Strategic scholarly publishing

Authorship best practice 

Many authors submit their manuscript only to have it very quickly rejected in what is known as "On-the-desk-rejection". To maximise the chance of acceptance, you should keep in mind the following authorship guidelines:

• ALWAYS submit a cover letter with your paper
• Follow publisher’s author instructions to the letter
• Respond promptly and effectively to requests to “review and resubmit".

See the Publishing process page for more advice on authorship considerations.

Researcher identity

It is essential to differentiate yourself from other researchers with similar names or fields of study. Researcher identifiers, such as an ORCID iD, allow you to reliably and unambiguously connect your names(s) with your professional activities throughout your career.

Creating an online scholarly identity can be helpful in a number of ways, as it:

• provides a means to distinguish between you and other authors with identical or similar names
• links together all of your works, even if you have had several affiliations or used different names over the course of your career
• makes it easy for others (grant funders, other researchers etc.) to find your research output, for example you can use your ORCID iD to populate Australian Research Council grant applications
• ensures that your work is clearly attributed to you
• ensures more accurate citation and impact metrics
• reduces duplication of administrative work in research workflows.

Watch What is ORCID? (Video, 4m16s)

Publishers are increasingly requesting ORCID IDs from authors at article submission. This helps the publisher streamline the submission process via Single-Sign-On and/or auto-populating the submission form with data from the author’s ORCID record - such as preferred publication name or affiliation - reducing the occurrence of frustrating errors. This also ensures that your paper is correctly attributed to you across all stages of the publishing process - including being embedded into article metadata for online indexing systems together with the DOI of the article, and linking the two even further.

Some funding bodies are now also mandating that ALL authors on any paper which has arisen from research undertaken as part of the grant allocation must submit their ORCID iD to the journal, along with the Funding agency and grant ID. See the ORCID iD and research identifiers page for more information.

Affiliation

List your affiliation details as per the Author affiliations with UQ section of the UQ Authorship Procedure to link your research to the University.

Follow the same affiliation pattern on social media platforms. 

Include an Acknowledgement of Country

Include an Acknowledgement of Country in your manuscript to show respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 

Select a location that suits your publication type and the publisher’s style. For example:

• articles - in the Acknowledgements section or as the first footnote on the front page
• books - include anywhere in the front matter of the book.

Personalise the statement

Personalise your Acknowledgement to the campus or location where your research took place.  

• This may involve acknowledging more than one Country, Nation or language group. 
• In cases where there are disputes around custodial ownership, the Traditional Owners of the land are acknowledged without naming any specific peoples. 

To write your statement:

1. Use one of the examples (below, on this page) as a starting point
2. Add the specific Country and peoples where possible. For assistance, use:
   1. First Languages Australia map  
   2. AustLang database for locating language groups  
   3. Whose Country am I on? for additional ways to identify traditional owners. 

Acknowledgement examples

For a paper:

This paper was written on (* Country). I acknowledge the (* people) as Traditional Owners and their custodianship of the lands. I pay my respects to their Ancestors and their descendants, who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country - recognising their valuable contributions to Australian and global society. 

For research:

This research was conducted on (* Country) of/with (* people/s). I acknowledge the
(* people) as Traditional Owners and their custodianship of the lands. I pay my respects to their Ancestors and their descendants, who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country - recognising their valuable contributions to Australian and global society. 

Further information 

Ask your supervisor, relevant group in your Faculty or Institute or local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community organisation for further guidance. 

More resources

Refer to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander referencing guide to cite and acknowledge: 

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors 
• Oral histories 
• Traditional knowledge 
• Art  
• Datasets.