative and should not be interpreted in a quantitative way. In addition to revealing fascinating insights into scientists’ experiences with contribution statements, the responses highlight how diverse—and often conflicting—opinions about these statements are.

The bibliometric analysis in Study 1 shows significant relationships between author order and contribution statements, consistent with the view that authorship and author order can allow readers to infer co-authors’ individual contributions. However, author order and contribution statements are not always aligned, suggesting that they also provide different—and complementary—information. The key advantage of contribution disclosures is that they provide more information about the breadth and types of authors’ contributions, reducing the risk of erroneous inferences regarding these aspects based on author order, which is especially useful for middle authors and in larger teams. Yet, contribution statements provide little information about two other important aspects. First, they do not inform about an author’s level of involvement in particular contributions, which is particularly problematic when several authors are listed with the same contributions. Second, they provide little information on the importance of different contributions to project success. Differences in the importance of particular contributions across projects may explain, for example, why some teams assign prominent author positions to individuals who made primarily empirical contributions, whereas others assign these positions to members whose contributions were conceptual.

Survey responses from corresponding authors in Study 2 provide further insights into the informational value of contribution statements: A large majority of respondents indicates that contribution statements provide them with information above and beyond that provided by authorship order. Consistent with our conceptual model, however, contribution statements are considered to be more informative about types of contributions made than about shares of effort or the overall credit an author should receive. The survey also provides insights into the process by which contribution statements are made, suggesting that many respondents—especially those who are more junior—care strongly about where they appear in contribution statements and suggesting broad participation in discussing and approving these statements. Despite the high perceived informational value, however, most respondents pay more attention to author order than contribution statements when evaluating others. Reasons include, among others, concerns about biases due to social influence and lack of attention, greater difficulty of accessing and processing contribution statements compared to authorship information, as well as the lack of detail and the inability of standardized contribution statements to reflect the complexity of teamwork.

Future research

Before we turn to implications of the findings, we highlight three fundamental issues that emerged from our analyses and that suggest important avenues for future research. First, contribution statements are based on the premise that scientific projects involve different types of tasks and activities, and that team members’ contributions can at least, to some extent, be differentiated and assessed relative to each other. However, there are strong complementarities between contributions, and even seemingly minor aspects may ultimately be essential for project success. As illustrated in the open responses to our survey, some scientists believe that efforts to differentiate author contributions are therefore futile and may even be detrimental to collaborative efforts. This tension suggests the need for future conceptual and empirical work on the division of labor in teams, the degree to which contributions can and should be modularized, and on how we can compare the value of contributions that critically depend upon each other. This work should also theorize and empirically evaluate potential differences across fields. Research in other domains such as organizational theory, the economics of bargaining, and the sociology of teams may be useful for studies on these issues ( 18 – 21 ).

Second, it is clear that authorship and contribution disclosures not only reflect objective contributions but also are shaped by important social dynamics. Although a considerable body of work has examined these issues for authorship ( 6 , 7 , 22 ), our understanding of the role of social factors in shaping contribution statements remains limited. Similarly, future work is needed on the social dynamics that influence the adoption and use of contribution statements by journals and the broader scientific community. Descriptive work such as our survey will be an important step, but future work may also usefully draw on related literature on the role of status and social norms, cognitive biases in estimating one’s own contributions, or the diffusion of innovations ( 23 – 26 ). Insights from these literatures may also help understand how social biases can be reduced, how contribution statements can be made more informative, and how the adoption of improved contribution disclosures can be accelerated.

Third, although contribution disclosures report on the past, the presence and design of these statements are likely to affect scientists’ future behaviors. For example, contribution disclosures not only convey credit for work well done but also assign responsibility for errors and potential misconduct. Hence, they may encourage greater effort to avoid mistakes and reduce the incentives for misconduct ( 8 ). However, explicit contribution statements may also lead scientists to crowd into activities that are perceived to be valued more highly while avoiding activities that are considered less important or expose them to greater risks of errors. Understanding any such longer-term effects seems particularly important to gain a more holistic view of the benefits and challenges of contribution statements and of opportunities for improvements. Economic frameworks can be used to study these issues, but research in other areas, such as the psychology of accountability and blame, may also provide useful guidance ( 27 – 30 ).

Implications and recommendations

Notwithstanding the need for future research on several fundamental issues, our results suggest opportunities for improvements of contribution disclosures as well as the need for discussion around specific design parameters. First, the results from both studies point to merits of a contributorship system that discloses information not only on the types of contributions made but also on the level of authors’ involvement in each contribution. Science already asks what share of a particular contribution was made by each co-author (ranging from 0 to 100%), although the resulting information is not publicly disclosed ( Table 1 ). Of course, reporting this detailed information requires additional effort and may expose disagreements among co-authors, and reported contributions may not always be accurate (see table S15). Without this detail, however, evaluators are forced to infer important aspects of the value of authors’ contributions from author order, despite the considerable risk of errors. As noted in some open-ended responses to the survey, detailed contribution statements may also encourage more explicit discussions about team members’ contributions, potentially leading to more accurate assessments, more transparency, and less influence of implicit assumptions and social norms that hamper the traditional authorship system ( 8 , 13 ). This may ultimately increase the likelihood that all individual team members—not just first and last authors—receive adequate recognition for their respective contributions.

Second, public discussions are needed on whether and how contribution disclosures can be standardized. Some journals currently ask authors to use predefined categories of contributions, but different journals use different categories. Other journals ask for open-ended statements ( Table 1 ). A standardized approach may increase the consistency of disclosures and facilitate comparisons across journals ( 13 , 31 ). It may also allow aggregation and the development of contribution-based indices to complement authorship-based indices ( 32 ). At the same time, a standardized approach would have to provide enough flexibility to accommodate heterogeneity across projects and fields. It should also anticipate changes to scientific activity, such as growing team size and specialization, automation and commoditization of certain research activities, as well as broader participation by nonprofessional scientists ( 1 , 33 , 34 ).

Finally, several of our respondents indicated that—in their role as evaluators—they paid little attention to contribution statements because these statements are not provided in all journals, are difficult to find, and are not aggregated in mechanisms such as resumés or publication databases. Hence, editors, funding agencies, administrators, and database providers should consider how the visibility of contribution statements can be increased and users’ costs of accessing and processing this new information can be reduced. Of course, readers may also find it easier to access and process contribution information as their experience with this relatively new mechanism accumulates. However, lower costs of access and information processing may not increase the use of contribution statements significantly unless some of the more fundamental hurdles such as a perceived lack of detail or concerns about accuracy can be addressed.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: STUDY 1

We analyzed data from articles published in PLOS ONE . This large Open Access peer-reviewed journal was started in 2006 by the Public Library of Science. We obtained data for 14,602 research articles published from February 2007 to September 2011 by downloading article xml files available on the PLOS ONE website. Because we are interested in the relationships between contributions and author order, we dropped 233 single-authored papers, 169 papers that did not disclose the contributions of one or more authors, 54 papers that did not use the standard classification of contributions or listed only “other contributions,” and 61 papers that did not list any authors as having “written” (because each paper needs to be written, the contribution statements of these papers are likely incomplete). We excluded papers with more than 14 authors (the 95th percentile) because the organization of knowledge production may be qualitatively different in big science projects ( 2 ) and because small cell sizes make analyses of very large teams difficult. Because authorship norms may differ across fields ( 5 , 14 ), we also excluded a small share of papers that do not have at least one field categorization (see below) in the biological or life sciences. Although Study 1 focuses on data from the biological and life sciences, we examined potential field differences using a different data set in Study 2 below. Overall, Study 1 analyzes data from 12,772 articles that list 79,776 authors.

We used a number of individual-level (i_) and team/article-level (t_) variables. Summary statistics are reported in table S1.

Measures of contributions

When submitting a manuscript to PLOS ONE , authors state the particular contributions made by each individual author. The journal offers a template with five predefined types of contributions: (i) conceived and designed the study (i_conceived), (ii) performed the experiments (i_performed), (iii) analyzed the data (i_analyzed), (iv) contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools (i_materials), and (v) wrote the paper (i_wrote). An open-text field “other” allows authors to list additional contributions that may not fall in the five predefined types. We created a dummy variable, indicating whether a particular individual was listed as having made some other contribution (i_other). Other contributions were manually checked and recoded if they fell in one of the five predefined categories. We also created the variable i_countcontributions, which captures the total count of contributions for each author and thus the breadth of his or her involvement in the project.

We recognize that listed contributions are imperfect measures of the activities performed by project participants. In particular, they do not capture work done by any “ghost authors,” individuals who made significant contributions but are not listed as authors ( 7 , 22 ). This limitation also applies to authorship order and thus should not affect our comparisons between the two. More importantly, the listing of author contributions may reflect not only objective contributions but also a social process of negotiation among team members, with more powerful or accomplished team members potentially negotiating to be listed as having made contributions they did not actually make (there may also be reasons to inflate the contributions of junior members, although Fig. 6 suggests that this is less common). Assuming that in the biological and life sciences, senior authors tend to be the last authors on papers (table S1), inflated contribution statements for senior authors may mean that differences in the actual contributions of first and last authors are even greater than estimated in our analyses (whereas differences in the actual contributions of last and middle authors may be smaller). These biases should be less problematic for our analyses of errors when interpreting author order because these analyses primarily focus on the distribution of contributions for a given author position (for example, Fig. 2 ). Similarly, they should not have a significant impact on our analyses of the relationships between contributions and team size. Nevertheless, a clearer understanding of the potential role of social factors in shaping contribution statements will be critical for future research using these statements and for their actual use in the scientific community. Although Study 2 suggests that some of our respondents are concerned about social influences, it also shows that contribution statements are generally perceived to be quite informative about actual contributions. We seek to partly address social factors through control variables as well as additional analyses reported in the Supplementary Materials.

Despite their limitations, the contribution measures have key advantages over available alternatives. Most importantly, they allow insights into a large sample of projects, complementing previous qualitative work using small numbers of cases ( 23 ). By using predefined categories, we obtained measures that are easily compared across teams while relying on the scientists themselves (rather than less knowledgeable coders) to decide which categories best fit the contributions made by the various team members. Finally, although information about author contributions can also be obtained through surveys distributed to individual authors, individuals may overestimate their contributions to a team effort ( 25 ). The contributions listed on published papers should be less affected by these biases to the extent that they reflect a collective assessment by team members. Study 2 suggests that contribution statements tend to be collective decisions and approved by all authors on the majority of papers.

Author position

Depending on the order of authorship, each author is coded as first, last, or middle author. Because we analyzed papers with 2 to 14 authors, all papers have a first author and a last author, and the number of middle authors per paper ranges from 0 to 12.

Corresponding author

We created an indicator variable that takes on the value of one if the author is designated as the corresponding author. Nine percent of papers list more than one corresponding author.

ICMJE criteria fulfilled

We coded two binary variables reflecting the fulfillment of ICMJE authorship criteria (i_ icmjefulfilled_weak and i_ icmjefulfilled_strong). These variables are explained in more detail below.

t_teamsize is a count of the number of authors on the paper.

Alphabetical author order

The indicator variable t_alphaorder equals one if the authors are listed in alphabetical order.

To account for the fact that not all papers list all six types of contributions, we created the variable t_totalactivitieslisted, which indicates how many of the six possible contributions are listed on the paper at all. Each article is classified by the authors using field classifications provided by PLOS ONE , whereby an article can be classified under multiple fields. We used 34 indicator variables to control for these fields of research (for example, f_biochemistry and f_biophysics; see table S1). We also controlled for the paper’s publication date (t_published).

Social dynamics may be particularly relevant if all authors are from the same laboratory, potentially giving the laboratory head particularly great power in deciding contribution statements. Hence, we included a dummy variable (t_affiliations_d), indicating whether all authors on the paper share the same affiliation (coded as 0; 25% of the sample) or not (coded as 1). In a robustness check reported in the Supplementary Materials, we also control for the quantity and quality of co-authors’ prior publications.

Statistical analyses

Figure 1 visualizes the relationships between author position and contributions for teams of six co-authors. For each author position, we computed the share of individuals who made a particular type of contribution and visualized the result by stacking the shares for all contribution types. For example, 94% of first authors were involved in analyzing data, 86% were involved in performing experiments, 88% were involved in writing the paper, 80% were involved in conceiving the study, 28% supplied materials, and 5% made other contributions. The total height of the bar is 381%, which means that the average first author made 3.81 different contributions.

In table S2, we examined the correspondence between author position and contributions using the full sample by regression analysis. SEs are clustered at the level of the article. All regressions include a number of control variables, such as team size and detailed field fixed effects. Note that these and subsequent regressions examine differences in the contributions made by authors listed in different positions and are purely correlational in nature. The objective is to explore the degree to which author position allows observers to infer or “predict” the number or types of authors’ contributions. These regressions are not designed to examine the causal nature of any observed relationships; in particular, we do not seek to determine whether particular contributions “cause” individuals to be placed in particular positions on the byline.

We also explored to what extent author order informs about certain combinations of contributions. In a first step, we performed a factor analysis (using promax rotation) to examine which contributions tend to co-occur as sets. This approach shows two factors. The contributions that clearly load on factor one are conceived (rotated factor loading, 0.81), wrote (0.85), and—less strongly—analyzed (0.57). Factor two consists of performed (0.79) and analyzed (0.37). In a second step, we estimated three additional regression models using these common combinations of contributions as dependent variables (table S2, models 8 to 10). Model 8 shows whether an author conceived&wrote (the dependent variable is one for authors who have made at least these two contributions and is zero for authors without this combination of contributions), model 9 uses conceived&wrote&analyzed, and model 10 uses performed&analyzed. Last authorship is most strongly associated with conceived&wrote, whereas first authorship is most strongly associated with conceived&wrote&analyzed. The latter finding is consistent with our earlier observation that first authors typically have the highest count of contributions (table S2, model 1).

Corresponding authors

Table S5 shows the relationships between author position and corresponding author status. Corresponding authors are more likely to also be last authors (59%) or first authors (32%) than middle authors (9%).

Regressions reported in table S6 examine how corresponding authorship is related to the count of contributions (model 1) and to the likelihood that an author made particular contributions (models 2 to 7). Even controlling for author order (first, middle, and last), corresponding authors are involved in a broader range of activities, particularly conceptual activities and writing. Models 8 to 10 show that the additional contribution count for corresponding authors is particularly large among middle authors (who are generally less likely to be corresponding authors; see table S5).

Deviations from conventions

We examined how reliably author position informs about authors’ contributions relative to each other. We started from two empirical conventions observed in table S2: First authors tend to have broader involvement in the project (higher contribution count) than last authors, and last authors have broader involvement than middle authors. We then examined how many papers with at least three authors deviate from these conventions in that first authors have a lower contribution count than last authors or that last authors have a lower contribution count than at least one of the middle authors. Results are discussed in the main text.

Contributions and team size

We regressed the count of contributions and individual contribution measures on a series of team size dummies as well as article controls. These regressions were estimated separately for first, middle, last, and corresponding authors (tables S8 and S9). We see that authors in larger teams tend to have a lower count of contributions, consistent with increasing specialization in larger teams. Similarly, the likelihood that first, middle, and last authors have made particular contributions also depends on the size of the team.

Reliability of inferences by team size

Figure 2A plots for each author position the SD of individuals’ count of contributions against team size, showing an increase with team size especially for first authors. Figure 2B shows the share of papers deviating from the conventions that first authors have a higher contribution count than last authors and last authors have a higher contribution count than middle authors by team size. The share of papers deviating from the conventions increases with team size. Both panels highlight that inferences about the breadth of authors’ contributions based on author position will have a higher error rate in larger teams.

Fulfillment of ICMJE authorship criteria

According to the ICMJE, authorship requires that an individual fulfill all four of the following criteria: (i) substantial contribution to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (iii) final approval of the version to be published; and (iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Because criteria (iii) and (iv) are not observed in the data, we focused on criteria (i) and (ii).

On the basis of each author’s stated contributions, we coded two binary variables indicating whether the ICMJE criteria for authorship are fulfilled. The first variable—i_icmjefulfilled _strong—uses a strict interpretation and is coded as 1 if an author was involved in writing the paper and at least one of the following: conceived, performed, analyzed. The second variable—i_icmjefulfilled _weak—is coded as 1 if an author was involved in writing the paper and at least one of the following: conceived, performed, analyzed, materials. It is also coded as 1 if an author is listed with an “other” contribution because this may include aspects that satisfy the ICMJE criteria. The share of authors fulfilling the requirements in the strong interpretation is 44% and that in the weak interpretation is 52%.

Figure 3 shows the share of authors in each position who fulfill the ICMJE criteria using the weak (that is, more permissive) interpretation by team size. Table S10 shows regressions of the two variables on author position and team size.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: STUDY 2

Sample and survey development.

We surveyed corresponding authors on recent papers in PLOS ONE and PNAS . PNAS provides a useful complement to PLOS ONE because it is a traditional journal (started in 1915) that consistently publishes high-impact work and ranks in the top 5 of interdisciplinary sciences journals ( Table 1 ). Moreover, PNAS publishes research across a broader range of fields than PLOS ONE , allowing us to explore potential differences across fields. Unlike Science or Nature , PNAS makes article and author information publicly available, allowing us to use this journal in the current study. Because PNAS does not use standardized contribution statements, we were not able to replicate Study 1 using PNAS data. The survey was approved by the Georgia Institute of Technology Institutional Review Board (IRB #H17208).

To obtain the initial sample of PLOS ONE authors, we scraped the PLOS ONE website and downloaded article information and corresponding author names and email addresses for all articles published between January 2016 and April 2017. After removing duplicate contacts, we randomly selected 17,000 of these corresponding authors for our survey. For PNAS (which publishes fewer papers than PLOS ONE ), we collected contact information for papers published between January 2014 and April 2017 and randomly selected 10,000 corresponding authors for this study.

We pretested the survey in direct interactions with individual scientists and revised according to their feedback. We then piloted the survey with 4000 of the PLOS ONE corresponding authors. The pilot survey resulted in the addition and removal of some questions but is otherwise identical with the main survey; we used the combined data where possible.

We invited the corresponding authors to participate in an online survey implemented using the software suite Qualtrics between May and July 2017. Respondents were offered to be entered into a drawing of Amazon gift certificates and received a personalized invitation as well as up to three reminders. We received 3980 usable responses from PLOS ONE authors and 2448 from PNAS authors, which correspond to response rates of 23.41 and 24.48%, respectively (not adjusting for undeliverable emails). These response rates are comparable to other recent online survey efforts ( 35 ). To analyze nonresponse, we examined the relationships between response status and key variables coded from the original articles (see the next section). Compared to authors on articles in the biological/life sciences, we found significantly higher response rates among social scientists and in “other” fields. Corresponding authors from smaller teams are more likely to respond than those from larger teams. The response rate is lower for authors on older articles, likely reflecting that contact information on older articles is more likely to be outdated. Corresponding authors who are first authors on the focal paper were significantly more likely to respond than those who are second or last author. Finally, PNAS authors were more likely to respond than PLOS ONE authors. To address these differences in response rates, we reported descriptive statistics separately by field and author status in table S11, and we additionally estimated regression models with the relevant control variables.

For this study, we dropped responses from corresponding authors on single-authored papers ( n = 64) and on papers with more than 14 authors ( n = 362), leaving a final sample of 6002 responses. The sample size for some questions is smaller because not all respondents answered each question, and the respondents to the pilot did not receive some of the questions included in the final survey. Table S11 shows descriptive statistics for all variables for the full sample, as well as by major field, by junior versus senior status of the respondent, and by journal.

Measures (if not discussed in the results section)

PNAS papers list up to two field classifications using the major fields of biological sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences as well as more detailed subfields within. For our analyses, we classified papers using the first listed broad field. More than 85% of PNAS respondents were on papers that were classified using only one of the broad field classifications. PLOS ONE papers include a list of very specific “subject areas.” Using a classification tree available on the PLOS ONE website, we related these subject areas back to their major “root” fields, including biological/life sciences, medical/health sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, as well as “other” fields (for example, earth sciences, engineering and technology, and research methods). For this study, we used the major root field of the first listed subject area.

Junior versus senior status

In the module that asked respondents about the particular paper from which their contact information was obtained, we asked “At the time of the publication of this paper (date of publication), which of the following best describes your position?,” with options including “PhD or undergraduate student,” “Postdoc,” “Faculty member but not lab head,” “Faculty member and lab head,” and “Other (please specify).” For some comparisons, we collapsed PhDs and Postdocs into the category “Junior scientist” and both types of faculty members into “Senior scientist.”

Team size is the number of authors listed on the focal publication.

Article age

Article age is computed as the difference between the publication date of the youngest article included in the data set (published on 12 April 2017) and the publication date of the focal article, in days.

Remember this paper

In the module that asked respondents about the particular paper from which their contact information was obtained, we asked “How well do you remember your work on this paper?,” with options including “Not at all,” “Somewhat,” “Quite well,” and “Very well.”

Regression analyses

Our regressions include full sets of controls as shown in tables S12 and S13. Regressions were estimated using either ordered logit or multinomial logit regressions, as indicated in the table headings. SEs are robust to heteroscedasticity.

Supplementary Material

Acknowledgments.

Funding: The authors acknowledge that they received no external funding in support of this research. Author contributions: Conceived the study: H.S. (50%) and C.H. (50%); collected PLOS ONE article data: H.S. (100%); collected Scopus data on authors’ previous publications: C.H. (100%); analyzed PLOS ONE data: H.S. (50%) and C.H. (50%); developed and implemented survey: H.S. (70%) and C.H. (30%); analyzed survey data: H.S. (100%); wrote the paper: H.S. (70%) and C.H. (30%). Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: The data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are presented in the paper and the Supplementary Materials. IRB protocol required participant confidentiality and nondisclosure of individual-level data. Scopus data can be obtained under the same conditions and as described by authors for this study. Interested readers should direct questions regarding the data to the corresponding author.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

References and notes.

Disclosure in Publications, Presentations, etc.

UCI's standard practice requires researchers reviewed by the COIOC to disclose their financial interests in the publications and presentations related to that study to promote transparency. The Disclosing Individual is required to embed a financial interest disclosure in the text of the publication, either in the footnotes or in the acknowledgement section, whether or not such disclosure is or is not also required by the journal. Similarly, the COIOC will also require researchers to include a slide concerning the disclosure in all presentations of their research.

The following are examples of how a financial interest with an outside  entity  should be disclosed in publications of research results:

Example #1:

These studies were supported by a  grant  from  NIH  (Award #________________). Joe  Doe  has an equity interest in XYZ, Inc., a company that may potentially  benefit  from the research results, and also serves on the company's Scientific Advisory Board. John Doe's relationship with XYZ, Inc. has been reviewed and approved by the University of California, Irvine in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

Example #2:

Dr. John Doe receives research funding from XYZ, Inc., which is developing products related to the research described in this paper. In addition, the author serves as a consultant to XYZ, Inc., and receives compensation for these services. John Doe's relationship with XYZ, Inc. has been reviewed and approved by the University of California, Irvine in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

Example #3:

The University of California, Irvine has a financial [ownership] interest in X Biotech, the company sponsoring this research. Jane Doe and the University of California, Irvine may potentially benefit from this research. Jane Doe has received honoraria from X Biotech.  Jane Doe's relationship with X Biotech has been reviewed and approved by the University of California, Irvine in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

Example #4:

These studies were supported by a grant from the NSF (Grant #________________). Principal Investigator _______________ has an equity interest in XYZ, Inc. ____'s relationship with XYZ, Inc. has been reviewed and approved by the University of California, Irvine in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

Please Note:  In addition to the guidelines stated above, journals have different standards about publishing financial relationships. For additional examples on how to incorporate such language, access guidance from the  International Committee of Medical Journals Editors  and the  American Chemical Society Publications .