Attribution Guidelines

CIS outputs often involve contribution from several people, playing different roles of conceptualisation, research, writing, editing, reviewing design, visualisations and formatting. As opposed to following the single author colophon style, it may be more accurate to represent contributions with greater granularity. Sometimes, outputs done over a year or longer also go through several iterations and hands, especially when they may be transitioned from one set to authors to others, which could be occasioned by changes in team structure or researchers leaving the organisation. These are also situations where attribution, and more particularly, priority of attribution gets tricky. Sometimes several people have contributed to an output, but only one or two people may have done a substantial amount of work. In such cases, attributions at the same level may not be fair. Therefore, it would still be wise to have Lead Author(s) in such outputs.

This document will act as a set of guidelines for determining attribution of credit in the production of an output. While the determination will be a deliberative and dynamic process, the final decision lies with the primary/lead author(s) of an output in consultation with their supervisor. In case of a disagreement, the primary author takes the final call.

The primary author(s) of an output is(are) the individual(s) tasked with the output and must bear the responsibility for seeing it through to publication. The primary author retains the discretion to request help at various levels-research assistance, editing, co-authorship-all of which should finally be determined at the closing of an output based on the following indicators. In case there are two primary authors, order of attribution is to be decided based on who contributed more to the criteria for co-authorship.

ATTRIBUTION	WORK
Conceptualisation	Conceived the ideas, structure and outline of a research output.
Co-author	Indicators: -Drafted substantive portions of the document -Contributed to Literature Review, analysis of data gathered. -In certain circumstances,entirely at the discretion of the primary author, it is possible to get co-authorship having drafted a minor chunk of the paper or altered/added to various parts of the paper if the person’s contribution has contributed directly to the form of the final output. However, as a general practice, no one can ask for co-authorship in this case. The primary author has to independently take the call and reach out to the concerned person.
Research Assistance	Provided research assistance by summarising papers/judgments, looking up databases but did not draft significant portions of the paper
Edited with inputs/Reviewed	Did not provide significant research assistance but provided edits and comments along with developing the idea in certain parts of the paper
Edited	Only gave edits and comments
Data collection and analysis	Did the data collection and/or data analysis/interpretation
Substantive Inputs	There are cases where even though none of the above roles are played by an individual, they may have provided substantive inputs and insights critical to the output.
Translation	Translated from original to another language. At discretion of primary author, translation could earn someone co-authorship

Document Layout by ______ OR Based on a document template created by ________

If there are visualisations within a document.

Visualisation of research by

(For videos)

Storyboarding and script by:

Design and Development by

(For podcasts)

Conceptualisation

Based on Research

Interviewees

Editing

Development

Episode Lead: In case aside from the above roles, one or two people take the lead in the production of the episode, they can be separately credited.

FAQ:

Should the primary authorship should go to the person who contributes most to the idea and the contours of the paper?

Contours of the paper. Conceptualisation credit should be given for anyone who came up with the idea.

How do we treat inputs that qualitatively change the paper or rework the concept itself?

Discretion of the primary author but generally ‘substantive inputs’ or co-author.

How do we treat contributions that are word count heavy but not synthesized or meaningful?

If the output ends up being published, and edits are responded to in a timely manner that shows improvement, then any person who has contributed to the document should get co-author/primary author. If not, then it is the discretion of the primary author/project supervisor to remove credits.

If a primary author has requested someone to be a co-author and the person has accepted, then does that mean that the primary author can have certain expectations of the co-author?

Yes