Internationally accepted standards for authorship state that the basic requirements for scientific authorship of original scholarship include: a) meaningful involvement in the design of the study methods or methods of scholarly work; OR, b) meaningful involvement in the analysis of the study data or scholarly work; AND, c) involvement in writing the manuscript including, at a minimum, reading the final manuscript and willingness to be publicly accountable for the intellectual content for which they were responsible. FPIN Librarians meet these criteria for authorship. They design the methods of the scholarly work (the search strategy), and review the final manuscript prior to publication.
As a co-author the FPIN Librarian is obligated to read the entire manuscript and be prepared to assume public accountability for its content. This does not mean that the librarian is expected to understand the medical content. But, just as a biostatistician would be expected to take accountability for the statistics, the librarian's role as a co-author is to account for the description of the search methods used, the accuracy of the references, and any other content in the document that he/she feels qualified to address.
For additional information about librarian co-author responsibilities for reviewing manuscripts, contact the Librarian Coordinator .