Before the mid 20th century most scientific writing was solely authored (Claxton, 2005; Greene, 2007) and thus it is only relatively recently, as science has grown more complex, that the ethical and procedural issues around authorship have arisen. Fields as diverse as medicine (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 2008), mathematics (e.g., American Statistical Association, 1999), the physical sciences (e.g., American Chemical Society, 2006), and the social sciences (e.g., American Psychological Association, 2002) have, in recent years, wrestled with what constitutes authorship and how to eliminate problematic practices such as honorary authorship and ghost authorship (e.g., Anonymous, 2004; Claxton, 2005; Manton & English, 2008). As authorship is the coin of the realm in academia (Louis, Holdsworth, Anderson, & Campbell, 2008), it is an ethical issue of singular importance. The goal of this paper is to review prominent and diverse guidelines concerning scientific authorship and to attempt to synthesize existing guidelines into recommendations that represent ethical practices for ensuring credit where (and only where) credit is due. (Contains 2 tables.)