By SHANNON O. WELLS

When one researcher doesn’t agree with how writing credits appear on a published paper, Pitt Research leaders prefer that the authors at least try to sort it out amongst themselves.

That’s the message Bill Yates, vice chancellor for research protections, shared with the Senate Research Committee on May 15 at its last meeting of the 2025-26 academic year, in proposing an authorship resolution process.

“If somebody has a concern, they shouldn’t run off to a committee first. They should talk to the lead author and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t fair. I should have been an author,’ or ‘I should have been the first author’ and discuss it with the team first,” he said.

For instances when this approach doesn’t easily resolve the issue, the proposed authorship resolution process would involve an ombudsman or neutral facilitator, “such as a senior faculty member in your department. Maybe it’s the department chair. Somebody that can help the group come up with a mutually acceptable decision about authorship,” he explained.

“What we’re suggesting now is, if all fails, that we put together an authorship dispute committee to provide more advice to the authors. And the advice is going to be neutral and hopefully will help resolve the conflict amongst the team.”

The authorship dispute committee would be similar to what Duke and other universities have in a variety of disciplines, he noted. The committees also should involve trainees.

“Sometimes trainees are the people that are bringing the concerns about authorship, and having a trainee perspective is very helpful,” Yates said, which would include one graduate student and one postdoc. “Of course, the committee will need an additional chair who is there mainly to do the work, to do the intakes, make assignments, etc.”

The Pitt committee would likely require six faculty members in various disciplines, including a human subject researcher, a basic biomedical researcher, professions like law, business, education, and areas such as social sciences, humanities/the arts, and someone from STEM fields like mathematics, engineering, computer physics, computer science, and physics or chemistry.

“If somebody has a concern, there would be a process. They would fill out (an intake) form, so that in writing they can relay their concern about authorship,” Yates explained. “The first question the chair will ask, is ‘Have you tried to resolve this informally?’ And if they haven’t, they’re going to send them back to talk with the lead author and try to, again, get the authors to work it out amongst themselves.”

The committee would be charged with gathering information about who should be the first author and what are the team’s concerns and perspectives. The committee would then provide a written determination to the authors and their dean or deans, if multiple schools are involved.

“This is not binding,” Yates clarified. “It’s just, the committee has been asked to look at the authorship, and this is what we think. … The authors don’t need to take the advice … it’s neutral advice from a knowledgeable committee that hopefully will help the authors make a good determination about what the authorship should be.”

The committee is engaged when somebody has a concern. “It gives advice back, and it’s just advice.”

Yates added a similar caveat to the proposal from Duke University’s approach that could lead to a binding decision.

“If the authors all agree — everybody involved in authorship on a study and might be involved — say, ‘Please, committee, tell us what the authorship should be,’ then the advice could be binding. But it should not be binding unless everybody tells the committee, ‘Please make a decision for us.’”

Yates said he thinks the approach will be beneficial to Pitt’s research community. “If you do think it’s a useful idea, your feedback on who should be on the committee is helpful. “(We’ll) also need your help socializing the committee once it’s formed with deans and departments.”

A question arose about a proposal provision that says if authors do not accept committee guidance, its written determination “may be treated as presumptive evidence of the appropriate authorship designation.”

Yates clarified that if the authors “really don’t take any advice and they can’t submit a paper, or if there are concerns raised by a journal, there’s this document that’s out there,” he said. “This is an impartial committee that thinks this is what the authorship should be.

“Again, it’s non-binding. … Presumptively, the authors will accept this advice, but if they don’t, they don’t. No one can tell people what the authorship on the paper, on for their scholarship, should be.”

The document would be sent to all the authors, including those who were left out, as well as the dean.

“If the authors are not going to be able to sort this out at this point between themselves, the dean is going to have to get involved and hopefully help them resolve their controversy,” Yates clarified, adding that it would remain within the school or institution. “This is not any regulatory thing. It’s not punitive at all. It’s advice to help people.”

Workload concerns

Responding to a question from Melanie Scott, associate professor in the Department of Surgery, about how this might affect the committee’s workload, Yates said, “That’s a good question. We don’t know … until we roll it out.

“I know what we get in our office, and we get a couple a month, something like that. Now, once this committee rolls out and it’s available, we may get more. We’re going to have to look to see,” he acknowledged. “That’s why I don’t want any rigid written guidelines or structure for the committee right now, because the committee may have to adapt its procedures based on its workload.”

Yates further clarified that the guidance is based on international academic research standards.

“These are not our standards, these are … adopted pretty much consistently across fields,” he said. “If the person in that core lab has played a big role in data collection and interpretation, they probably should be an author, but if it’s just the manager of the core lab says, ‘Yeah, you can use my lab,’ and is given no intellectual contribution to the paper, they should be acknowledged, but probably not (as) an author.”

Addressing Scott’s concern about the “scope creep on this,” Rob Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor of research, clarified the chain of command as authors first talking to each other followed by “your department head or heads or institute directors, the n-plus-one level of authority, talk to them about this, and (the committee process) is when all else fails.

“The University has a thoughtful, neutral level of expertise, so I’m hoping that we can curate the workload a bit by saying ‘No, you guys go talk about this among yourselves first,’ and hopefully that works most of these things out,” he said. “It’s like (Yates) said, we get a couple of these a month and (he) always tells me about them.

“The problem is people say, ‘I wish to report some research misconduct. I should be an author,’ and it’s like, ‘No, it’s not research misconduct. Maybe you should be an author.’

“We just think this is a good, honest attempt to put some expertise in front of a problem where we’ve had white space.”

Shannon Wells is a University Times reporter. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.

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