CSMaP Authorship and Roles Guidelines - NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics

For papers that are designated “Standard CSMaP papers”[1], there are three categories of authors that are identified based on on author order:

Lead author(s): Substantial contribution to conceiving the research design, carrying out the research, conducting the statistical analyses, and/or writing the first draft of the paper. In the event that multiple authors meet these criteria, they will be listed as co-lead authors.

Middle authors(s): An important contribution to a part of the research that allowed this paper to be written. This could include writing a part of the manuscript, carrying out a part of the research, a contribution to the statistical analyses or data visualization, designing a new tool or method for collecting the data, contributing to the research design, or other contributions.

Last author(s): Each Standard CSMaP paper will have a “Lead PI” from CSMaP who is listed as the last author on the paper to reflect their role in overseeing the research on the paper, as well as to reflect the contribution of the PIs to overseeing and managing the CSMaP lab infrastructure that supports CSMaP research. In the event that additional CSMaP PIs have also made contributions to the paper, they will be listed immediately preceding the last author.

CSMaP papers should include an acknowledgement statement identifying the lead, middle, and last authors, as well as identifying each author’s contributions.

Footnotes

1

For more on the definition of a “Standard CSMaP paper,” see here. Papers supported by the Center that are not designated as a Standard CSMaP paper might choose to use a different set of authorship guidelines. This includes solo-authored papers by PhD students and external collaborations where the project is being led by the external collaborator(s).