Is it acceptable to be listed as an author based only on technical assitance? I am a PhD student in bioinformatics/computational biology. A year or two ago I helped a fellow student using a software package she needed for creating a certain type of figures for her project. This week I got an email from that student asking if I wish to be listed as an author in a paper she is submitting in which she used these figures.

Other than helping to get her started with this software package and maybe helping her a bit with improving her code otherwise, I made no contribution to that project and in fact had only a very vague idea what she was working on until I saw the manuscript this week. I estimate that at most I dedicated 5-10 hours  to the whole thing.

So my dilemma is if such a minor contribution justifies me being listed as an author.

On the one hand, I have invested very little in this student in terms of time and effort, and was not involved at all in her research process per se.

On the other hand, I did invest a considerable amount of time learning to work with the said software for my own project (totally unrelated to hers) so I think there was some kind of knowledge/skill transfer involved that may have saved her some time.

If it matters, the paper has four authors other then me: the student that I helped, her two supervisors, and another PhD student who to my understanding was much more involved than me in this project.

I'm looking forward to hearing your perspective, O wise ones.
The criteria for authorship may somehow vary by discipline. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) stipulates four criteria that must be met if someone is to deserve authorship.


  
  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
  AND
  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the
  work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
  


The ICMJE guideline further states that contributors fulfilling only less than four of the criteria should not be listed as authors but should be acknowledged.

A COPE discussion document about authorship also raises authorship criteria that are considered in different disciplines. 

You may decide whether you qualify to be listed as an author based on the different guidelines available, probably based on the one closest to your discipline.