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Case10a :

What is a "Substantial Contribution" Anyways?

Ako was awake very early in the morning, trying to determine how best to draft an email to Chandra. Sitting at her computer, she has decided that the "matter of fact approach" is best. She writes,

"While my team sincerely appreciates your time, effort, and expertise to assist us to perform the statistical analysis of our data, I am sorry to report that I do not think I can add you to the list of authors for the publications in question. I have added you in as the statistical consultant in the acknowledgements section. Please do not hesitate to contact me for further questions or work".

Ako's team of survey research experts had compiled a tremendous, multi-national, dataset exploring youth attitudes towards political campaigns in non-democratic nations. They were very pleased with their results in data gathering, but, after a few papers published, they endeavored to mine the data for more interesting correlations. As Ako's team did not include an expert in statistical analysis, they had recruited Chandra, recently appointed as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Statistics, to assist in crafting more sophisticated data analyses.

Chandra had assisted the team greatly in developing advanced statistical methods to mine for correlations the team had been interested to find, but did not have the skills to uncover themselves. Chandra drafted a few paragraphs they use in the "Data and Methods" section and provided them with the charts and tables from the analysis.

Although Ako believed she was clear when she hired Chandra that his remit was consultation and analysis, Chandra is now making noise that he should be considered an author.

In the latest correspondence, Chandra has quoted the ICMJE criteria for authorship and has tried to make the case that, without his contribution, these papers would not exist. Ako is certain that these papers may have taken much longer to compose and that the analyses would not be as elegant if Chandra was not involved, but he is quite sure the team would have discovered these interesting correlations on their own eventually.

• Thinking through the ICJME definition of authorship as having made a substantial contribution to the published work, what is the role of a statistical analyst?
• Do you think that Chandra ought to be included as an author here?
• Make a case for and against Chandra's inclusion as an author.