BIOET 533
Ethical Dimensions of Renewable Energy and Sustainability Systems

3.1 Credit in Authorship

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3.1 Credit in Authorship

What is an Author?

Authorship of a publication implies both taking credit as well as responsibility for what is published. This can sometimes be a challenge in interdisciplinary or large team contexts, where trust in others' work is an established necessity. Even though most fields and even different labs will have slightly, if not completely, different standards for deciding on the order of authorship, what constitutes a viable contribution is fairly similar across fields.

Listing Authors

"The list of authors establishes 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 the 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 errors or explain why he or she had no professional responsibility for the material in question."

(pg. 37) National Research Council. On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research: Third Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2009.

Can Anyone Really Claim Authorship?

John Hardwig (1985) articulated one philosophical dilemma posed by such large teams of researchers. Each member or subgroup participating in such a project is required because each has a crucial bit of expertise not possessed by any other member or subgroup. This may be knowledge of a part of the instrumentation, the ability to perform a certain kind of calculation, the ability to make a certain kind of measurement or observation. The other members are not in a position to evaluate the results of other members' work, and hence, all must take one anothers' results on trust. The consequence is an experimental result, (for example, the measurement of a property such as the decay rate or spin of a given particle) the evidence for which is not fully understood by any single participant in the experiment."

Significant Principles

Agree on the order of authorship beforehand, if at all possible. Sometimes authors get pulled into a publication later in the process, but even then some agreement on the order of authorship ought to be arrived at before sending off a manuscript for review.

Contribution. Authorship is generally limited to individuals who make significant contributions to the work that is reported. This includes anyone who:

  • Was intimately involved in the conception and design of the research,
  • Assumed responsibility for data collection and interpretation,
  • Participated in drafting the publication, and
  • Approved the final version of the publication."

Steneck, Nicholas H. 2007. ORI Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research. [Rockville, Md.]: Dept. of Health and Human Services.