Authorship Guidelines

Please consider these Faculty Advisory Committee approved guidelines for including Bioinformatics Core personnel who worked on your projects as co-authors in your publications.

Download the guidelines as a PDF

Guidelines for authorship (Bioinformatics Core at Purdue University)

We request that you consider including the Bioinformatics Core personnel as co-authors or in the acknowledgment section for the following reasons:

  • As commonly accepted standard for authors of a scholarly publication, please include the core personnel if they have made a significant intellectual and/or organizational contribution to the work described – such as the conceptualization, design, analysis and interpretation of data and/or input into drafting, revising or writing any portion of the manuscript.
  • In order to maintain high competency and provide high quality data analysis services to the Purdue research community, we need to attract and retain qualified personnel in the Bioinformatics Core. These core personnel are skilled professionals and view your projects as opportunities to engage intellectually and venues to develop professionally.
  • Co-authorship and acknowledgment demonstrate the utilization of the Bioinformatics Core services and is an indication of its value to your research.

Individuals who have contributed to the project, but whose contributions do not rise to the level justifying authorship, can be recognized in an Acknowledgements section of the manuscript as follows:
“The authors acknowledge the support of the Bioinformatics Core at Purdue University.”

Please note that payment for core expenses for data analysis services rendered and authorship are not mutually exclusive. Depending on their contribution, they may be similar to collaborators who often receive funding to work on a project. The recovery of Core expenses through the recharge system does not exclude the possibility for authorship for Core personnel. Similarly, authorship does not substitute for payment of Core expenses for services rendered.

Please think about authorship for Core personnel at the time of initial consultation. The recharge center is here to help you with your analysis regardless of your decision.