This page is part of MIT's Guidelines for Ethical Authorship and Publication Practices.
MIT recognizes that individuals may have differing views about individual contributions and what constitutes appropriate credit when assigning authorship, order, or acknowledgments. Because of the diverse nature of accepted authorship practices among MIT’s many disciplines, authorship disputes are most appropriately handled at the local level within each respective MIT department, laboratory, center, or institute (DLCI). If a resolution cannot be reached through discussions between the individual, collaborators (if any), and the PI/faculty supervisors of the subject project, and there is no written authorship agreement establishing a process for addressing the dispute, the issue may be appealed to the head or director of the PI/faculty supervisor’s respective MIT DLCI for a review and determination. For matters involving more than one PI/faculty supervisor in different DLCIs or outside of MIT, the respective heads or directors of those individuals should consult with each other and decide who shall take lead in reviewing the dispute.
The head or director should objectively review the matter and determine not whether they would have made a different decision, but only whether the decision complies with the standard authorship and acknowledgment criteria in the respective discipline, or, if applicable, with the established authorship policy of the journal or publisher to which a submission has been made or is anticipated. The head or director may choose to appoint one or more objective tenured faculty member(s) with relevant field-related expertise to assist with the review. The disputants should be given a reasonable opportunity to review a draft report of the written determination and provide additional comments for consideration before it is finalized. MIT’s Research Integrity team in the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) is available as a resource to heads and directors, as needed. The written determination of the head or director constitutes MIT’s final consideration of, and position on, the authorship dispute. There is no appeal of MIT’s final determination.