Skip to main content

Rigorous Reproducible Responsible Research Integrity at UF

logo

Welcome to the Rigorous Reproducible Responsible Research Integrity at UF (R4I@UF) website!  Please visit each month for a new case that may be used as a framework for a brief conversation about best research practices in your lab meeting, research conference, journal club, or any research meeting.

July 2026 – Intellectual Input and Authorship

You have a radical idea regarding how to perform an experimental method critical for your field much more efficiently than was previously possible. You tell your colleague Anastasia about it and how you plan to test the hypothesis. Anastasia does not work in your field, but you spend some time explaining to her the details of your study and she offers a number of unsolicited suggestions on how to make a compelling case for the novelty of your method. After this initial conversation, Anastasia talks to you frequently about the project and comes to several of your lab presentations. She comments critically on your work and makes other suggestions, including the idea that you try an additional different experimental approach to further build your case. These experiments strongly support your initial hypothesis and show that the technique can be generalized. You decide to submit your exciting results to a prestigious journal and ask Anastasia to comment on it before sending it to the journal. Anastasia returns it with some insightful comments and argues strongly she should be a coauthor on the manuscript.

Discussion Questions

  1. Should you agree to include Anastasia as a co-author and what is the rationale underlying your response?
  2. What is the relative importance of thinking of and planning experiments compared to being able to effectively execute them? How should these two aspects of research be reflected in authorship and authorship positions?
  3. Was there a time when it would have been helpful to discuss Anastasia’s role in the project?

For a quick and easy read about responsible authorship and publication practices, please see Chapter 9 – Authorship & Publication from the online book “ORI Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research”. More resources are available at Authorship & Publication – R4I@UF.

To submit a “Case of the Month” for the R4I@UF website, please contact Wayne T. McCormack, PhD (mccormac at ufl.edu).

For general training questions, please contact rcr@research.ufl.edu.