CHARM Team Authorship Discussions

The meaning of authorship: Most team members viewed authorship as valuable to their career advancement and meeting performance goals. Authorship was also seen as especially valuable for those early in their career to gain experience and recognition, including the importance of taking on first and senior authorship roles during manuscript development. Some team members viewed authorship as an explicit expectation of their institutional role. Others, including some of those who were involved in specific tasks such as recruitment or genetic laboratory analysis, acknowledged the value of inclusion in some manuscripts to reflect their contributions, even if not an institutional expectation of their role. The discussion groups recognized that authorship expectations can differ among individuals, depending on one’s discipline, career stage, role within the study team, and/or institution. The expectations may be related to the meaning of authorship order, speed of publication, and co-authorship responsibilities.

Past experiences and challenges with authorship. One key challenge team members identified was determining who should be the lead authors, i.e. first and last (senior) authors. Team members reported past experiences that were, at times, both awkward and difficult, particularly when more than one team member perceived that they had contributed equally to the work related to the topic of the manuscript. Additionally, some team members noted that the traditional model of the project principal investigator being the senior author was problematic for this large multi-disciplinary study that involves diverse, multiple senior leadership. They also expressed some confusion as to who was responsible for determining the first and senior authors and their responsibilities for a manuscript.

The second key challenge involved inclusion as a coauthor. There was concern that in a large research team, many team members may meet authorship criteria, but it was challenging to identify these potential authors because of the fragmented way our work was conducted across multiple institutions and working groups. People working on the same project might never have any direct interaction with each other or be fully aware of who is engaged in moving the work forward. It was also unclear whether team members involved in core tasks, such as recruitment and data analysis, should always be included as coauthors, especially because it could be infeasible or burdensome for those team members given the number of manuscripts expected to be produced by the study. Some team members expressed frustration that there were occasions in which they were unaware of a manuscript that was in progress to which they would have liked to contribute. Some team members felt that to be included on a paper required an assertiveness that, on bigger teams, can feel uncomfortable or perceived as self-promotion. Conversely, team members also discussed the burden of having too many coauthors on a manuscript, which could substantially delay receiving feedback and lead to a greater likelihood of having to resolve contradictory feedback.

Processes to address the challenges of authorship. The small group participants recommended clarifying expectations for each authorship role in manuscript writing. Team members recommended using an acknowledgments section, or when allowed by a journal, a “non-author contributor” list, to recognize team members who made contributions to the research and did not have the capacity to be involved in fulfilling all responsibilities of co-authorship. CHARM team members further suggested creating a visual dashboard to display every team member’s involvement in each manuscript. This created an opportunity to improve equity of lead authorship and inclusion in authorship amongst team members.

Additional recommendations addressed the culture of authorship. Team members recommended that potential authors be transparent and communicate about their capacity to contribute to a manuscript. Team members suggested supporting one another to advocate for themselves in the writing process, while also recognizing that some are uncomfortable with advocating for themselves in a large research team. Team members also discussed the need for a process to moderate differences in approaches to a manuscript, calling for collaborative engagement between lead authors and team leads to deliberate options and arrive at a solution.

Authorship Guidelines

Following the group discussions, recommendations were incorporated into existing tools and approaches and were also used to aid the development of new tools and approaches. For instance, at the outset of CHARM, the team created and implemented a concept sheet for each manuscript as a tool to define a manuscript’s scope, analysis plan, and audience as well as which team members may be involved (see supplementary material 1). The CHARM team leads were typically responsible for generating a concept sheet. The Team leads were the group of investigators who directed key aspects of the CHARM study, often representing different institutions, and including roles such as the multiple principal investigators, site principal investigators, program director (administrative lead), and co-investigators leading critical functions of the study. They had expertise in a variety of areas of practice (i.e., genetic counseling, laboratory science, patient engagement, health systems) and worked collaboratively with the study principal investigators and study methodologists (quantitative and/or qualitative) to create the CHARM analysis and dissemination plan, including determining the lead authors for each manuscript. The concept sheet process was incorporated by the Team Science Working Group into the authorship guidelines.

The guidelines included three components to support the authorship objectives of the CHARM team. One component clarified the roles and responsibilities of authors. A second described the CHARM study’s values and related principles to uphold these values. Further, the guidelines established several implementation approaches to support manuscript authorship decisions, writing processes, and management of the manuscript. The goal of the guidelines was to set expectations that promote a cohesive authorship culture within the CHARM team. They were intended to be inclusive in offering co-authorship to all who contribute to the research and to support junior researchers taking on leadership roles.

The guidelines defined author roles for each manuscript (see Table 1). The lead authors for each manuscript guided the analysis and writing and were typically the first and last authors. The primary writing group is the core group involved in the details of the manuscript development. The secondary writing group is not involved in drafting but meets authorship criteria under ICMJE guidelines due to their involvement in editing the manuscript.

Table 1.

Authorship roles and responsibilities

The responsibilities for authorship are based on each author’s role in the manuscript.

The CHARM guidelines articulate three core values of equity, inclusion, and efficiency with associated principles for each in authorship opportunities. In this context, equity refers to the distribution of leadership roles in manuscripts. Inclusion refers to including those team members who would like the opportunity to contribute to manuscripts and have made a sufficient contribution. Efficiency refers to developing processes to prospectively facilitate the development of the manuscript to reduce the overall time and effort required to produce the manuscript. Each value (equity, inclusion, and efficiency) is connected to principles and implementation approaches.

Equity: Our team identified three authorship principles related to equity. First, team leads should distribute lead authorship opportunities among team members who are guiding key aspects of the study. Second, team leads should encourage junior team members to be first author with mentorship from a senior author. Third, lead authors are also expected to identify second and third authors and up to two additional senior authors. The rationale for identifying these roles close to the onset of working on each manuscript was to clarify roles and broaden leadership within the team.

We developed a tool in Smartsheet (CJ, JB), a cloud-based work management platform, which allowed the CHARM team to visualize who was involved in each of 34 CHARM manuscripts (ranging from planned to published) and authorship roles for each team member. The first author entered information into a form that populated the Smartsheet for each manuscript, including the authors, their role in the manuscript, and institutions. Monthly automated requests were sent to first authors asking that they update the information, which helps to capture changes to authorship lists during manuscript development. Data were displayed as a visual dashboard to summarize authorship distribution across the CHARM team. The dashboard listed all team members across the various CHARM sites and displayed a stacked bar chart showing the manuscripts and the authorship roles that have been filled by team members (see Fig. 1). The dashboard was accessible to all team members and promoted equity by providing a visual aid to identify which team members have or have not been lead authors. In addition, the dashboard promoted inclusion by identifying team members who might have been overlooked as a coauthor on each manuscript and promoted efficiency by tracking the progress of manuscripts and helping with the management of manuscripts across the project via automated update requests. The template the CHARM team created is available. (https://app.smartsheet.com/b/launch?lx=IG61eWKGzJYH-i8MNlVaiuqKwon7W423t4KaXJloEug). Our team created an overview of the approach, startup guide, and a data dictionary which are available as supplementary material 2.

Figure 1.

CHARM manuscript authorship distribution dashboard using Smartsheet. Illustration of how a visual dashboard can show individual team members and their role as a lead author (first author, last author) or coauthor. This illustration conveys that first authors' roles are distributed across investigators, trainees, and staff. The illustration also shows distribution of senior author roles across team members. Finally, the illustration shows that team members are included as coauthors with variable frequency.

Inclusion: The first principle is for team leads and lead authors to consider who has been involved in the research activities related to a manuscript when nominating team members to be coauthors. A second principle is for team leads and lead authors to ensure the larger team is aware of all manuscripts in progress.

Team leads and lead authors are expected to identify the writing teams on the concept sheet. The concept sheet is reviewed by the principal investigators and by all the team leads and is presented at team meetings. At each step, team members can nominate others or themselves for the paper. The concept sheets, as well as the dashboard, were accessible to all team members in cloud-based files to promote transparency in manuscript development. We also created a “non-author” contributor list of current and past team members that could be used on any paper, to be acknowledged “on behalf of the CHARM team.” This allowed those who have received funding support from the grant or have contributed significantly to the project to be recognized even if they were not authors on a paper.

Efficiency: The first efficiency principle advises team leads to be realistic about the capacity of the team members to lead papers. This is important to ensure that progress on a paper is made in a timely way. In addition, team leads are advised to focus on completing manuscripts that are of highest priority. We appreciated that this prioritization could allow us to write the most important manuscripts with more engagement of the team compared to what might happen if too many papers were planned to be written at the same time. A correlated second principle is for team members to be realistic about their own capacity to fulfill the obligations of being a lead author or part of a writing group when deciding whether to commit to work on a manuscript. Third, the coauthors should take responsibility to be actively engaged in the development and/or review of manuscripts, including communicating with the lead authors in a timely manner and proactively asking for more time, if needed.

To implement our efficiency principles, project managers were assigned to each manuscript to facilitate efficient development and review of manuscripts. These project managers established clear timelines and deadlines. They were expected to forecast expectations for each step to promote responsiveness to timelines by all authors. Lead authors were encouraged to limit the number of rounds of review. If a secondary author did not respond to deadlines, team leads were expected to follow up and keep the paper moving forward.