Authorship guidelines
GOC publications: Author Guidelines
The GOC is a large and distributed group with multiple contributors and concurrent threads of development. In addition to the main NHGRI U41 grant, other funding lines support specific GOC activities and projects. Our program covers many aspects of research informatics including data integration, tool development, curation of molecular and genomic information, knowledge visualization, and community support. Our collective publication record is robust and growing. Here we detail guidelines for authorship in GOC publications.
- Publications that include authors funded by GOC U41 grant need to put funding source in Acknowledgements. The following text is recommended, particularly if the PIs are not authors.
“The Gene Ontology is funded by NIH NHGRI grant U41 002273 to multi-Pis Judith A Blake, J. Michael Cherry, Suzanna Lewis, Paul Thomas and Paul Sternberg."
- Papers with GOC-funded authors, whether or not a GO PI is an author, need sign-off from go-tops.
- Authorship is best discussed at the start of a project, with expected first and last authors on any projected papers discussed with those working on the project.
- Particularly with projects detailing work on a specific aspect of biology (such as apoptosis), it is important to consider including as authors all developers and curators who contributed to the specific project.
- Papers such as the GOC paper in the NAR special database issue in Jan, that include work from all active GOC funded people, can often be authored as ‘The Gene Ontology Consortium’ with a contributing author, and a list of Consortium members included at the end of the document.