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NITARP - Authorship Policy
Authorship of scientific posters and papers can be a sticky issue.
Not too long ago, an Ethics
Statement was formally adopted by the American Astronomical
Society (AAS). The following spells out the authorship policies we
expect all participants in NITARP (scientists, teachers, and
students) to adopt.
- It is the expectation that each team will present at least one
science poster and at least one education poster on the work from this
project. More are ok too, this year or in the future!
- All of the original team members, teachers plus mentor
scientist(s), should be invited to be authors on any posters or
research journal articles coming out of this communal team work (there
is more below on programs that emerge out of the original work). For
these original team projects, in common terms, every team member
should have the "right of refusal," e.g., they are by default included
and are only dropped if they ask to be dropped. This original team
worked hard to come up with the idea, and even if their contributions
to the data analysis are small, the proposal would not have been
accepted without their contributions. Each team member may also ask
to include the students who in their opinion contributed significantly
to the work being presented (not just attended class or meetings in
which the project was discussed).
- Any poster abstracts submitted to the AAS should be distributed to
all of the team members a minimum of 24 hours before the
abstract deadline. Preferably, all authors should be
involved in the drafting of the poster itself. No posters should just
suddenly "show up" at an AAS meeting, with or without everyone's name
attached.
- Traditionally, the list of authors is organized in the order of
size of contribution to the work. If everyone contributed equally,
alphabetical order is fine. In the case of these projects, where
there are likely to be many authors, it is just fine to list teachers
in this order, but then have the students listed near their teacher,
e.g., Teacher1, Student1.1, Student1.2 (school), Teacher2, Student2.1
(school), Teacher3, Student3.1, Student3.2, Student3.3 (school),
etc.
- It is usually expected that teachers will be the leading authors
of both the science and education posters. You can add as many
students as contributed (see above).
- To be blunt, your mentor scientist does not usually get much
tangible out of this collaboration. They do this because it's fun. One
tangible thing they do get is authorship of posters. Even on the
educational abstracts, throw them a bone and add them in somewhere in
the list. Most likely, they contributed to your educational experience
in some way.
- Scientists are usually members of the AAS, and thus can present at
AAS meetings without a member endorsement. There is an "educator
membership" option in the AAS tier of memberships, and as such, some
teachers can also present without a member endorsement. However,
teachers who are not members must have a member endorser. Those
member endorsers should be listed on the poster abstracts (even the
education ones), as per AAS policy. It is expected that the 'member
endorser' will be the mentor scientist for the project, if needed.
- AAS posters on work that has been done primarily by students
should also carry the list of authors who contributed to the project
either in concept or in execution. This need not be the entire team
of teachers; consult with your scientist or the NITARP management for
guidance if needed. In any case, there should be no single-author
student posters, since all students had help, at least from their own
teacher if not actually their scientist too. Particularly if the
scientist's name is to be included, the abstract and poster
must be submitted to the scientist for their review at least 5 days
before the deadline (or the start of the conference).
- Authorship policies for science fairs and TLRBSE journal articles
(or other school journals) are understandably different. Science is
collaborative, but we do understand that there are additional
restrictions and externally-imposed expectations when it comes to
these kinds of events, and single-author (or few-author) papers are
expected in these cases. To be fair to the contribution of others on
the team, these papers should include at least an acknowledgment of
the contributions of the rest of the team, even if it is, for
example, "The basic data reduction techniques used here were learned
as part of the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP),
2010 class" or something else appropriate to your situation indicating
you were not working in a vacuum.
- Authorship policies for refereed journal articles are yet another
case. It is generally expected that a scientist will lead authorship
of those papers. Teachers should be included in the author list. It
is not expected that many students will necessarily be included on the
author list, unless they made substantial contributions to the data
and analysis actually being presented. A complete list of students
who participated in the program can be included as part of the
acknowledgments.
- Science is an ongoing process, and it may be that the original
team project inspires more work by subgroups of the original team. In
those cases, AAS posters need not include the entire original team
unless you feel that the entire team contributed. It should, however,
include all people who contributed to the project either in concept or
in execution. If the first author is an AAS member, then they can
present at an AAS meeting without further approval (from the AAS or
NITARP). If the first author is not an AAS member, then they need a
member endorser, and as per AAS policy, that member endorser should
appear as a co-author on the poster. Either way, as a courtesy, we ask
that the presenters at least notify their original team scientist
early in the process so that the scientist can look for obvious errors
in the project. If the team scientist is the member endorser, then he
or she should be heavily involved in the abstract and poster writing
process, since his or her name is explicitly on the abstract.
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