This guide collects guidance for all authors on;
"[Principal Investigators should] in the case of academic publications, ensure contributors are included as corresponding authors where appropriate."
Durham University Research Integrity Policy and Code of Good Practice [Section 10.0]
The full University Guidance, approved at University Research Committee (January 2020) can be downloaded here.
The guidance covers:
As a signatory of the Technician's Commitment, Durham University has also provided guidance which advises all Durham staff and students how the contribution of technicians and other staff can be attributed or acknowledged in an appropriate manner.
Please see our full guidance on authorship and appropriate credit above.
Staff are encouraged to try and resolve any disputes on a peer-to-peer level and this guidance is designed to help them to do so. It is recognised that there are occasions where this is not possible and in these cases the escalation process is outlined below. At any point support and advice can be accessed from RIS / Library via the Research Policy email.
It is expected that most disputes can be resolved at this stage.
The Flowchart below builds upon the full authorship guidance presented above, and the guidance on authorship and acknowledgement for Research Technical Professionals (RTP) and other Research-performing and Research-enabling staff, to provide a visual guide of all staff and students. This is designed to aid our community in identifying when an authorship credit, or acknowledgement of contribution, is warranted and to support discussions within research teams.
[Please click on the image below to download a larger, pdf copy]
"It is the responsibility of individual authors to ensure that their affiliation to Durham University is correctly recorded. This includes checking the proofs of any publications received."
Policy on Institutional Affiliation in Connection with Durham University Research Publications [Section 4.0]
Authors are strongly advised to standardise how they record their affiliation(s) where applicable. This can:
Authors should be familiar with the University's Institutional Affiliation Policy, and refer to the examples and guidance included within it.
"CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is high-level taxonomy, including 14 roles, that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly output. The roles describe each contributor’s specific contribution to the scholarly output."
CRediT – Contributor Roles Taxonomy [NISO]
Authors are recommended to agree on the form of contribution an author (or other contributor) has made to a research output, in line with the University's guidance on authorship, and that where appropriate this should reflect the roles identified in the CRediT list of contributor roles. This list of contributor roles is increasingly being used by journals as part of the manuscript submission process and other research systems.
"[All researchers should] appropriately acknowledge anyone who has directly or indirectly assisted their work. This includes collaborators, funders and participants."
Durham University Research Integrity Policy and Code of Good Practice [Section 10.1(e)]
In 2008, major research funders and publishers published guidance for authors to help standardise how research funding should be acknowledged in published research outputs. For some funders, such as the UK Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust, this is a requirement for most research funding awards.
The recommended format is:
[This work/author initials] was supported by the Wellcome Trust [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Royal Society [Newton International Fellowship, Grant NIF\##\######]; the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number zzzz]; and the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number aaaa].
Full guidance has been archived on the Research Information Network.
In line with the University's Research Publications Policy, author's are expected to ensure that they retain sufficient rights in the published Scholarly Articles to enable them to share any Author Accepted Manuscript resulting from their submission to be shared freely, for the benefit of other researchers and society more widely.
In line with the expectations of research funders, under the policy all authors are strongly recommended that a statement as detailed below is included in all manuscripts submitted for publication. The following text should be included in the funding acknowledgements1 section of the manuscript, and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission, where possible:
For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.
This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising." (NOTE: the specific licence applied may be amended with the licence as agreed under 2.3.4 of this policy)
"[Principal Investigators are responsible for] Ensuring that the metadata for data underpinning published research findings is accessible online no later than the first date of publication of the output... ."
Durham University Research Data Management Policy [Section 4.3.1]
Many journals, primarily in STEM subjects, will allow or require authors to also submit data underpinning the published research, or provide information on how data might be accessed.
Even where this is not already the case, it is good research practice to at the least, provide an indication of if and how underpinning research data, or supplementary materials, can be accessed, where there are not intellectual property or data protection issues.
It is worth noting that some funders are also require such a statement to be included in published outputs, where applicable.
The most common types of Data Access Statement are in line with the examples below:
The following guidance may also be useful:
