Affiliation requirements and authorship

For scientific institutions and individual researchers alike, it is important to make their scientific achievements clearly attributable, visible and analysable. To this end, clear and standardised affiliation is essential. (For researchers, this can be achieved in particular via the ORCiD, which can be included in the publication by most publishers).

Scientific publications from the Faculty of Medicine should therefore always be provided with an affiliation that allows them to be clearly assigned to the Faculty. Conversely, publications that are not based on scientific work in research and teaching at the RWTH may not be provided with an affiliation to the university or faculty.

The affiliation should be in accordance with the RWTH publication guidelines in the following form: First name, last name, name of professorship or institution, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. For JARA publications, an affiliation in accordance with the JARA Publication Guidelines (in the appendix of the RWTH Publication Guidelines) must also be stated.

The affiliation obligation applies to all professors, associate professors, honorary professors, private lecturers, research assistants, doctoral candidates, scholarship holders, lecturers, employees in technology and administration as well as students, insofar as they act as co-authors in research projects.

So-called ‘honorary authorships’, i.e. the naming of persons who have no or only a marginal share in the creation of the publication, constitute scientific misconduct and must be refrained from. (Shared) first and last authorships should also only be awarded on the basis of actual contributions to the publication in accordance with the usual practices of the discipline.

If a publication is based on a grant, this should usually also be named in accordance with the requirements of the funding body. This applies in particular to the faculty's intramural funding programmes. You will find the corresponding specifications for such acknowledgments in the respective statutes.