Mapping author taxonomies and author criteria: good practices for thinking through complex authorship situations

Authorship criteria can be difficult to apply in complex situations, such as multicenter clinical trials, multidisciplinary research, or manuscripts reporting the results of several studies. Authors may need additional guidance to appropriately credit their colleagues even when using existing accepted author criteria and/or contributor taxonomies to guide their decisions. Definitions and explanations of authorship by various editorial groups such as International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Committee on Publication Ethics, the World Association of Medical Editors, and the Council of Science Editors emphasize intellectual input and accountability. Existing contributor taxonomies list additional activities that should be credited, but do not stand in for authorship criteria or confer authorship. The literature was searched for existing guidelines for authors that suggest how to apply accepted authorship criteria to activities listed in contributor taxonomies. No publication was identified that mapped specific authorship criteria to particular contributor taxonomies. Suggestions were developed to assist in differentiating activities that meet author criteria from other contributions outlined in two existing contributor taxonomies.