GRADUATE SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORIC PRESERVATION

Authorship Policy

1. In the Graduate Group in Historic Preservation all students and faculty are expected to produce individual scholarship and to cite all contributions to their work in conformity with customary scholarly practices.

2. All student work for the fulfillment of degree requirements is student work and the property of the student. It must have due citation and acknowledgement of contributions from others.

3. Students have the right to publish their work. No publications that occur before the degree is completed are assumed to fulfill degree requirements.

4. Any joint project will be presented as such from the outset and the collaborators will agree from the beginning that their joint efforts will be presented publicly under all names.

5. If there is any dispute as to propriety in the development or publication of joint work, the matter should be brought to the attention of the Graduate Group Chair, by either the student or the faculty member, and then handled within the Graduate Group with appropriate consultation with other members of the Graduate Group.

6. Definitions:
   1. Qualifications for authorship
      1. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for its content.

      2. Authorship credit should be based on substantial contributions to each of the following areas: conception and design of the project; drafting the text; revising it critically for intellectual content; and final approval of the text and illustrations to be published. All of these conditions should normally be met for authorship to be assigned.

      3. Minor contributions to the research or to the writing for publication are appropriately acknowledged, such as in footnotes or in an introductory statement.

      4. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding, providing for language translation, or the collection of data and/or illustrations does not require the assignment of authorship

      5. Appropriate credit for the contributions of individuals engaged in sponsored research should be formally acknowledged and is the responsibility of the principal investigator(s).

      6. Any unpublished idea or part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be assigned to its author and acknowledged. If that author is a student, the faculty member must acknowledge that person as coauthor.

      7. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multipleauthored article that is based primarily on the student's dissertation or thesis.

   2. The order of authors
      1. The order of names should be mutually agreed, preferably at the outset.
      2. The order of authors may be alphabetical.

      3. The first author is likely to be the person who has contributed most to the work

      4. The sequence of more than two authors is determined by the relative contributions to the work.

   3. Specific factors that may serve as the basis for claims to authorship:
      1. The Idea. An important consideration for authorship is based on an answer to the question "Whose idea was it?" Having the idea for the study is one basis for a claim to authorship, but most projects evolve over time and there are many revisions in the initial idea along the way. As a result, from time to time the relative intellectual contribution of joint authors may have to be reassessed.

      2. The Literature Review. In some cases a faculty mentor will ask a graduate student to conduct a literature review on the topic of a jointly authored paper. Literature reviews may be extensive or focused, and may be directed to a greater or lesser degree by the faculty advisor. In some projects, an extensive literature review forms the basis of the subsequent research, whereas in other cases it plays a more limited role. At the minimal end of the continuum, literature reviews involve bibliographic preparation. At the other extreme, literature reviews may take the form of long memos about previous research in a field, and go beyond summarizing individual papers to synthesize the findings in the field and the gaps in the literature. The more extensive and independent the literature review, and the more decisive with respect to the ideas developed in the paper, the more this contribution entitles one to authorship credit.

      3. Data Collection. There are instances in which a faculty member may have spent years, even decades, collecting data on a particular topic, perhaps following a sample of individuals over time. Such data collection efforts can be extremely expensive and time consuming. In collaborative research, "ownership" of the data can serve as the basis for a claim to authorship, yet there is much variation among faculty in this position. Some faculty may feel that ownership of the data under investigation entitles them to authorship of any paper that is based on these data. Some faculty may feel they are entitled to be first author in all such instances, while others may feel that second or third authorship is more appropriate. Still others vary authorship depending on the nature of the project at hand. Conversations about authorship are particularly important in cases where graduate student research is based on data collected by their faculty advisor. In other instances, the graduate student may have collected data and the faculty assists in both overall methodology, analysis, and interpretation. Here both student and faculty would be entitled to authorship. Individual or group collection of data, including graphic manipulation and production under faculty supervision does not automatically entitle students authorship of that material.

      4. Data Analysis. In many cases of statistical research, a faculty member supervises the data analysis, which is conducted principally or exclusively by the graduate student. In some cases the graduate student receives a wage as a research assistant, while conducting tasks closely directed by the faculty advisors. Some faculty would feel this situation entitles the graduate student to no authorship credit, while others feel it is appropriate for graduate students to receive junior authorship credit in such cases. At the other extreme is a case where the graduate student selects the variables to be examined, makes many substantive decisions about the data analysis, and shapes the statistical approaches used in the research. In this case, the graduate assistant certainly should receive credit and possibly authorship, although the scope of this contribution must be determined relative to inputs.

      5. Writing. Writing the text of a paper often involves much more than simply summarizing the results of the data or research at hand. This is certainly true for qualitative work, where the selection of appropriate material from the rich body of collected data is an essential part of the research process. Writing is no less of a creative undertaking in research based principally on quantitative data. Sometimes the writing of a paper is shared, but more often one author takes the lead in writing a portion or the entire text. Many involved in collaborative research feel that writing is the decisive contribution, that whoever wrote the paper is entitled to be first author. Situations where the graduate student "did the research" but the faculty member "wrote the paper" may produce misunderstandings regarding authorship and credit. Collaborators should keep in mind that writing is an important component of the final project, but that there may be other important contributions as well.

      6. Editing. Editing can range in intensity from light copy-editing to a thorough reworking of the text. Often one partner in a collaboration writes and the other edits. There may be several rounds of editorial revisions before a paper is published. Situation where one author draSed the paper and the other "substantially revised" or "rewrote" it may well lead to disagreement about authorship and credit. Here, as before, writing and editing are both potentially important contributions to the final product.

      7. Financial Remuneration. In some cases graduate students serve as paid research assistants working on faculty grants. In other cases joint projects are conducted as part of an independent study course, while in still other situations joint projects emerge simply out of common interest outside the nexus of courses and wages. Some faculty feel that students who are paid in wages are less entitled to authorship than student collaborators who are working for free. The latter group, it is thought, are "compensated with authorship rather than with wages. Other faculty feel that only intellectual contribution and not salary should determine authorship. Students who work as paid research assistants for a faculty member are particularly dependent on that faculty member for both intellectual guidance and financial support. Consequently, it is particularly important for issues of authorship to be discussed in such cases.

      8. Turf Disputes. When a faculty member has collected a large data set, it is often the case that a series of papers, and perhaps one or more books, will be published from the project. One problem that can arise from this bounty is distinct aspects of the research can blur into one another. A worst case scenario is that there is conflict over who is going to work on a given aspect of the project. Another problem from the graduate student's viewpoint is that the best projects are reserved for the faculty and other project members, and that he or she is "assigned" particularly barren terrain to plow. Faculty and students should periodically discuss these issues with graduate students, keeping the division of opportunities in mind.