Cracking the Code Assessing institutional compliance with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research

This paper provides a review of institutional authorship policies as required by the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (the 'Code') (National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC) & Universities Australia (UA) 2007), and assesses them for Code compliance. Institutional authorship policies were specifically chosen for this study as research publications are increasingly underpinning institutional income derived from the Australian Government, with publications likely to become even more important under the Excellence in Research for Australia initiative. Of the 39 Australian institutions reviewed, three universities, namely Charles Darwin University, University of Tasmania and University of Technology Sydney, did not have an institutional authorship policy, while another four universities, namely Curtin University of Technology, Flinders University, La Trobe University and University of Adelaide, had policies that were not compliant with the Code. Most universities, particularly the Group of Eight institutions, need to improve their authorship policies and management practices to avoid continual breach of Section 5.1 ('have criteria for authorship') of the Code and risk losing ARC and NHMRC research funding.