The TCAP will generate a lot of data that has the potential to be analyzed into many manuscripts. We want manuscript preparation and submission to be a somewhat open process to fulfill the objectives that graduate students and postdocs get the priority they need, that minimal redundant analysis/effort occurs, and that manuscripts benefit from maximal collaboration to increase their quality.
Briefly, the idea is that when a CAP collaborator has a manuscript idea, they submit the idea to the Project Director and the idea is then emailed to the CAP participants. We suggest a format for the announcement below. The announcement allows others to respond, for example to ask to become co-authors along the authorship guidelines, and it allows the author to solicit help or feedback. It also “stakes out turf” in the positive sense that it creates a space for people thinking along similar lines to work together. The “staked out turf” is a collaboration space rather than an exclusion zone. These postings are assembled into a list of links to the outlines. Eventually, the manuscript is submitted and a pdf of the paper is posted on the CAP website.
Outline Format
- Proposed title
-
Proposed authors
-
~250 word outline of paper
- Issue addressed
- Analysis procedures
- CAP data to be used
- Target audience or journal
- Projected completion date
- Procedure
1. A manuscript plan is submitted to the Project Director and the Project Director emails the manuscript plan to the CAP participants.
2. Initially the list of proposed authors should be flexible. The TCAP has an authorship policy and, applying the policy, members can petition to be co-authors on a proposed manuscript.
3. Outlines may also be calls for help or suggestions. For example, one might have an analysis idea but need specific phenotypic data, and the email announcement would also serve as a query to find out if anyone was interested in that work.
The TCAP is an open community, and we don’t have a problem contacting another if we need help or want to exchange ideas. The advantage of a process like this one is that it might allow authors to benefit from ideas of people they had not considered approaching. Also, it can streamline reporting of one of the most important deliverables of the CAP, namely published research.
