Appendix C — Authorship & Contributorship Policy

Status: Authoritative · Owner: PI · Review: Annually (authorship audit)

C.1 1. Purpose

To assign credit for RIPLRT scholarly products fairly, transparently, and consistently, and to prevent disputes by deciding authorship early and documenting it.

C.2 2. Scope

All scholarly products: manuscripts, abstracts, posters, presentations, reproducible notebooks, dashboards, briefs, and public-facing materials.

C.3 3. Authorship standard (ICMJE)

A person qualifies as an author only by meeting all four ICMJE criteria: 1. Substantial contributions to conception/design or acquisition/analysis/interpretation of data; 2. Drafting or critically revising for important intellectual content; 3. Final approval of the version to be published; 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Contributors not meeting all four are acknowledged, with their permission. Funding, supervision alone, or data collection alone do not, by themselves, confer authorship.

C.4 4. Contributorship (CRediT)

Every product records contributions using the CRediT taxonomy. The Authorship/Contributorship Agreement template captures this at project start and is updated as roles change.

C.5 5. Author order

  • First author: led the intellectual/practical work.
  • Senior (last) author: provided direction and holds accountability (typically the PI).
  • Middle authors: ordered by contribution, discussed openly.
  • Student-first pathway: when a mentee led the work, they receive first authorship. Developing mentees into first/co-first authors is an explicit group goal.

C.6 6. Process

  1. Authorship is discussed and documented at project start (pod charter + agreement).
  2. The plan is revisited at major milestones and at the annual authorship audit.
  3. Changes require discussion with affected contributors and PI sign-off.

C.7 7. AI tools

AI tools are never authors — they cannot accept accountability. Material AI assistance is disclosed per the Responsible AI Use Policy and venue requirements.

C.8 8. Disputes

Raised early and directly; mediated by the PI against the documented agreement. Because plans are written at the start, most disputes are prevented.

C.9 9. Acknowledgments & attributions

Funders, data providers, and repositories are acknowledged using the exact required language of each source. Conflicts of interest are disclosed per venue and institution.