A Task-Weighted Approach to Determining Authorship

Abstract

Collaborative research is important in that it recognises the input and skills of a range of players participating in and contributing to health care programs. These players include academic researchers, practitioners, policy makers and evaluators. Questions relating to research publication arise across the spectrum of health-related research activities. The importance of establishing, at the commencement of research projects, expectations for claiming authorship is highlighted. Inevitably, collaborative research projects are a social enterprise and thus authorship determination can never be reduced to an objective process. This paper has emphasised that there are two dimensions for this negotiation.