对于不够署名条件, 但对研究成果确有贡献者, 可以“致谢”的形式列出. “致谢”除了表达道义上的感激外, 也是尊重他人贡献的表示.

        “致谢”中通常包括的主要内容:

        (1) 感谢任何个人或机构在技术上的帮助, 其中包括提供仪器、设备或相关实验材料, 协助实验工作, 提供有益的启发、建议、指导、审阅, 承担某些辅助性工作, 等等.

        (2) 感谢外部的基金帮助, 如资助、协议或奖学金等, 通常需要附注基金资助的项目号、合同书编号等(但不宜列出具体的项目名称和所得到经费的数额).

        表达“致谢”的注意事项:

        (1) 致谢的内容应尽量具体、恰如其分

        致谢的对象应是对论文工作有直接和实质性帮助、贡献的人或机构, 因此, 致谢中应尽量指出相应对象的具体帮助与贡献. 例如: 应该使用诸如“We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Steven Conley in preparing the photomicrographs. We also thank David Hill and Marilee Burrell for preparing the mouse antisera to WAF1.”的表达, 避免诸如“To acknowledge all of the people who have contributed to this paper…”的表述.

        并且, 致谢某人可能暗含着某人赞同论文的观点或结论, 如果被感谢的人并不同意论文的全部观点或结论, 那么论文公开发表后被感谢的人和作者都会很尴尬. 因此, 如果是感谢一个思想、建议或解释, 就要尽量指明这些内容, 以免将被感谢的对象敏感而尴尬地置于为整篇论文承担文责的境地.

        为表示应有的礼貌和尊重, 投稿前应请所有被感谢的对象阅读论文的定稿(尤其要包括“致谢”部分), 以获得允许或默认.

        (2) 用词要恰当

        要注意选用适当的词句来表达感谢之情, 避免因疏忽而冒犯本应接受感谢的个人或机构. 致谢的开始就用“We thank”, 不要使用“We wish to thank”, “We would like to thank”, 或“The authors wish to thank”等. 尤其是“wish”一词最好从致谢中消失. 当表达愿望时, “wish”是很好的词, 但如果说“I wish to thank Dr. R. Richman” 则是在浪费单词, 并且也可能蕴含着“I wish that I could thank Dr. R. Richman for his help but it was not all that great.”(我希望感谢R. Richman博士的帮助, 但实际上这种帮助并不那么大). 因此, 用“I thank Dr. R. Richman”显得更简明和真诚.

        (3) 致谢的形式要遵从拟投稿期刊的习惯和相关规定

        参阅拟投稿期刊的“作者须知”和该刊已发表论文的致谢部分, 注意其致谢的表达形式和相关要求. 通常情况下, 无须将审稿人和期刊编辑列为致谢对象； 对于感谢有关基金资助的信息, 国内大部分科技期刊习惯将其作为论文首页的脚注, 国外期刊则多将其作为“致谢”的一部分. 对于基金项目类别名称的英文表达, 应尽量通过查询相关资助机构的官方网站或文本获取. 此外, 应尽量避免在同一篇论文的致谢中列出3个以上的基金资助来源, 以免给他人造成“拿钱不少, 出活不多”的感觉.

        英文“致谢”实例

        例1: Acknowledgments  W. M. and Z. Z. are supported by grant LM05110 from the National Library of Medicine. We thank Dr. Warren Gish for helpful conversations, Dr. Eugene Koonin for assistance with the samples, and Dr. Gregory Schuler for producing several of the figures.

        例2: Acknowledgements  The authors thank the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for supporting this work as part of C. D. PhD work. We also thank Harry Becker, Pierre Schiano and Richard Carlson for their constructive comments during the review process. We are grateful to John Watson for XRF analyses and to Nick Rogers and Fatima Mokadem for ICP-MS analyses. Thanks also go to Jason Harvey and Dan Croucher for their help in the field.

        例3: Acknowledgments  We thank Drs. D. Morgan and C. Sherr for baculoviruses, L. Connell-Crowley for purified proteins, Dr. J. Shero for Y190, and Dr. H. Piwnica-Worms for baculoviruses and antibodies to cyclin B. We also thank Drs. E. Harlow, S. van den Heuvel, M. Mendenhall, A. Noda, and M. Meyerson for gifts of plasmids and for sharing unpublished data. We thank Dr. R. Sager for providing cell lines and Drs. A. Pardee and J. Smith, in whose lab some of these experiments were performed. We thank B. Kuhlman, R. Richman, E. Swindell, and N. O'Leary for excellent technical assistance. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants AG-11085 (to S. J, E. and J. W. H.) and RO1-AG11066, (to J. Smith) by the Welch Foundation (to J. W. H.), and by an American Cancer Society junior faculty award (to J. W. H.).

摘编自《英语科技论文撰写与投稿》(任胜利编著, 科学出版社, 2007年第5次印刷)