Intervention to Promote Ethical Authorship Practices in Graduate Education

Authorship credit is essential for researchers' success in academia. For academics collaborating with others, differing perceptions of how to value different contributions, disciplinary differences in authorship conventions, and power differences among collaborators can make authorship decisions more difficult to navigate in ways that feel fair and transparent to all involved. Graduate students may feel particularly disadvantaged in authorship decisions due to their relative lack of publishing experience. Here we tested the effectiveness of an educational training intervention designed to promote ethical authorship practices by supporting graduate students' knowledge of authorship and authorship ethics and their ability to effectively navigate authorship conversations with collaborators. Students (n = 185) underwent an online training program and used an authorship agreement form to discuss authorship on a research project with their faculty mentor. We randomly assigned half of the students to undergo an additional small group workshop to test the level of institutional investments needed to see benefits for students. We found the online training and authorship agreement forms boosted students' perceptions of their authorship knowledge and confidence effectively navigating authorship conversations with collaborators. The additional workshop did not yield further benefits for students' outcomes, suggesting that institutions can help promote ethical authorship through low-cost, scalable educational resources.