Authorship Issues in Undergraduate Research

If you are working with undergraduate researchers on presentations and publications, you will need to have conversations with them about issues such as when they are co-authors versus acknowledged in the manuscript/presentation and the order of authorship. Below are some resources that might be useful as you have these conversations:

• The Council on Undergraduate Research's flagship journal, Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research (SPUR), has addressed student authorship issues in their Authorship Policy.

• Fine and Kurdek (1993) discuss these issues and present case studies in their article entitled, "Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations." Although the paper is geared toward psychology, the issues are relevant to all disciplines. 

• Mauer (2017) proposes guidelines regarding how best to determine authorship issues when collaborating with students, particularly on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects.

• The booklet On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research, contains a section on authorship (beginning on page 35).