# Presentation: 087968

## Guidelines for authorship on publications

- ALS HP meeting 3rd November 2004

- S.M. Clark

## http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/obas/

**COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND PUBLIC POLICY**
**NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES****NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING****INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE**
**NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS****Washington, D.C. 1995**

## Authorship Practices 

- The allocation of credit can also become an issue in the listing of authors' names. Science has become a much more collaborative enterprise than it was in the past. The average number of authors for articles in the *New England Journal of Medicine*, for example, has risen from slightly more than one in 1925 to more than six today. In some areas, such as high-energy physics or genome sequencing, the number of authors can rise into the hundreds. This increased collaboration has produced many new oppor tunities for researchers to work with colleagues at different stages in their careers, in different disciplines, or even in widely separated locations. It has also increased the possibility for differences to arise over questions of authorship.
- In many fields, the earlier a name appears in the list of authors, the greater the implied contribution, but conventions differ greatly among disciplines and among research groups. Sometimes the scientist with the greatest name recognition is listed first , whereas in other fields the research leader's name is always last. In some disciplines supervisors' names rarely appear on papers, while in others the professor's name appears on almost every paper that comes out of the lab. Some research groups and jou rnals avoid these decisions by simply listing authors alphabetically.
- Frank and open discussion of the division of credit within research groups-as early in the research process as possible and preferably at the very beginning, especially for research leading to a published paper-can prevent later difficulties. The best pra ctice is for authorship criteria to be explicit among all collaborators. In addition, collaborators should be familiar with the conventions in a particular field to understand their rights and obligations. Group meetings provide an occasion to discuss eth ical and policy issues in research.
- The allocation of credit can be particularly sensitive when it involves researchers at different stages of their careers-for example, postdocs and graduate students, or senior faculty and student researchers. In such situations, differences in roles and s tatus compound the difficulties of according credit.
- Several considerations must be weighed in determining the proper division of credit between a student or research assistant and a senior scientist, and a range of practices are acceptable. If a senior researcher has defined and put a project into motion a nd a junior researcher is invited to join in, major credit may go to the senior researcher, even if at the moment of discovery the senior researcher is not present. By the same token, when a student or research assistant is making an intellectual contribution to a research project, that contribution deserves to be recognized. Senior scientists are well aware of the importance of credit in science and are expected to give junior researchers credit where warranted. In such cases, junior researchers may be l isted as coauthors or even senior authors, depending on the work, traditions within the field, and arrangements within the team.
- Occasionally a name is included in a list of authors even though that person had little or nothing to do with the content of a paper. Such "honorary authors" dilute the credit due the people who actually did the work, inflate the credentials of those so " honored," and make the proper attribution of credit more difficult. Several scientific journals now state that a person should be listed as the author of a paper only if that person made a direct and substantial contribution to the paper. Some journals re quire all named authors to sign the letter that accompanies submission of the original article and all subsequent revisions to ensure that no author is named without consent and that all authors agree with the final version.
- As with citations, author listings establish accountability as well as credit. When a paper is found to contain errors, whether caused by mistakes or deceit, authors might wish to disavow responsibility, saying that they were not involved in the part of t he paper containing the errors or that they had very little to do with the paper in general. However, an author who is willing to take credit for a paper must also bear responsibility for its contents. Thus, unless a footnote or the text of the paper expl icitly assigns responsibility for different parts of the paper to different authors, the authors whose names appear on a paper must share responsibility for all of it.

## WHO SHOULD GET CREDIT FOR THE DISCOVERY OF PULSARS?

**A much-discussed example of the difficulties associated with allocating credit between junior and senior researchers was the 1967 discovery by Jocelyn Bell, then a 24-year-old graduate student, of pulsars. Over the previous two years, Bell and several other students, under the supervision of Bell's thesis advisor, Anthony Hewish, had built a 4.5-acre radiotelescope to investigate scintillating radio sources in th e sky. After the telescope began functioning, Bell was in charge of operating it and analyzing its data under Hewish's direction. One day Bell noticed "a bit of scruff" on the data chart. She remembered seeing the same signal earlier and, by measuring the period of its recurrence, determined that it had to be coming from an extraterrestrial source. Together Bell and Hewish analyzed the signal and found several similar examples elsewhere in the sky. After discarding the idea that the signals were coming fr om an extraterrestrial intelligence, Hewish, Bell, and three other people involved in the project published a paper announcing the discovery, which was given the name "pulsar" by a British science reporter.Many argued that Bell should have shared the Nobel Prize awarded to Hewish for the discovery, saying that her recognition of the signal was the crucial act of discovery. Others, including Bell herself, said that she received adequate recognition in other ways and should not have been so lavishly rewarded for doing what a graduate student is expected to do in a project conceived and set up by others.**

## Authorship for Contributors to Clinical Trials Description:Dr. Colleen May is a participating neurologist in a clinical trial to assess the efficacy and toxicity of a new anticonvulsant medication. For the duration of the two-year study, each neurologist is to meet with each of his or her patients for an average of 30 minutes each month. In Dr. May's case, this amounts to an average of 20 hrs/month. During each visit, the physicians administer a variety of specialized tests, requiring judgments dependent on their experience and training in neurology. At the completion of the study, the results are to be unblinded and analyzed by the project leaders. It is anticipated that at least 2 publications will be prepared for the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. May has just learned that she will be listed in the acknowledgements, but not as an author of the manuscript. Dr. May argues that she has provided nearly 500 hours of her expert time, far more than needed to complete a publishable study in her experimental laboratory.

- Questions:
- Does Dr. May have a case for authorship?
- Are a clinician's substantial, and necessary contributions to a large clinical trial sufficient to warrant authorship?
- To what extent can previously published data, or a method of data display, be re-used?
- From Macrina FL (2000): *Scientific Integrity,* 2nd edition, published by ASM Press. Used with permission. © ASM PressThis case was contributed by Dr. Francis L. Macrina (macrina@vcu.edu) of Virginia Commonwealth University. © 2000For further information about credit and copyright, please see the terms of use at the bottom of this window.

## http://ethics.ucsd.edu/courses/ethics/topics/overview.htm

- http://www.physics.emich.edu/mthomsen/resn1.htm

- http://rcrec.org/

- More interesting links

**Open Society and Its Enemies (Volume 1) by Karl Popper (1971)**

- http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/Education/498ST/Fall04/Lectures/Ethics.pdf