Ownership and Acknowledgement
Ownership and Acknowledgement
As a graduate student researcher and scholar, your reputation, future funding, and career opportunities are influenced by the work to which you have contributed and for which you have been given credit.
As early as possible in your program, issues related to intellectual property, ownership, and authorship should be discussed and agreed upon by all participants. Whether an individual or collaborative effort, whether you are writing a course paper, thesis or journal article, or giving a presentation, it is important that all those who contributed to your work are properly credited. In written works, credit is allocated in the list of authors, the acknowledgements, and the list of references.
In collaborative work, it is important that all participants clearly understand the rights that individuals have both to the intellectual property contributed to the research and to the knowledge created as a result of the research. In instances where a private sector partner funds research, a contract is normally drawn up and describes, among other things, ownership of the intellectual property resulting from the research.
| Authorship | Bibliographic Accuracy | Intellectual Property |
| Shared authorship on published papers is a standard practice. Because scholarly work often involves collaboration, it is essential that credit is appropriately given, be it through authorship or acknowledgement. |
When preparing a course paper, work term report, thesis, or scholarly article, acknowledge all sources of information, directly quoted or paraphrased, in a complete and accurate bibliography. |
When your research is collaborative, or funded by an industrial client, corporation, or other such agency, think carefully about intellectual property issues before you begin work on your project. |