CNRI Bioinformatics Unit

Authorship Policy

Per the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)[1], authorship credit is indicated when the following four conditions are met:

  • Substantial contributions to: the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
  • Final approval of the version to be published
  • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved

Therefore, members of the Children’s National Research Institute Bioinformatics Unit who contribute substantially to study design, implementation, analysis and/or interpretation should be offered the opportunity to earn authorship on all abstracts, presentations and manuscripts stemming from joint collaborations with investigators seeking support. Investigators should invite their collaborators in the Children’s National Research Institute Bioinformatics Unit to participate in drafting and revising abstracts and manuscripts.

Authorship order should be discussed prior to the initiation of the collaboration. The order tends to vary and often depends upon the specific contributions of the collaborating bioinformatician(s). For example, it is customary for faculty bioinformaticians who have participated in the design, analysis, conduct and manuscript preparation of a clinical trial to be listed as second author. For studies requiring an intensive or high-end bioinformatics analysis, it is also customary to list the faculty bioinformatician(s) among the first three authors. Staff bioinformaticians are typically listed as middle authors.

Decisions about authorship are not related to funding arrangements between investigators and their collaborators in the Children’s National Research Institute Bioinformatics Unit.

In the acknowledgment, please use:

We acknowledge the support of the Children’s National Research Institute Bioinformatics Unit, a partnership between the the Children’s National Research Institute, the Center for Genetic Medicine Research, the Clinical Translational Science Institute at Children's National (CTSI-CN) and the District of Columbia Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (DC-IDDRC). The CTSI-CN is supported through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, grant UL1TR001876 and KL2TR001877. The CTSA program is led by the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). The DC-IDDRC is supported through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) District of Columbia Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center Award (DC-IDDRC) program, grant (1U54HD090257). The DC-IDDRC program is led by NIH, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

[1] International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. http://www.icmje.org. Updated 2013. Accessed January 30, 2014.