Equity in authorship: a strategy for assigning credit when publishing.

Existing guidelines for authorship are lacking in specific detail, differ from discipline to discipline, implicitly or explicitly contradict each other on many issues, and are therefore open to varying interpretation by different people. In order to encourage and facilitate consistency and fair acknowledgement of contributions to publications, a Points System was developed for evaluating 13 categories of contribution by individuals. The system is intended for use in determining who should be listed as authors, and in what sequence names should appear by enabling points "earned" through contribution to be then "spent" in purchasing authorship. The system is based on ratings of perceived values of the contribution types obtained from the staff of a multi-disciplinary research centre, but it can readily be adapted to the local needs and values of any research group. The system is likely to be particularly useful in relation to complex research projects and programs, to which a number of individuals from different disciplines make contributions over time, and/or from which several publications are derived.