<p>Guidelines for authorship of scientific publications appointed the Medical Faculty board April 23, 2008 </p><p>Co-operation in national- or international research groups is more and more common. Varying habits and conventions as to co-authorship and ‘order of authors’ exist. The credit of authorship is an important scientific qualification. To avoid conflicts when publishing scientific material from research co-operations, the order of authors need to be agreed upon early in the research process.</p><p>The ethics committee of the Medical Faculty has reviewed the authors’ instructions of a selection of medical and nursing journals. The ethics committee found that most journals apply similar instructions for: </p><p>- “Contributorship-policy”: Authorship credits should only be attributed to someone who has contributed scientifically. Everyone who has contributed substantially to the scientific effort should be listed as an author. - “Guarantorship-policy”: One of the authors should be identified as the person who takes the responsibility to co-ordinate all contacts between the editor of the journal and the authors. </p><p>The ethics committee has developed the following recommendations to judge who should be mentioned as an author of a scientific publication. The recommendation is based on the “Vancouver Style” (Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).</p><p>Authorship is only based on scientific contributions.</p><p>Authorship credit should be based on: 1. Substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data. 2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content. 3. Final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet all the conditions 1, 2, and 3. A person who fulfils the qualifications 1, 2, and 3 should appear as co-author. Co-authorship should if possible be agreed upon when planning for the publication of the research project. All co-authors should agree to the final version of the manuscript and thereby accept their responsibility for the publication. One of the authors should take a certain responsibility for each part of the manuscript. </p><p>No authorship credit to a person who: - solely supply financial support or laboratory space. - solely contributes in data collection - contributes with routine technical assistance - gives general supervision to the research team Each author should have taken part in production of the article to a sufficient degree to be able to answer for applicable parts of the content and conclusions. Persons who have taken part in the process but not sufficiently to be included as co-authors ought to be mentioned in the ‘acknowledgement part’ of the article. All persons mentioned in the acknowledgement part shall give permission to this in writing.</p><p>Order of authors: First author in the order of authors should be the person who has put the major effort in the conduction of the study/manuscript/publication. The second author’s name should refer to the person who has contributed the next most. The last author’s name ought to be the senior/or advanced researcher who has been the supervisor or scientific guarantor. In some occasions an alphabetical order of authors is practised with the exception of the first or second author’s name.</p><p>References:</p><p>The Swedish Research Council (2003) Guidelines for good practice in medical research. (Riktlinjer för god medicinsk forskning). Website: http://www.vr.se</p><p>International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2005) Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals: writing and editing for biomedical publication. Website: http://www.icmje.org/index.html</p>