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UrBioNet Authorship Guidelines

We, The UrBioNet Steering Committee, acknowledge there will be two main types of written products stemming from the findings of UrBioNet, White papers and Scientific Papers. Below we outline the guidelines for authorship of these products.

White Papers/Fact Sheets/Webpages/Other Public Outreach Products

Authorship is granted to those who wrote/produced the product.
UrBioNet will be the publisher for those public products coming out of the network. If other organizations use our information, they will be the publisher. No matter whom the authors or the publisher, the Network logo (contact Myla Aronson for logo) and NSF award number (NSF RCN: DEB# 1354676/1355151) must be on the product.

Scientific Papers

  1. Researchers will claim authorship of a paper only if they have made a substantial contribution.
  2. Authorship may legitimately be claimed if researchers:
    • Conceived of the idea for the MS – e.g., framing the question or objectives, overall idea
    • Designed the MS – help determine structure of the MS, the intellectual content and scope, etc.
    • Supervised – oversight and responsibility for the organization of the project and manuscript
    • Performed research – data analysis or modeling
    • Contributed new methods or models
    • Drafted figures and tables
    • Wrote parts of the MS – selected portions of the manuscriptPerformed critical reviews – reworking the manuscript for intellectual content before submission, not just spelling and grammar checking
    • *Only contributing data to the network with none of the above will not be included as an author

  3. Authors must indicate their specific contributions to each manuscript stemming from UrBioNet, whether or not it is required by the journal.
  4. Researchers will not add or delete authors from a manuscript submitted for publication without consent of those authors.
  5. Researchers will not include as co-author(s) any individual who has not agreed to the content of the final version of the manuscript.
  6. The corresponding author must have obtained permission from all authors for the submission of each version of the paper.
  7. The NSF award number must be included (NSF RCN: DEB# 1354676/1355151) in the acknowledgments section.

Recommended References

Weltzin, JF, RT Belote, LT Williams, JK Keller and EC Engel. 2006. Authorship in ecology: attribution, accountability, and responsibility. Front. Ecol. Environ. 4(8):435-441.

ESA. 2013. ESA Code of Ethics. http://www.esa.org/esa/?page_id=857

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