Working together on a scientific paper often creates more organisational headaches than the research itself. Author order, the way contribution is divided and how the list of co-authors is compiled all affect a publication’s reputation directly and can become a source of conflict between project participants. Here we look at the criteria that determine the right to authorship, how author order is formed in a paper, and which ethical risks are worth bearing in mind when preparing a joint publication.
Who may be listed as an author of a scientific publication?
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has developed criteria that are increasingly applied in other fields of science when determining the right to authorship. Under this approach, only a project participant who meets several conditions at once may be considered a co-author:
- made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the study, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data
- took part in drafting the article or critically revising it
- approved the final version of the manuscript before it was submitted to the journal
- agrees to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of every part of the work
If a research participant has carried out only isolated technical tasks – for example, providing equipment, funding or organisational support – their contribution is usually noted in the acknowledgements rather than in the author list. This distinction reduces the risk of later disputes and makes the publication more transparent for reviewers and readers.
The January 2026 update to the ICMJE recommendations specifically states that artificial intelligence tools, including chatbots and other generative systems, cannot be listed as co-authors. Such systems are not capable of taking responsibility for the accuracy and reliability of an article’s content, and this is a mandatory condition for authorship. The use of such tools when preparing a text must be disclosed to the editorial office, while responsibility for the content of the publication remains, in every case, with the human authors.
Author order does not follow a single standard
ICMJE recommendations state directly that the order of names on the author list is the result of a joint decision by the co-authors, not a formal rule set by the publisher. Even so, informal conventions have developed within the scientific community, and these are often used as a guide when positions are assigned:
- First author. This position is usually held by the participant who carried out the main part of the study and prepared the first draft of the article.
- Corresponding author. Responsible for correspondence with the editorial office at every stage of manuscript review, and not necessarily the same person as the first author.
- Middle-list co-authors. Listed according to their contribution to particular stages of the work – methodology, data collection or statistical analysis.
- Last author. In a number of disciplines, particularly in the biomedical sciences, this position denotes the head of the research group or project supervisor.
Differing interpretations of these conventions are a common cause of conflict between co-authors, which is why specialists recommend agreeing on author order at an early stage of the work, rather than leaving the question until the paper is submitted.
How does the CRediT taxonomy help define each author’s contribution?
Alongside the ICMJE criteria, a growing number of journals are introducing the CRediT taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) – a standardised list of fourteen roles describing a participant’s specific contribution to the work, from conceptualising the idea and collecting data through to visualising results and writing the text. This system does not replace the criteria for authorship but complements them: ICMJE answers the question of who is entitled to be listed as an author, while CRediT specifies exactly what that author did.
Using CRediT reduces the likelihood of disputes when preparing a manuscript, since each participant records their role in the project in advance rather than relying on verbal agreements. Some research institutions also use this taxonomy to help resolve authorship disputes that have already arisen, asking the parties involved to describe their contribution in terms of the same set of roles.
Guest and fictitious authorship as serious ethical risks
Three common models of improper authorship allocation are described in detail by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). A ghost author is a specialist who genuinely took part in preparing the text but is not listed among the authors, often by arrangement with the sponsor of the work. A guest (or honorary) author, by contrast, is included on the list without having made any substantive contribution to the research, usually to raise the publication’s profile. A gift author is added out of courtesy or as a mark of appreciation, despite not formally meeting any of the criteria for authorship.
Each of these practices misrepresents who actually bore responsibility for the research, and can become grounds for an investigation by the journal or the institution where the work was carried out. ICMJE stresses that authorship disputes should be resolved primarily at the level of the institution where the research was conducted, rather than by the journal’s editors.
How is authorship regulated in Poland at national level?
The Committee for Ethics in Science, which operates under the Polish Academy of Sciences, has included questions of authorship and academic publishing in a separate section of the Code of Ethics for Researchers – the document currently in force is the edition adopted in December 2024, and it draws on international standards of good research practice, covering the division of responsibility between co-authors as well as the procedure for resolving disputes within a research team. This approach is consistent with the logic of ICMJE and confirms that questions of co-authorship remain a matter of concern for international and national ethics bodies alike.
Clear division of roles and timely agreement on author order protect not only the reputation of an individual publication, but also trust in the research team as a whole. Applying recognised authorship criteria, the CRediT taxonomy, and discussing each participant’s contribution well in advance all reduce the risk of conflict and make the peer review process easier. Paying attention to these questions early in the work on an article is one of the most reliable ways to avoid reputational damage after it is published.
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