Guidelines for Faculty/Student Joint Authorship
An important part of the degree programs in Communication is the apprenticeship. Only a relatively few applicants are admitted into the degree programs each year, so that the student/faculty ratio remains low and each student can receive individual attention and gain experience through apprenticeships in teaching and/or research under faculty supervision.
The success of this enterprise requires an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust among students and faculty. All must feel free to exchange ideas, discuss academic issues and to work together in the advancement of knowledge in the field. It has been our experience that such a climate of mutual respect and trust has and does exist within our community. Nevertheless because of the ever increasing opportunities for collaborative research in Communication, our mounting resources of large scale data from various faculty research projects, and other complexities of common research we welcome the University's suggestion that each graduate program set forth guidelines for potential multiple authorship involving faculty and students.
We recognize that intellectual products often benefit from a variety of contributions from many people. These may be contributions of ideas, data, financial support, encouragement, or other helpful items. It is a long standing and time-honored academic norm to acknowledge such contributions in footnotes and Acknowledgment sections of published works and elsewhere. We subscribe to this tradition and urge all of our graduate students to make it part of their own professional expectations. The following guidelines, then, are not intended to replace but rather to supplement these professional norms.
2. Authorship is not presumed to be a right obtained by association with a research project. Hence the need for prior understandings, as stated above.
3. In general authorship implies that the person made a major substantive contribution to the research being reported.
4. Data gathered for a research project or program of research under a Principal Investigator [under a grant or otherwise] are the property of that Investigator. It is an academic tradition that such data are not used without the PI's permission, unless they have been made part of a public archive. In either case, proper acknowledgements are expected.
5. It is the presumption that the person who conceptualized the project, secured the funding, developed the research instruments, etc., should review any publications or other public presentations from the project and give his or her permission if something from the project is to be published without his or her name on it.
6. A student is presumed to have authorship of his or her masters thesis and/or doctoral dissertation and is encouraged to publish any parts or all of the approved thesis or dissertation unless there have been some prior restrictions to which the student has agreed, e.g. that authorship must be shared with others contributing to the project or to wait for a jointly authored or edited book combining several theses.
7. It is impossible to anticipate all potential problems. We believe that mutual respect, trust and clear communication will forestall difficulties. However, if disagreements about authorship do arise and cannot be resolved by the people involved, it is recommended that the matter be referred to the ASC Associate dean for Graduate Studies for prompt consideration and suggested resolution or to the Dean of the school if the Associate Dean is one of the parties involved.
12-9-97