Thematic and ISS Working Group Protocols for the 2010 Ridge 2000 Community Meeting

Participants in each Thematic Working Group (TWG) and ISS Working Group (IWG) are expected to operate within the ethical guidelines listed below and to do the following prior to meeting:

• Outline specific data and analytical tools required, both for use at the meeting as well as to accomplish the scientific goals.
• Anticipate IT needs (basic Internet access will be available at the meeting; free web conferencing will be provided by the Ridge 2000 Office before and after the meeting)
• Become familiar with Ridge 2000 and relevant legacy data/research pertaining to the TWG topic and/or IWG region, and consider topical overlaps with other TWGs and IWGs.  Utilization of the MGDS R2K Data Portal is highly encouraged and one outcome of the meeting is for more data to be ingested into the database.
• Identify outstanding questions or data sets about the topic.
• Discuss numbers and types of manuscripts that will be written and propose timetables and writing/figure preparation assignments for manuscript completion.
• Exchange short CVs or equivalent within the WG as a means of introduction

Expected outcomes by end of the Oct. 2010 R2K meeting:

Each TWG and IWG will have identified one or more manuscript titles and for at least one manuscript, have roughed out an abstract, outline, list of figures, list of co-authors, preliminary reference list, and task list for TWG and TWG members participating in each paper.

Ethical Guidelines for Collaboration and Joint Publication

Largely inspired by content at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis  web site (http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/)

Most people who have participated in group projects recognize the importance and challenges of maintaining clear channels of communication among team members. We encourage meeting participants to discuss authorship and data sharing early and often. Publications resulting from this meeting will likely be authored by large groups of individuals who may not know each other well at the beginning of the project, and who may represent fields which have diverse views on authorship and data sharing. As a starting point for discussions about co-authorship, TWG members should consult guidelines published by the journal(s) to which they anticipate submitting the work, and in general, abide by the ethical principles described below.

Manuscript preparation

The following principles should apply to papers published by a Working Group.

Authorship:

• Researchers will claim authorship of a paper only if they have made a substantial contribution.  Authorship may legitimately be claimed if researchers (a) conceived ideas or designed new experiments; (b) participated actively in data integration and synthesis; (c) analyzed and/or interpreted data; or (d) wrote portions of the manuscript.

• Contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria should be appropriately acknowledged in the paper.

• Researchers will not add or delete authors from a manuscript submitted for publication without the consent of all the authors involved.

• Researchers will not include as coauthor(s) any individual who has not agreed to the content of the final version of the manuscript. The corresponding author will attest that all the coauthors have seen the final version of the article, agree with the major conclusions, and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Data and interpretations

• Manuscripts are intended primarily as vehicles to describe data and observations that are already in the literature.  New data can be included in a manuscript at the authors’ discretions, but we strongly encourage synthesis-integration studies.  The extent to which TWG papers resulting from the R2K Community Meeting provide venues for publication of unpublished field or laboratory data will be left to the discretion of the authors involved.

• Researchers will not submit for publication any manuscript containing data they are not authorized to use.  It is assumed that the principal investigator(s) of a research project retain the right to control use of resulting unpublished data unless otherwise specified in writing between the researchers involved in the synthesis study.

• Researchers will not represent research results as new if they have been published or submitted elsewhere, or submit a manuscript for publication while it is under review for possible publication elsewhere.

• Researchers will give full attribution of sources when using ideas or results of others in manuscripts submitted for publication.  If the ideas or results have not been published, they may not be used without permission of the original researcher(s).  Illustrations or tables from other publications or manuscripts may be used only with permission of the copyright owner.

• New ideas, models or results developed by the TWG shall be considered proprietary to the group for the purpose of publication of the results, although it is hoped that there will be extensive sharing of new concepts and cross-fertilization between Working Groups so that new models for ridge processes can be developed quickly and be as comprehensive as possible.

Acknowledgments

• Authors must acknowledge that the work in manuscripts published by a TWG resulted from a working group assembled at the 2010 Ridge 2000 Community Meeting, which was funded by NSF (NSF-OCE-0838923) ). Individual research grants, especially those funded by the Ridge 2000 program should also be acknowledged, as applicable.