Research squad criteria

1. What this page is for

Some SGSJ papers are produced by research squads: structured groups that collect, audit and write up data together. A squad has a working ratio of fifteen contributors to five auditors to one lead investigator.

Placing people in those roles requires criteria, because authorship carries responsibility. This page states the criteria exactly, in terms of the fields recorded in the Gene Academy member registry, so that a placement can be checked rather than asserted.

2. What the tiers measure, and what they do not

Two different things are easy to confuse, so they are kept apart here.

• Engagement is how much someone has used the platform: points earned, cases attempted, days active. It is real and measurable, and it tells you nothing about whether a person is who they say they are.
• Verification is whether a named human being has examined a primary document and recorded the result. It is the only thing that can support authorship.

Points are not a qualification. A high score means someone has shown up consistently. That earns a place in a squad's working tier; it does not earn an author line.

3. The four states

State	Exact rule	What it permits
Registered	GA_ID exists	Learning modules. Submission to the journal, on the same terms as any member of the public. Not assignable to a squad.
Active contributor (the 15)	GA_ID valid GP >= 500 ACCURACY_PERCENT >= 75 MTC_Cases_Attempted >= 50	Supervised data extraction and case logging within a squad. Named in the acknowledgements of any resulting paper, with the role stated. Not an author.
Audited fellow (the 5)	All of the above, plus Credential_Status = verified Checked_By is not empty	Quality audit, secondary verification, methodology review. Eligible for co-authorship where the ICMJE criteria are met.
Lead investigator (the 1)	All of the above, plus at least one completed supervised output	Study design, manuscript drafting, corresponding authorship. Named on the primary author line.

The attempted-cases floor exists so that a high percentage on a handful of cases cannot stand in for sustained work. Seventy-five per cent of four cases is not a result.

4. What credential verification means

Verification is a human act with a record. Four fields hold it:

• Credential_Status — unchecked, provisional, verified or failed.
• Credential_Doc_Type — which primary document was examined.
• Checked_By — the identifier of the person who examined it.
• Checked_On — the date it was examined.

A self-declared affiliation is not verification. A member typing the name of a hospital or university into a form is an assertion by that member. It is recorded as such and it does not move anyone out of the unchecked state.

Unchecked is the default and carries no implication. Most members are unchecked simply because nobody has had reason to check them. It is not a judgement.

A person who performs a credential check is recused from editing or reviewing manuscripts by the person they checked. That rule is in the governance policy and is not waivable.

5. Authorship

Squad placement decides eligibility. It does not decide authorship. Authorship is decided for each paper against the ICMJE criteria, and a person in the audited-fellow tier who did not meet those criteria on a given paper is not an author on it.

Every author and every named contributor has their contribution recorded using the CRediT taxonomy, which is published with the paper.

6. Moving between states

Engagement thresholds are met by using the platform. Verification is requested: a member asks for their credentials to be checked, supplies a primary document, and the result is recorded with the checker's identifier and the date. The outcome, including a failed check, belongs to the member and may be queried.

A member may ask to be removed from a squad, or to have their verification record deleted, at any time.

7. Being listed publicly

Verification does not by itself put anyone's name on this site. Public listing requires separate, explicit, recorded consent, which may be withdrawn. See section 6 of the governance policy.

8. What a verified badge does and does not mean

It means a named person at Gene Academy examined a primary document on a stated date and recorded the result.

It is not an academic degree, a professional licence, a certification, a registration with any statutory council, or an endorsement by any institution named in the member's affiliation. Gene Academy is an independent academy and is not affiliated with any statutory medical council.