Authorship Policy:

 
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Policy on Authorship of Physics Publications
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 This policy was adopted at Belle general meeting on November 17, 2001.
 The replacement of shift taking was addopted at Nov. 2010 IB/BGM.


1.  Eligibility

1.1 Only physicists, including graduate students, can be authors.
    In general, engineers, technicians and undergraduate students will
    not be included as authors. However, in exceptional cases, where such
    individuals have made significant and specific contributions to a paper,
    they can be included as authors subject to the agreement of the paper's
    primary author(s) and the spokespersons.   
    The IB will be notified by spokespersons whenever this sort of
    exception is granted.

1.2 To be eligible for authorship, individuals must take at least
    three experimental-shifts per year in average.  
    In the event of unavoidable difficulties that prevent a member from
    fulfilling his or her shift obligation in a given year, extra shifts
    from the previous year may be carried forward.  Active collaboration
    members who are otherwise in good standing can appeal to the
    spokespersons to defer their shift obligation by a maximum of one year.
    All such appeals must be reported to the IB.  
    (this applied only before Nov-2010. See 1.4)

1.3 In addition to taking shifts, individuals are expected to actively 
    contribute to Belle on an ongoing basis.  
    Sample contributions include the construction, maintenance, and/or
    operation of the detector and upgrades; refereeing analyses  and
    helping in the preparation of papers; core software development;
    management of production analyses and Monte Carlo jobs, data analysis,
    and general detector and collaboration management.  
    (Sample contributions are updated. See 1.4.)

1.4 After the end of data taking at the Belle experiment, the shift
    requirements have been replaced by other service work described in
    http://belle.kek.jp/belle/rules/shift_to_service_task.txt

1.5 Although the names confirmed by the contact persons are treated as
    authors, each individual can withdraw his/her name from the list by
    informing the spokespersons and the IB chair.
 

2.  Author list and order of the author listing on individual papers

2.1 The order of authors is in general alphabetical.

2.2 To encourage individuals, a single person or a small group may be
    the first author(s) on the paper published in association with their
    new idea and/or their analysis of published data, for example.
    Proposals to modify the authorlist in this way should be submitted by
    individual member of the collaboration and judged by the spokespersons.
  
2.3 Once a paper has been approved by its referees and the the physics
    convenors, it should available for final review by the collaboration
    for a period of two weeks prior to publication.  During that period
    each individual must confirm his/her authorship by submitting the
    following statement: "I have read this paper and agree with its 
    conclusions. Please include me as an author."   

    In unusual cirmcumstances, where rapid publication is essential, the
    spokespersons and the physics convenors can reduce the approval time,
    for example by starting the final review by the collaboration to
    overlap with the review by the referees.  In such cases, the EB
    should be consulted at least 72 hours in advance.

 
3.  Term of eligibility as an author

3.1 New collaborators
    After becoming a member of BELLE, at least 6 months of contribution
    to the experiment is required in order to be included as an author,
    unless that contribution is essential to the paper as judged by the
    spokespersons.  

3.2 Collaborators leaving Belle
    Eligibility for authorship is lost one year after leaving Belle.


4.  Responsibility and Bookkeeping

4.1 The contact person of each institution is responsible for providing
    a list of eligible (see Sec. 1) authors from his/her institution.
    Each institution's list should be reconfirmed on April 1 of each year.
    Updates should be provided in a timely fashion throughout the year
    when members are added or leave the collaboration.

4.2 The IB chairperson or designee is responsible for the bookkeeping of
    the inclusive list of eligible authors.


5.  Others

5.1 Whenever problems occur, these issues will be discussed at the IB.
    In all cases, the spokespersons will keep the IB informed of their
    actions on questions of authorship and eligibility.

5.2 Note: Belle does not exclude publication of papers with limited
    authors. These will be treated by the spokespersons as special papers.
    Special paper status must be agreed to by the spokespersons and is
    subject to a majority vote of the collaboration.



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