If you are collaborating with other researchers, you should specify your roles and discuss your publication goals at the beginning of your project. At the latest, you should have this conversation before writing your manuscript. Key decisions include:

Who counts as a co-author? In what order will you list the co-authors’ names? Which team members will prepare data, collect permissions, and correspond with the publisher? If there is a publishing fee, how will the group pay it?

The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) may help you determine who should receive credit in your publication. Although CRediT was designed for the STEM fields, you can adapt it for other disciplines.

Everyone whose name appears on the article shares responsibility for the quality of the research and the trustworthiness of its presentation. Therefore, before you submit your manuscript, all co-authors must read and approve the same version of the manuscript and the supplementary material.

The Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE), an international, nonprofit organization, created a guide on how to prevent disagreements among authors and how to address them if they occur. This guide, How to Handle Authorship Disputes, is freely available online.