Publications and Authorship

As the saying goes – “publish or perish.”  It goes without saying that DCAL research staff should aim to publish. Like conference attendance, there is no hard and fast rule about how many publications you should have. As a rough rule of thumb, research staff should aim for submission of at least one article to a major journal per year. Staff who have recently finished their PhD should aim to publish one or more articles based on their thesis within their first year at DCAL (and will be supported in using DCAL time to do this), if they have not already done so. 

DCAL strongly encourages publication of research primarily in journal articles. Publication of books or articles in edited books will not be as accessible to as many people.  Aim high with your submissions. The more prestigious the journal, the better your publication will be for your CV and your career.

Other publications (e.g. review articles, articles in lesser known magazines/journals) may be a good idea particularly if there is likely to be substantial impact amongst DCAL stakeholders (e.g. the Deaf community).

All DCAL staff must keep their UCL publications records up to date. This is done via Research Publications Service (RPS), UCL's publication management system: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/open-access/boxes/rps

Researchers’ publication details are imported or entered manually into author profiles in RPS. They are then transferred to UCL Discovery and IRIS, both of which are repositories for showing information about research activity at UCL. See the RPS FAQ for help with managing your publications in RPS.

UCL staff are required to upload all publications to RPS, providing not only bibliographic details but also to upload pre-proof accepted version of manuscript, and to do this as soon as the paper is accepted for publication. This is to ensure that you comply with open access requirements in case you are or might become eligible for the next UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). For more on open access and REF, see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/open-access/ref.  Note: Different funders have different policies relating to open access – see e.g. policies for UKRI and Wellcome funding. 

It is supposedly possible to import your publications from Reference Manager into RPS (or, if you use Endnote, to export your publications from Endnote, import them into Reference Manager, then export them into the UCL database).

It is possible to enter all kinds of outputs (not just strictly publications but also e.g. conference presentations, etc).

All outputs where preparation, data collection, analysis, writing-up, revising, etc. were undertaken while employed by DCAL, or anything arising from such research (for 5 years past the end of the DCAL legacy grant, i.e. until 2029) must be recorded regularly in ResearchFish. Attribution should be at least to DCAL legacy grant for research arising since 2019, and additionally DCAL 2 grant for research arising since 2016.

https://www.researchfish.net

This applies to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including publications, conference presentations, media apperances, etc arising from DCAL research.

All publications where preparation, data collection, analysis, writing-up, revising, etc. were undertaken while employed by DCAL, or anything arising from such research (for 5 years past the end of DCAL, i.e. until 2021) should state:

Version A. (publications arising from DCAL funded work).

The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged. The work was part of the programme of the ESRC Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) Grant RES-620-28-0002.

Version B. (Where researchers’ salaries are part or wholly funded by DCAL (even where publications arise from another project).

The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged. [INSERT YOUR NAME] was supported by the ESRC Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) Grant RES-620-28-0002.

GUIDELINES (for where the ESRC acknowledgement should be placed)

• In a book acknowledgement the ESRC must appear prominently in the preliminaries.
• In a journal article, it should preferably appear on the first page (as Footnote 1 where footnotes are set throughout the text or as an independent line of the footnotes are accumulated at the end of the text). If this is impossible for reasons of house style, the acknowledgement should appear as prominently as is reasonably practicable.
• The Centre should also try to ensure, where feasible, that any journalist, radio or television programme makes similar acknowledgement.

UCL Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London, 49 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

The guidelines apply to any publication, presentation, talk or other output, which has or can be cited as having authors. They will not cover all disciplines or situations that might arise regarding authorship but they provide some general guidance to follow.

General points

1. Principal Investigators (PI) or supervisors should go through these guidelines with new members of their team as part of their induction so expectations are clear.
2. Authorship for planned publications should be discussed between researchers before writing up has begun, but it can be renegotiated at any time. In particular, researchers should agree on which academic papers, research reports and public engagement materials will be written with others (and who will first author each paper) and which will be single authored, with an agreed acknowledgement given to contributors.
3. Students should normally be the first author on any multi-authored article based on their thesis or dissertation. In some disciplines, students can also publish papers based on their dissertation work as sole author. In this situation, any publications need to acknowledge the contribution made by their supervisors.
4. More senior members of DCAL staff are encouraged to give more junior colleagues opportunities to be first author when appropriate.
5. There is a risk of junior staff not being appropriately recognised for their contributions or of ambiguity about roles in the paper. PIs or supervisors should encourage and provide opportunities for more junior staff to contribute enough to the research to warrant authorship. This is especially pertinent in the case of junior staff who contribute to project success in terms of participant recruitment/data collection. Opportunities or mentoring should be provided to enable them to contribute to other components of the research process (as listed below).
6. For presentations about specific research projects, joint authorship should be clear on the title slide even if there is only one presenter. In presentations giving an overview of multiple studies, collaborators should be acknowledged in a slide at the end of the presentation.

Attributing authorship

Authorship should be reserved for those, and only those, who have made significant intellectual contribution to the research.

1. Everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial direct academic contribution (i.e., intellectual responsibility and substantive work) to at least two of the four main components of a typical paper:
   1. Conception or design
   2. Data collection and processing
   3. Analysis and interpretation of the data
   4. Writing substantial sections of the paper
2. In some disciplines, authorship is given in return for the provision of materials or facilities without which the research would not have been possible.
3. Everyone who is listed as an author should have critically reviewed all drafts of the paper and should approve the final version. PIs and supervisors should ensure that new team members understand this process.
4. Everyone who is listed as an author should be able to understand and explain the paper as a whole (although not necessarily all the technical details).
5. Many journals require author contribution to be specified. If this is not requested, authors are encouraged to use the APA’s CreDIT contribution statements. https://www.elsevier.com/authors/policies-and-guidelines/credit-author-statement

Order of authorship

1. The person who has made the major contribution to the paper and/or taken the lead in writing (e.g., written the first draft of the paper) is usually the first author or senior author.
2. Those who have made a major contribution to analysis or writing are entitled to follow the first author; where there is a clear difference in the size of these contributions, this should be reflected in the order of these authors. Alternatively, the authors may be listed alphabetically after the first author if there is mutual agreement to do so (readers can be alerted to this fact in a footnote).

If all the authors feel that they have contributed equally to the paper, this can be indicated in a footnote. Note: different journal have different rules re: joint first or senior (last) authors.

Decisions about acknowledgements

ll those who make a substantial contribution to a paper without fulfilling the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged, usually in an acknowledgement section specifying their contributions. These might include:

• support staff, such as information technology and clerical staff.
• Academic colleagues who have provided specialised statistical advice or analysis, reviewed the paper, or who provided assistance in obtaining funding should also be acknowledged.
• Funding sources must be acknowledged. For any publications arising from DCAL research carried out between 2006 and 2016, this includes the ESRC.

Other suggestions

Digiusto (1994) has suggested a points system in order to evaluate contribution to publications in order to decide who merits authorship and in what order.

Digiusto, E. (1994). Equity in authorship: a strategy for assigning credit when publishing. Social Science & Medicine, 38 (1), pp. 55-58.

Acknowledgements

This policy has been updated in 2022 in line with the Statement of Policy on Authorship and Publication Credit from the British Psychological Society (2017). https://www.bps.org.uk/guideline/statement-policy-authorship-and-publication-credit

This policy was originally adapted from guidelines by the British Sociological Association Equality of the Sexes Committee. They draw heavily on the guidelines developed by Sally Macintyre at the Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit (which in turn draw on those produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and the guidelines for co-authorship between faculty and graduate students developed by the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999.

Once a paper has been published researchers should aim to produce a lay summary.

Researchers should prepare text to film 2 minutes clips as a response to each of the questions below.
• What is your name and research interest? (please use language that is accessible to the deaf community)
• Why did you choose to do research in this area? (Related to the paper)
• What questions did you want to answer?
• What did you find out?<< /li>
• What impact does this have for research, those who work with deaf people and the deaf community?

The text should in Plain English (see below for further guidance) and shared with the Impact and Communication Officer and colleagues for feedback.
Note: Average words per minute is 130 words so for prep aim for a maximum of 200 words per answer.

Once text has been agreed, researchers are to film themselves delivering their answers. Please see "Jake Fairnie’s guide on how to record yourself at home" for guidance.

Subtitles will be added for those who use BSL and English speakers will have interpreters and subtitles added to their clips.

If you wish to use BSL and would like to feedback on your translation please contact the Impact and Communication Officer who will put you in touch with Clive Mason to discuss feedback.

Once the clips have been filmed and subtitled they will be put onto the DCAL website to be shared alongside the Plain English text.

Plain English is not meant to be patronising or oversimplified. It doesn’t mean you should reduce the length of your message or change its meaning. However, it’s not as easy as we would like to think. It is a message written with the reader in mind that is clear and concise.

Here are a few tips for writing in plain English:
Keep your sentences short. Average sentence length of 15 to 20 words. Each sentence does not have to be the same length, sentence should be a mixture of short and long ones. You should stick to one idea per sentence.

Use active verbs. Passive verbs can be confusing and lend themselves to longer sentences. An example of a passive verb would be ‘The experiment was administered by Simon’ as opposed to an active verb ‘Simon administered the experiment’.
1. Use ‘we’ when referring to yourself or your team.
2. Use words that are appropriate for the reader.
3. Use everyday English and avoid jargon.
4. Avoid nominalisation, for example ‘The implementation of the method has been done by a team’ vs ‘A team implemented the method’.

Before you start to write think about the following:
• What are your points for the summary?
• Prefer short words.
• Be concise.
• Imagine you are talking to your reader.

After you have drafted your lay summary, review the text and look out in particular for jargon. Superfluous words, for example ‘in order to’ instead of ‘to’. Long sentences, if you have made a point and then go on to explain the background, you will need to reorder the information to make it clearer. Finally, punctuation – keep your punctuation as simple as possible.

Once you are happy with your lay summary you can run it through Drivel Defence which will analyse your text for plain English.

Acknowledgements

These guidelines were adapted from the Plain English Campaign.