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Publication and Authorship

HDR candidates are morally and ethically obliged to publish from their research. The general community has invested significantly in the University sector through taxation payments and deserve an explicit return. If you are funded through a government scholarship and the research training scheme then it is even more important that you communicate your research results through publication. The general community benefits greatly, through the new knowledge generation produced through HDR and it is your obligation to support that benefit to society.

Publishing from Your Thesis

The general expectation is that you should seek to publish results from your research in academic journals. Your supervisors will normally mentor you through this process as there is a lot to learn. One decision you will need to make early in your candidature is whether to try to publish as you go or wait until completion before your start to publish. There are advantages and disadvantages for both choices and your supervisors will help you in making this decision.

Authorship Protocols and Guidelines

In considering publishing from your thesis decisions must be made about attribution of authorship. The issue that arises is whether you are the sole author of any resulting publications or whether the authorship should be jointly attributed with supervisors or others.

HDR candidates and supervisors should agree on authorship of a publication at an early stage in the research project and should review their decisions periodically.

Attribution of authorship depends to some extent on the discipline, but in all cases, authorship must be based on substantial contributions in a combination of:

• conception and design of the project;
• analysis and interpretation of research data;
• drafting significant parts of the work or critically revising it so as to contribute to the interpretation.

Authorship should not be offered to those who do not meet the requirements set out above. For example, none of the following contributions, in and of themselves, justifies including a person as a co-author:

• being head of department, holding other positions of authority, or personal friendship with the HDR candidate;
• providing a technical contribution but no other intellectual input to the project or publication;
• providing routine assistance in some aspects of the project, the acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research team;
• providing data that has already been published or materials obtained from third parties, but with no other intellectual input.

A HDR candidate should be the principal author of publications emerging from a thesis with supervisors, where appropriate, taking second author status. Second author status is obligatory if the supervisor/s designates the primary variables or makes interpretative contributions or provides the database; is a courtesy if the supervisor/s designates the general area or substantially contributes to design; and is not acceptable if the supervisor only provides encouragement, physical resources, financial support, critiques or editorial contribution. In the last case, supervisors should be acknowledged in the acknowledgments section. There are some circumstances where the supervisor may be the principal author but where this occurs it must be with the HDR candidate's written approval. If research supervisors use contracts with their HDR candidates it would appropriate to include a statement of authorship.