Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A four-person lab team publishes a study. Two members designed the experiment and wrote the analysis plan; one ran the statistical analysis and helped interpret results; one only collected data following a fixed protocol with no design or analytic input. Under Standard 8.12a, the data collector's role alone does not meet the threshold for authorship — it is acknowledged in a note rather than credited with a byline, unless that person also contributed to design, analysis, or interpretation.
- Is an instance
A doctoral student's dissertation forms the basis of a journal article co-written with their supervisor. Standard 8.12c directs that, absent exceptional circumstances, the student is listed as principal author — even though the supervisor may have secured funding, provided the lab, and given ongoing guidance, since supervisory and resource-provision roles do not by themselves outweigh the student's contribution to the underlying dissertation work.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A department chair is added to the author byline as a courtesy, without having formulated the research problem, designed the study, analyzed data, or interpreted results. This is precisely the case Standard 8.12b names and rejects: "mere possession of an institutional position, such as department chair, does not justify authorship credit." It is an instance of what CASRAI's dictionary separately treats as gift authorship, not a case APA's guidelines endorse.
Editorial commentary
What APA’s authorship guidelines actually govern
“APA authorship guidelines” refers to Standard 8.12 (“Publication Credit”) of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct — the professional ethics code psychologists are bound by, not the citation-formatting rules in the separate APA Publication Manual (7th ed.). The two are easy to conflate because both come from APA, but they answer completely different questions: the Publication Manual tells you how to format a reference list entry; Standard 8.12 tells you who is entitled to appear as an author in the first place, and in what order.
Standard 8.12a: who qualifies as an author
Standard 8.12a states that psychologists take responsibility and credit, including authorship credit, only for work they have actually performed or to which they have substantially contributed. APA’s own guidance identifies substantial professional contributions as including: formulating the problem or hypothesis, structuring the experimental design, organizing and conducting the statistical analysis, or interpreting the results and findings. Contributions that fall short of this — for example, purely mechanical data collection under someone else’s protocol, general supervisory oversight, or securing funding alone — do not by themselves meet the authorship threshold, though they may warrant acknowledgment.
Standard 8.12b: publication credit and author order
Once the author list is settled, Standard 8.12b requires that principal authorship and the order of other authors accurately reflect the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, “regardless of their relative status.” APA is explicit that holding an institutional position such as department chair does not by itself justify authorship credit or a particular place in the byline. Contributions that are real but minor — assisting with data collection, proofreading, or general encouragement — are acknowledged appropriately, for instance in a footnote or introductory statement, rather than rewarded with authorship.
Standard 8.12c: the student-dissertation rule
APA’s code includes a provision most other authorship frameworks do not: except under exceptional circumstances, a student is listed as principal (first) author on any multiple-authored article that is substantially based on that student’s doctoral dissertation. This exists specifically to prevent supervisors from taking first authorship on work that originated as a student’s own dissertation research by virtue of seniority or lab ownership alone.
How this differs from ICMJE’s authorship criteria
APA’s Standard 8.12 and the ICMJE authorship criteria both exist to stop undeserved (“gift”/”honorary”) authorship and uncredited (“ghost”) contribution, but they are structured differently and come from different kinds of bodies:
- Source and scope. ICMJE’s four-part test is a biomedical-journal editorial policy adopted by participating journals worldwide. APA’s Standard 8.12 is a professional ethics code binding on APA members and psychologists more broadly, enforceable through APA’s own ethics process rather than journal editorial policy alone.
- Structure of the test. ICMJE sets out four cumulative conditions every author must meet (substantial contribution to conception/design or data acquisition/analysis/interpretation; drafting or critically revising the work; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work). Standard 8.12a instead names a non-exhaustive list of qualifying contribution types (design, analysis, interpretation) without the drafting, final-approval, and accountability requirements ICMJE makes explicit.
- Author order. ICMJE does not itself prescribe how to order authors once the criteria are met — that is left to the group. APA’s Standard 8.12b speaks directly to order, requiring it to track relative contribution, and Standard 8.12c goes further with an explicit default rule for student-derived work that ICMJE has no equivalent of.
In practice, a psychology journal or department may apply both: ICMJE-style criteria if the journal has adopted them editorially, and APA’s Ethics Code as the underlying professional-conduct standard its authors remain bound by regardless of where they publish.
Worked examples
- A four-person lab team publishes a study. Two members designed the experiment and wrote the analysis plan; one ran the statistical analysis and helped interpret results; one only collected data following a fixed protocol with no design or analytic input. Under Standard 8.12a, the data collector’s role alone does not meet the threshold for authorship — it is acknowledged in a note rather than credited with a byline, unless that person also contributed to design, analysis, or interpretation.
- A doctoral student’s dissertation forms the basis of a journal article co-written with their supervisor. Standard 8.12c directs that, absent exceptional circumstances, the student is listed as principal author — even though the supervisor may have secured funding, provided the lab, and given ongoing guidance, since supervisory and resource-provision roles do not by themselves outweigh the student’s contribution to the underlying dissertation work.
Counter-example
A department chair is added to the author byline as a courtesy, without having formulated the research problem, designed the study, analyzed data, or interpreted results. This is precisely the case Standard 8.12b names and rejects: “mere possession of an institutional position, such as department chair, does not justify authorship credit.” It is an instance of what this dictionary separately treats as gift authorship, not a case APA’s guidelines endorse.
Related terms and further reading
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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"description": "APA authorship guidelines are the authorship-determination rules set out in Standard 8.12 (\"Publication Credit\") of the American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. They govern two separate questions: who qualifies as an author at all (Standard 8.12a: only someone who has actually performed the work or substantially contributed to it — formulating the problem or hypothesis, structuring the experimental design, conducting the statistical analysis, or interpreting the results), and how author order and credit should be assigned once the author list is settled (Standard 8.12b: order must accurately reflect each person's relative scientific or professional contribution, never institutional rank or seniority alone). A separate provision, Standard 8.12c, addresses student work specifically: except in exceptional circumstances, a student is listed as principal (first) author on any multi-authored article substantially based on that student's doctoral dissertation. The guidelines apply within the ethical code psychologists are bound by professionally — they are not a citation-formatting rule, and are distinct from the APA Publication Manual's separate reference-list and in-text citation conventions.",
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