At Nested Knowledge (NK), we value research transparency. A major part of research transparency is also clearly indicating the responsible parties on a manuscript and their contributions to it. To that end, we have some guidelines we follow to make sure all parties are properly credited for their work on projects. Please make sure to read carefully!

This policy will be applied in any case where a Nested Knowledge team member is asked to participate in the study design, research or drafting process, and publication of outputs to the level that meets ICMJE standards for authorship.

1. Authorship decisions will be agreed upon by both the primary Nested Knowledge contact and the Lead Collaborator responsible for completing the primary drafting. Any collaborator can make non-binding suggestions of authorship or acknowledgement.
2. In the case of dispute or questions, final authorship decisions will be made by the Principal Investigator and the Director of Research at Nested Knowledge.
3. The author list should contain all collaborators and NK personnel who meet ICMJE standards of contribution on a given manuscript.
4. To be included in the author list, any collaborator or NK personnel must have filed up-to-date Disclosures/Conflict of Interest information, institutional information, and funding with NK.

1. In general, the first author should be the collaborator or NK team member who completes the most work and/or drives the research forward. To be first author, the author must make substantial contributions to:
   1. the review protocol, as it exists within the nest, OR the acquisition or analysis of the data, AND
   2. drafting the manuscript or substantially revising nest materials.
2. Order of middle authors: in general, all academic collaborators and NK personnel should be listed in order of level of contribution.
3. In general, the senior author should be the collaborator or NK team member who provides primary oversight of the drafting and editing process.

• NK personnel must include a Conflict of Interest statement noting their work for Nested Knowledge in any publication that promotes the use of the Nested Knowledge software.
• Collaborators are responsible for supplying complete and correct Conflict of Interest statements for any publication coauthored with NK personnel.

1. For any collaborator, NK personnel, or other individual who contributed to the software, statistics, data gathering, drafting, or support services to a level that substantially impacted the content of the manuscript, their name should be included in the acknowledgements with a brief description of their contribution.
2. As appropriate, the institution of any acknowledged person should be listed in the Acknowledgements section, but does not need to be noted as a conflict of interest.
3. The Nested Knowledge developers should be recognized in a statement such as the following, “The authors acknowledge Karl Holub, Stephen Mead, Jeffrey Johnson, and Darian Lehmann-Plantenberg for their design and support of the Nested Knowledge meta-analytical software.”