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Authorship
Authorship can be a rewarding but complicated endeavor. Through authorship, individuals receive credit and accolades for their contributions but assume great responsibility for the quality and integrity of their research and reputation1. The library offers a variety of services and instructional content to assist individuals in understanding authorship, publication matters, research impact, and more. Review each section below for more information.
Need help choosing a journal, creating an author profile, or calculating your h-index? Library staff can help with this and more. Request a consultation.
Author roles & responsibilities
Are you working with a team of authors? Use the following resources to learn about the responsibilities of key author roles and be prepared to meet the demands of your position on the team.
- MD Anderson Cancer Center provides definitions for Author, Co-Author, and Corresponding Author in its Scientific Publication Policy.
- Yale University outlines key author roles in Guidance on Authorship in Scholarly or Scientific Publications.
- The ICJME recommendations provide best practice for author roles.
- More information on authorship considerations is available in Authorship Considerations for Biomedical Research Papers, written by Senior Scientific Editor, Erica Goodoff.
Choosing a journal
Choosing a suitable journal is an important first step in sharing your work and building your scholarly reputation. The following journal selection tools can help you find good matches for your research.
- Manuscript Matcher, which suggests journals based on a manuscript’s title and abstract
- Journal Citation Reports, which compiles journal impact factors
- The library’s Journal Assessment tool, which can be used to evaluate a lesser-known journal’s legitimacy and reputation
Author discounts
The library maintains Read-and-Publish agreements with several well-known publishers. In part, these agreements let MD Anderson authors publish their work in the publishers’ open access journals at no cost (i.e., publish without article processing charges). This benefit is granted to the MD Anderson-affiliated Corresponding Author during the manuscript submission process. Review open access discounts for MD Anderson authors.
Managing your work
Keeping track of your scholarly work can be an arduous task, especially if you are a busy clinician. Take advantage of publication productivity tools, which can help you maintain a current record of your work.
Promoting your work
Make it easy for your peers and others to discover your research. When work is easy to find, it is easy to cite, and more citations leads to more recognition and greater impact. Here are a few tips to help you promote your research:
- Choose suitable journals for your research, allowing you to reach the right audiences.
- Title your works and choose keywords carefully. Review guidelines for writing effective titles in this library news article.
- Identify yourself as an author using a persistent identifier, such as ORCID. These identifiers uniquely identify you, which is especially helpful when your name is common or if you publish under name variations.
- Keep an up-to-date record of your work online. Claim and maintain your Scopus Author Profile. This profile shares data to MD Anderson’s Pure system, which is the institution’s public-facing platform showcasing faculty research.
Measuring your impact
Research impact is measured using quantitative methods, usually involving publication numbers and citation counts. These methods produce metrics about authors, their works, and the publications in which their works appear. The most well-known and widely used author-level metric is the h-index. This metric is calculated and reported by the following resources. Learn more about h-indexes and how they are calculated.