You are the Scientific Director of a medical communications agency who is working with the Publications Director at a large pharma company. An external author posts draft one of a preclinical manuscript on their department preprint server to invite review and comments from colleagues who performed some of the work yet did not meet all ICMJE criteria for full authorship. This author is now petitioning the author group to add one colleague who provided insightful comments to the author byline.
What Would You Do?
A. Ask the recommending and potential new author to provide a list of the candidate’s contributions and share this with all authors. If all authors approve, then add the new author to the byline.
B. Suggest acknowledging the contributions of the newly-recommended author in the Acknowledgements section.
C. Contact the lead and senior authors for their input and proceed following their direction.
D. Remind the author who made the recommendation that all authors must meet all ICMJE criteria. As this was not established at manuscript initiation, it would not be appropriate to add an author at this stage of development.
This poll is closed. Results will be posted in March 2022.