Co-authoring - an overview

When talking about co-authoring and acknowledgments in a scientific paper it should be noted that there is no firm legislation in the EU. There are some case-law and legal practices from different jurisdictions, however no single text exists to set clear rules on the issue. 

In a codified form some ethical considerations based on innovativeness and contribution from authors and volunteers exists.

Concerning co-authorship fairly strict standard is established in the field of medicine that would require the author to be involved in the preparation of all the elements of the scientific publication, including in reviewing the paper before its submission. Those, however, are considering a possible dispute between authors. In most cases co-authorship is decided by the scientific team on merits, based individually on the paper and its creation process. 

Concerning acknowledgements in scientific papers - including of volunteers - there is no standard, but rather some ethical considerations.  As a citizen scientist you may request your name to be mentioned, but it would be up to the authors to determine should that be the case. In fairness, usually volunteers are highly appreciated by scientific teams and are always mentioned in one form or another in the scientific paper. 

Lastly, this section will look at the legal issue of proceeds and their distribution that may arise from a research. The main takeaway here is that you are unlikely to be entitled to proceeds from voluntary work. However, legally speaking, you may be entitled to such proceeds.   

There are two options for an intellectual property developed in a scientific project (with your participation) to be financially advantageous for its owners. The first general category is copy right and similar rights. Every time someone copies the intellectual property he/she  would pay sum of money. Realistically, talking about scientific work it is extremely unlikely that anyone would pay notable amount for the right to copy that work, as the commercial interest in science for the sake of science is very dim. Still, as a volunteer co-author, you would be entitled to some of the proceeds from copy-right. 

The second group of rights are patent and similar rights. Those are the ability for an organization to exclusively use certain technology. The patent holder is having the ability to request payment from anyone who  is using the patented technology. However, your contribution as a volunteer co-author of the research, will not entitle you to any of the proceeds from that patent. Please also check if the volunteer agreement you might enter in is not precluding you from claiming any proceeds.   

_{Photo attribution: Samson Katt from Pexels}