Ethical guidelines for publication of fisheries research

In 2000, the Governing Board of the American Fisheries Society (AFS) approved the first Guidelines for Authorship (GFA) in AFS publications, developed by the AFS Publications Overview Committee (POC) chaired by Mary Fabrizio. This version of the GFA document provided guidance for fisheries science publications for nearly two decades. The 2015 AFS President Donna Parish charged the POC to revise the document to improve the quality of AFS publications. With guidance from Mary Fabrizio and the AFS staff, the POC and chair Emmanuel Frimpong revised, updated, and clarified the GFA document. This revised fisheries research publication document provides guidance for all persons involved in the publication process including authors, reviewers, and editors. This version of the GFA document is not a guide for style or content in AFS publications, but rather provides substantial changes including clarification on what constitutes authorship versus acknowledgment and determining authorship order, including deceased authors. This version was adopted by the AFS Governing Board and is presented verbatim as it appears in the AFS Procedures Manual.