Table 1.
Institutions and departments the survey was sent to.
Fig 1.
A ranking of the relative importance of 11 authorship criteria.
A) Ranking of various criteria according to research faculty in the biomedical sciences. The middle line represents the median, the edges of the box represent the 25% and 75% quartiles; the whiskers represent the range and the ‘+’ mark is the mean. B) Total time spent has a high weight, but the majority of faculty do not appear to hold a strong opinion about this as reflected by the 19.6% of respondents giving it a score of 5, probably due to the fact that time spent does not necessary equate with an intellectual contribution to the study. N = 102 for all data presented. The blue bar represents the scale median.
Fig 2.
Quantifying spread as a metric for agreement.
Coefficient of variation (CV) used as a metric to quantify spread of the scores. Lower values represent a higher agreement between faculty on the importance score. Higher values imply the distribution was highly dispersed and there was little consensus regarding the score.
Fig 3.
Criteria involved in preparation for a research study.
A) A majority of responses regarded time spent doing background research as neutral. B) The histogram is clearly skewed, indicating that contribution to the hypothesis and initial idea is crucial. C) Although it is difficult to generalize to all material-based contributions, our survey respondents lean towards the idea that contributing a special reagent, material, or computer code alone does not justify authorship eligibility and rank. D) There is no clear consensus on the role that obtaining funding plays. N = 102. The blue bars represent the median.
Fig 4.
Criteria applicable during the experimental aspects of a research study.
A) Time spent conducting experiments is important with the majority of faculty scoring it high. B) The uniqueness of experimental skills and techniques had a median of 6 with a high coefficient of variation. The blue bars represent the median.
Fig 5.
Criteria representing post-experimental stage of a research study.
A) The amount of time spent analyzing data is as important as writing the manuscript (B). C) The quality of the contribution to the written manuscript is also important, but there were several respondents that indicated that it was not. D) The majority of faculty had a neutral stance regarding the time spent editing and proofreading the manuscript. The blue bars represent the median.