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PENN STATE - RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION |
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University that proper credit be given to those individuals who make material contributions to activities which lead to scholarly reports, papers and publications.
Rigid prescriptive requirements in this area are considered unwise, because the situation with respect to coauthorship varies from one discipline to another and from one publication to another. Nevertheless, it is recommended that the authors of scholarly reports, papers and publications abide by the following principles regarding coauthorship.
(1) Coauthorship should be offered to anyone who has clearly made a material contribution to the work.
Moreover, each coauthor should be furnished with a copy of the manuscript before it is submitted, and allowed an opportunity to review it prior to submission. An author submitting a paper, report or publication should never include the name of a coauthor without the person's consent. Exceptional circumstances, such as death or inability to locate a coauthor, should be handled on a case by case basis. In cases where the contribution may have been marginal, an acknowledgment of the contribution in the public action might be more appropriate than coauthorship.
(2) In cases of theses for advanced degrees, if any publication derived from the thesis is not published with the degree recipient as sole author, then that person should be listed as coauthor. In no instance should publications derived from a thesis be published under the sole authorship of the thesis adviser.
(3) Anyone accepting coauthorship of a paper must realize that this action implies a responsibility as well as a privilege. As a general rule, each coauthor should understand the content of the publication well enough to be able to take responsibility for all of it, otherwise the publication should clearly indicate the parts of which each coauthor has responsibility. If a potential coauthor has doubts concerning the correctness of the content or conclusions of a publication, and if these doubts cannot be dispelled by consultation with the other coauthors, the individual should decline coauthorship.
Other Policies in this Manual may apply, especially:
AD47 - General Standards of Professional Ethics.
RA10 - Handling Inquiries/Investigations into Questions of Ethics in Research and in Other Scholarly Activities, and
Effective Date: May 23, 2007
Date Approved: May
17, 2007
Date Published: May 22, 2007
Most Recent Changes:
Revision History (and effective dates):
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