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Authorship & Disputes

Authorship of published work is central to the academic structure. It confers credit and responsibility and has important implications to the individuals involved, the reputation of the institution and the public trust in academic work.  [See further guidance linked here]

UVA researchers should follow the joint authorship traditions accepted within their discipline, and should comply with the journal-specific requirements for authorship 
and all other aspects relevant to the publication. To learn more, consider watching CITI Programs webinar titled: "Promoting Healthy Authorship Dynamics in Research Teams."

Authorship at UVA should be based on the following four criteria: (1) significant contribution to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; (2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated.

Generally speaking, UVA does not handle authorship disputes as possible research misconduct violations. Rather, authorship disputes among research collaborators must be addressed internally by the school and/or department or lab. For example, the School of Medicine's Disputes Concerning Authorship of Scholarly Publications can be reviewed here. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Research Integrity will not handle these types of disputes either. 

An authorship dispute is a conflict among collaborators which does not meet the definition of Research Misconduct, and which may include 1) who should be named as an author/contributor; 2) order of authorship; 3) expectations for contributors to a project; or 4) intellectual property or confidentiality issues affecting publication. To prevent issues related to authorship, authorship expectations should be discussed between collaborators prior to the onset of a project, and throughout the collaboration.

The Guide to Ethical Writing by the Office of Research Integrity for the Department of Health and Human Services is another resource for considering best practices. 

Avoiding Plagiarism & iThenticate

Plagiarism is defined under federal regulations as “the appropriation of the ideas, processes, results, or words of another person, without giving appropriate credit.” Plagiarism is a growing concern in academia, subject to greater and greater scrutiny in the media, and needs to be avoided at all costs. We recommend that you proactively use available plagiarism checks like iThenticate.  

iThenticate is plagiarism detection software that is designed to be used by researchers and writers to ensure the originality of written work before publication. Top publishers use iThenticate to screen incoming submissions. Elsevier, Springer-Nature, IEEE, Wiley, The Taylor & Francis Group, Public Library of Science (PLoS), among other top publishers, use iThenticate. Other Turnitin products such as Turnitin Feedback Studio and Originality Check are optimized for students in the classroom.  Research institutions, publishers, and government agencies all use iThenticate to make sure content supports research excellence.

iThenticate is designed for speed and ease-of-use so that academic researchers can quickly upload, check and examine documents in just a few minutes. It is accessed through a web-based interface and requires little to no training. It also helps researchers share documents and collaborate as groups.  Using the tool does not automatically detect plagiarism, one needs to evaluate the reports generated by the platform.  

UVA OVPR maintains a license. Any researcher, faculty, graduate, and doctoral student is encouraged to make an effort to improve their citations using iThenticate or similar platforms.  Researchers may reach out to Kristen Schwendinger, UVA's Director of Research Integrity and Ethics, to ask for an account to use iThenticate.

Observations from NSF Plagiarism Investigations and Strategies to Prevent Plagiarism

A study recently completed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in March of 2022 has compiled one of the most complete plagiarism reviews to date. This review has looked at 134 recent plagiarism cases ranging from 2007-2017. When surveyed, NSF found these responses to be the most common reasons for committing plagiarism: 

  • Did not know what constitutes appropriate citation; 
  • Thought they used appropriate citation when they did not; 
  • Did not understand what kinds of text require citation; 
  • Considered appropriate citation less important in certain document sections; 
  • Recklessly incorporated sources into drafts; and/or 
  • Rushed through document preparation. 

Note: Plagiarism can occur in grant applications as well as published work. 

Guidance & Additional Resources