I Publication Guidelines for Members of the TCGA Network

Possible Authorship categories

• Any interim Pilot Project paper and the final major paper describing the overall findings of the Pilot Project, will be authored by the TCGA Pilot Project Consortium, similar to the authorship of the description paper and the Human Genome Sequence, HapMap and ENCODE papers.


• Papers on particular aspects of the Pilot Project that are written by a subset of Project participants, that use data from the Project, and which were primarily developed as part of the Project, will have the appropriate specialists leading the authorship list, followed by “and the TCGA Consortium”. The Consortium member listing will be on a website provided in the paper and will be included in supplementary information, if available. Examples would include the follow-up work necessary to better characterize a gene for which the TCGA Consortium has discovered interesting mutations. These papers should include an Acknowledgements Section that specifically thanks the set of contributing investigators who provided the samples and the sample donors themselves. If necessary, the TCGA Publications Committee can mediate any disputes that might arise concerning authorship issues and/or publication priorities.


• Papers that are written by a subset of Project participants on methods or processes developed within the Project will include as authors only those who participated directly in the relevant area. Examples would include any individual papers that describe a new method or process or technology application in the context of the Project. If a manuscript includes a description and/or analysis of genome sequence or structural variation data that previously has not been published by the TCGA Consortium, then that manuscript should be governed as in (b). If data from a previously submitted or published TCGA paper is included in the methods manuscript, the authors should acknowledge the TCGA Project and reference the description paper, and are encouraged to acknowledge the appropriate donors, research groups, and tissue sample providers.


• Opinion pieces, editorials, and other articles by Project participants about the general implications of the Project or the issues it raises are not required to include uninvolved participants or the TCGA Project as authors or in the acknowledgements. Note that all of these papers should include a reference to the Project website.

The Publications Committee should be made aware of all intended papers in the early planning stages, for information and coordination. The Publications Committee will make every effort to offer appropriate advice to maintain consistency in publishing practice. The Publications Committee has no wish to control publication, but it is willing to help maintain consistency and promote the interests of all participants of the Consortium.

For questions, please contact the co-chairs of the Publications Committee: Richard Wilson (rwilson@wustl.edu) and Charles Perou (cperou@med.unc.edu).