It Takes a Village to Publish a Paper!

If you have ever read a paper in a scientific journal, you have seen the list of authors near the top of the paper. Every paper has at least one author, and most have multiple authors. While you might have heard the cliché “publish or perish,” being part of that author list is important for researchers, especially those early in their careers. So, the Dog Aging Project wants to make sure that everyone who contributes to our published science is recognized for the role they play.

Recognizing everyone is a challenge for a project such as this. There are over 100 researchers, clinical researchers, full-time and part-time staff, graduate students, and post-doctoral interns and fellows. They are based in multiple laboratories at more than a dozen universities. The Dog Aging Project spans from sea to shining sea!

To make it easier for authors to recognize contributions, we include everyone in one of two groups: the Dog Aging Project Consortium and the Dog Aging Project Team. These lists are updated each budget year to ensure that everyone is properly credited for the work they do.

One “author” included on papers written by the Dog Aging Project researchers is the Dog Aging Project Consortium. This is a group of key leaders of the Dog Aging Project who participate in the overall design of our scientific work and in the editing process of each paper. Some may make significant scientific contributions, but not enough to be an author listed by name. The Consortium changes regularly as roles and availability change.

Those who are not a part of the Consortium are included in the Dog Aging Project Team. These are researchers who receive any salary from the Dog Aging Project, the full-time and part-time staff, graduate students, post-doctoral interns and fellows, consultants, independent contractors, and other contributors.. These are the people who gather data and samples, communicate with participants, recruit more dogs, pay the bills, create the social media campaign, well, you get the idea. You will find the Team mentioned in the Acknowledgments section of a paper.

The Dog Aging Project is committed to Open Data. We are also committed to our participants’ privacy. That means we release our data in curated sets after redacting any personally identifying information. Any researcher can get those data, and that is exciting! You could read a paper that uses Dog Aging Project data but is not written by Dog Aging Project researchers. But if you scan the author list and see the Dog Aging Project Consortium, you can be sure it was written by someone connected to the Dog Aging Project.