Phase 1 - Co-authorship policy

We recognise that global land surface model parameter calibration systems often require a considerable number of people – often early career researchers – for their development and indeed for carrying out the simulations/calibrations required by this voluntary CalLMIP initiative. Therefore, our primary goal is to ensure all those who contributed significantly to enabling CalLMIP to happen will be rewarded by co-authorship on CalLMIP papers. Any individual who contributes to performing parameter calibration experiments, and/or who contributes in an intellectual capacity to the design of the experiments and analyses, and/or who advises individuals carrying out parameter calibration experiments, and/or who documents the experiment information will be included as a co-author on papers resulting from the CalLMIP 1st Phase experiments.

Co-authors will also be expected to participate in discussions on analyses for the paper, and to provide feedback on the structure and framing of the paper as well as on draft(s) of the paper.

For each of the CalLMIP papers we are working on a more detailed ‘CRediT’ contributor matrix (‘Contributor, Roles, Taxonomy as columns and people as rows) with co-authorship requiring a certain number of those items in the coming weeks (November 24th 2025), which we will share with participating groups as they sign up. However, we note that we want to offer participating model groups as much autonomy and flexibility as possible when deciding who should be a co-author on the paper, while encouraging transparent, merit-based decisions that recognize all career stages.