Authorship & Contribution Policy

Immigrant Wellbeing and Technology (IWT) Lab · PI Nari Yoo, University of Michigan School of Social Work

1. Purpose

This document explains how work, credit, and authorship operate in the IWT Lab. The goal is simple: everyone should know from the start what kind of contribution leads to what kind of credit, so that recognition is fair, predictable, and based on what you actually contributed. Read this once, and refer back to it whenever you take on something new.

2. How we work

The lab runs on projects at different stages. For each project, there is a menu of tasks that range from foundational support work to independent intellectual contribution. You choose what fits your interest, time, and experience, and you can move up the ladder over time. You do not need prior research experience to start. Curiosity and reliability are enough.

Think of the work as a ladder:

• Foundational: literature searching, data cleaning, transcription, reference management, IRB paperwork, meeting notes.
• Applied: annotation or coding using an existing codebook, descriptive statistics, drafting first-pass figures or tables.
• Intellectual: helping design the study or codebook, making analytic decisions, interpreting results, drafting sections of the manuscript.
• Lead: owning an analysis stream or a section of the paper from start to finish.

Where you stop on this ladder is up to you. It also determines whether your contribution is recognized through acknowledgment or through authorship.

3. Authorship principles

The lab follows the authorship standards of the APA and the ICMJE. Authorship requires all of the following:

1. A substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the analysis or interpretation of the data;
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Approval of the final version to be published;
4. Agreement to be accountable for the work.

The key principle: authorship reflects intellectual contribution, not hours worked. Labor alone, however substantial, does not by itself make someone an author. Conversely, you do not need a formal title or funding to be an author. What matters is whether you contributed to the thinking, the analysis, or the writing.

4. What counts as authorship versus acknowledgment

Recognized through acknowledgment (important work, but applying rules others set):

• Running searches, exporting results, removing duplicates
• Screening titles and abstracts against criteria you did not help develop
• Retrieving full texts, organizing PDFs, formatting references
• Entering data into an existing extraction template
• Scheduling, note-taking, and administrative support

Qualifies for authorship (intellectual contribution begins here):

• Designing the search strategy or search terms
• Helping develop the inclusion/exclusion criteria or the extraction framework
• Resolving screening conflicts using your own judgment, not a fixed rule
• Synthesizing extracted data into themes and interpreting patterns
• Drafting and critically revising sections of the manuscript
• Building figures or tables that involve analytic choices
• Reviewing and approving the final manuscript

5. The gray zone: annotation, coding, and screening

The most common point of confusion is annotation, qualitative coding, and screening. Applying a finished codebook or screening rule to many records is foundational work and is recognized through acknowledgment. But if you help build or refine the codebook, resolve disagreements through reasoned discussion, or contribute to reliability decisions, that is intellectual contribution and counts toward authorship.

So the question is never whether you annotated. It is whether you stopped at applying the rules or helped shape the measurement and the interpretation. How far you move into that work depends on the project and is something we plan together, so it is not entirely yours alone to decide.

6. Author order

Author order reflects relative contribution and is not fixed in advance. It can change as a project develops, since contributions grow or taper at different rates. First authorship goes to the person who led the intellectual work and the writing. The order will be discussed openly before submission, and the rationale will be clear to everyone involved.

7. Process and timing

We talk about authorship early, not at the end. When you begin taking on intellectual-tier work, we will have an explicit conversation about what authorship on that project would require and what it means to commit to it, including the writing and revision stages.

Each project keeps a contribution log based on the CRediT taxonomy, where roles such as conceptualization, methodology, data curation, analysis, and writing are recorded as the work happens. This keeps authorship decisions grounded in a shared record rather than memory.

8. Special situations

• Leaving a project midway: If you step away, your contribution up to that point is what counts. If it was substantial and intellectual, you remain an author. If it was foundational, you are acknowledged. Volunteers are free to leave at any time, and this is handled without penalty.
• Paid RA work: Being paid for research assistance and being an author are separate matters. Compensation recognizes your time; authorship recognizes intellectual contribution. A paid RA earns authorship the same way everyone else does.
• Your own work: The lab is also a space for your own projects. If you bring your own work for feedback, it remains yours, and lab input is acknowledged unless someone makes an authorship-level contribution to it.
• Disagreements: If you ever feel your contribution is not being recognized fairly, raise it with me directly. The contribution log exists precisely to make these conversations factual and low-stakes.

9. What we do not do: gift, honorary, and ghost authorship

Two practices that are common in academia are not acceptable here. The first is gift or honorary authorship, listing someone who did not meet the criteria above. Seniority, supervision, funding, providing data, granting access to a lab or sample, or being well known does not earn authorship on its own. The same applies to me: being the PI is not by itself a qualification, and I earn authorship the same way everyone else does. These standards follow the ICMJE and COPE.

Reciprocal or quid-pro-quo authorship is also off the table: we do not trade authorships, and you should not feel you have to offer authorship in exchange for support or goodwill. If you ever feel pressure about an author list, from inside or outside the lab, let me know and we can sort it out together.

The second practice is ghost authorship, leaving off someone who genuinely qualifies or having a non-author do the substantive writing without credit. If you meet the criteria, you are named, regardless of your year, role, or whether you are paid, and contributions that fall short of authorship but still mattered, such as substantial writing or editing, are named in the acknowledgments. Both practices are well documented in the literature, including among social scientists.

10. Where we publish

Our work sits across several fields, so our outlets span health, social work, migration, and technology. Where a given project goes depends on its question, method, and audience. The full list of target journals, by field, is on the journals page.

The lab also publishes in peer-reviewed computer science venues, where the conference proceeding is the primary archival publication. A submission there is both a publication and, in most cases, a talk, and because timelines are set by hard deadlines these are planned well ahead. Those venues are listed on the conferences page.

11. Conference presentations

Presenting at a conference is one of the best ways to share lab work, get early feedback, build your CV, and meet people in the field. A conference abstract carries an author list just like a paper, so the same contribution principles apply to who is listed and who presents.

If you are leading a project and would like to submit it to a conference, please tell me before you submit the abstract, not after. This lets us coordinate the author list, confirm the work is ready to present, line up internal review, and look into travel funding. I am glad to support conference submissions; I just want us to plan them together.

The disciplinary conferences the lab presents at, with their seasons and deadlines, are listed on the conferences page.

12. A personal note

This is my first year as a faculty member, and I am still learning how to mentor, how to work well alongside students, and how to delegate. I will not always get it right. Please give me feedback whenever something is not working for you, and tell me directly what would help. I mean this genuinely, and I would rather hear it early than late.

If you are volunteering and you find that you are too busy, that this is not a priority for you right now, or that it is not helping your own goals, please tell me and feel free to step away. There is no penalty and no hard feelings. The purpose of this lab is for you to gain research experience and learn, so it should be worth your time. If it stops being worth your time, I would rather you spend that time where it serves you.