I've a couple of questions. Hopefully, you all can help me out.

Does the use of students from an instructor warrant this instructor to be an author?

Does the use of data from a company warrant the employee who enables you to collect data from the company an author?

What criteria should one use so as to be considered as an author of a paper?

Authors should have made a non-trivial contribution to the content of the paper.

Just being someone’s instructor is not a reason for inclusion. Providing data needs acknowledgement, but you are not an author unless you did something with it. Giving trivial advice, e.g. pointing out spelling mistakes, does not qualify for inclusion.

You are an author if you wrote all or part of the paper, unless you are just being dictated it. Also, if you contributed substantial ideas, e.g. suggested the experimental methodology and its application. Alternatively, you may have played a significant part in the research that the paper is about, e.g. did the experiments.

All authors should see the final version of the paper, before it is submitted, so that they agree with being included.

The practice of 'honorary authorship' is academic misconduct, where people are falsely included as authors. Sometimes supervisors pressurise their students to include their name, to enhance their own record. Also, people add on well-respected researchers to make it more likely a paper will get published. Universities can take disciplinary action on this.

Hope this helps,

Paul

Some of my data has been collected via a website at another institute. Anything I publish using that data will need to be co-authored, or at least, I will run the paper by them and see if they want ao-authorship or acknowledgement (this is the agreement we have).