Requirements for Authorship of a Publication

According to the current version of the convention, the right to co-authorship shall be based on:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. 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

ALL conditions (1 to 4) must be fulfilled for a researcher to be awarded authorship.

The Vancouver Convention recommends that each author gives a written account of their contribution. This should be managed by the authors, based on documentation requirements from the individual journals.

The researcher's responsibility under the Research Ethics Act presupposes that if he or she has reasonable grounds to suspect violations of recognized scientific norms, the employee is obliged, on his/her own initiative, to have this clarified before he or she submits a statement on co-authorship.

The Vancouver Convention can be found here: http://www.icmje.org/.