A method for assigning authorship in multiauthored publications.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Determining authorship for publications is often a difficult process, even more so when individuals from several disciplines collaborate with community organizations to conduct projects. Although multidisciplinary and community-academic partnerships provide fertile ground for publication efforts, disputes about authorship and ownership of data may hinder efforts to disseminate information. This article describes a process for dealing with authorship in multi-professional collaborations. It provides an authorship scale, similar to a neonatal Apgar scale, to determine order of authorship in multi-professional projects. Key components or activities in the process of authorship are identified, and points are assigned to each component in proportion to an investigator's level of activity in each component/activity. Scores are summed and can range from 1 to 35 for each author. The order of authorship is then determined by the relative score of each participant.