coauthorship

Coauthorship is the practice of attributing a scholarly work to more than one author who has contributed to its creation. It is used across many disciplines, including science, humanities, social sciences, and engineering, to recognize collaborative effort and to assign responsibility for the work’s content and integrity.

Most journals and professional societies publish guidelines that define what qualifies someone to be listed as an author. A widely cited standard comes from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which proposes that authorship should be based on (1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; (2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Many other fields use similar criteria or a contributorship model such as the CRediT taxonomy, which specifies roles like conceptualization, methodology, software, data curation, and writing.

Authorship order often reflects the level of contribution, but practices vary by discipline. In many areas, the first author is the primary contributor, the last author is the senior supervising researcher, and middle authors are ranked by relative input. Large collaborations may use alphabetical ordering or group authorship to emphasize collective work.

Ethical concerns include ghost authorship (uncredited contributions) and gift or honorary authorship (credit given to individuals with little or no involvement). To prevent disputes, researchers are encouraged to discuss authorship early, document contributions, use contributorship statements, and adopt unique identifiers such as ORCID to link researchers to their work. Coauthorship carries accountability as well as credit, reinforcing integrity in scholarly communication.