Fair Attribution
LSBU supports fair attribution of technical staff contributions in research and teaching. This aligns with the UK Concordat for Research Integrity, which promotes honesty, transparency, and accountability in attribution. Technicians are encouraged to seek authorship or formal acknowledgment where their expertise significantly contributes to outputs.
Authorship recognition and fair attribution Ensuring individuals are recognised for their contributions to research articles is essential to maintain high standards of integrity. Authorship and byline order should be agreed verbally at the start of each research project with the first and last authors clearly identified. 13 On occasion, research teams may want to invite other individuals to contribute to a project that is already in the data collection, analysis or writing up stage. This would ideally be done with agreement of the entire research team.
When inviting new individuals to join an existing project, it must be made clear from the outset whether their contribution will lead to co-authorship and what are the expectations for the contribution. Technicians, students, research assistants and other colleagues should be recognised as authors provided they make a significant contribution to a research project. In cases where contributors have made a smaller contribution to the research project, the research team should consider including an acknowledgment in the relevant section of the output. The CRediT taxonomy provides a useful guide on how to identify what constitutes a fair attribution to research. The Director of Studies or Principal Investigator would normally lead the discussion on authorship and byline order at the start of the project and lead any later discussion regarding the proposed integration of other co-authors in the byline