All theses and dissertations that contain co-authored and published chapters or papers must include a Chapter Heading Page with a citation and author contribution statement.
An author contribution statement is a public statement of the contribution of each co-author to the published work. These statements are considered best practice in publishing and are commonly required or strongly recommended by journals. The Graduate School requires an author contribution statement be provided for any chapter that presents previously published co-authored work. The dissertation committee will have sole discretion in determining whether the student’s contribution to the published work was adequate for inclusion as part of their thesis or dissertation.
The Chapter Heading Page with the author contribution statement must be in the final draft of the thesis or dissertation that is presented to the committee for examination (i.e., the draft that is submitted to committee members at least 14 days in advance of the defense).
Chapter Heading Page
Chapters that present previously published co-authored work must be preceded by a Chapter Heading Page that includes the full citation information and author contribution statement.
Although the Chapter Heading Page is not required if the material in the chapter has not been previously published, we recommend that it be included to identify the chapter/paper as co-authored and to clarify the publication status of the work.
Chapter Heading Page Template
Note: this MS Word template may need adjustments depending on the font you are using, whether your chapters/papers are numbered, and where the page numbers are located in your thesis/dissertation. Students are not required to use this template as long as the required information is provided and formatted as indicated.
Inclusion of Citation Information
When including previously published co-authored material in a thesis or dissertation, the complete citation information must also be included on the Chapter Heading Page. The following information must be provided:
- full citation information (include journal name, publication year, volume {where applicable} and page numbers {first to last})
- the names of all co-authors in the order in which they appear in the final journal article (the use of “et al.” to abbreviate the list of authors is not permitted).
There is no required format for the citation data. Students should follow the citation format guidelines of their chosen style guide (e.g., APA, MLA, an academic journal, etc.).
Writing and Formatting the Author Contribution Statement
The Graduate School has no specific requirement regarding how the author contribution statement must be worded, except that a contribution for all co-authors must be provided. The level of detail demanded in an author contribution statements varies by discipline. The CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) uses 14 roles that may describe typical roles involved in the generation of scholarly output. However, in some instances more detailed descriptions of contributions may be desirable to better express the work performed by each co-author. Author contribution statements should be brief.
If an author contribution statement is included in a published article, the student must use the published author contribution statement.
Following are examples of author contribution statements:
- Page, designed and performed experiments, analyzed data and drafted the paper; Bonham, designed and performed experiments; Jones, developed analytical tools; and Plant, designed experiments, analyzed data, and wrote and edited the paper.
- M.J., Methodology, Investigation, Formal Analysis, Writing - Original Draft; J.R., Data Curation, Formal Analysis; T.W., Methodology, Investigation; W.G., Software, Validation; J.W., Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Writing - Review & Editing.
- P. Postlethwaite, collected and analyzed data, edited the manuscript; T. Fitzgerald, assisted in the collection of data; J. Carter, performed computer modelling; S. Tompkinson, conducted data analysis; E. McGregor, coordinated the project and wrote the manuscript.
- B.W., Collected and analyzed data, drafted publication; P.T., Collected and analyzed data, drafted publication; R.M., performed comparative analyses and revised publication; C.S., theoretical simulations and data validation; M.G., data collection; B.M., Experimental design, coordinated the project, and collated and revised the final publication.
- Walters, J., Methodology, Investigation, Data Curation & Formal Analysis, ; Imrie, C., Investigation; Crosbie, A., Validation and Formal Analysis; Wilton, P., Software; Basset, L., Investigation; Mirren, H., Supervision & Writing.
- R.O., Developed the survey, collected and analyzed data, drafted the manuscript; C.S., Assisted in survey development and data analysis, revised and edited the manuscript.
Further examples of co-author contribution statements can usually be found by examining the author guidelines for journals in your discipline.
Additional Information
If available, the following information should also be included on the Chapter Heading Page: