Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Who should be the author(s) of an academic paper? This question is becoming increasingly pressing due to the increasing prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration and the corresponding diversity of authorship practices in different disciplines and sub-disciplines. This article addresses the conceptual issues underlying authorship, with an eye to ameliorating authorship practices. The first part of the article distinguishes five roles played by authorship attributions: allocating credit, constructing a speaker, enabling credibility judgements, supporting accountability, and creating an intellectual marketplace. The second part of the article argues that distinguishing these functions helps us see that at least some of the confusions around authorship are due to tensions between these functions. The final part of the article suggests a way to resolve these conceptual confusions. This proposal suggests replacing authorship with a bundle of roles tailored to the functions of authorship—contributor, spokesperson, writer, and guarantor—which can be distributed in a number of different ways.
DOI: 10.1086/715539
Authors: Line Edslev Andersen, Rosemary Bailey, Udit Bhatia, Joanna Burch-Brown, Liam Kofi Bright, Jim Brooke, Peter Cameron, Catrin Campbell-Moore, Joe Cornelli, Stephen Crowley, Haixin Dang, Rachel Fraser, Isobel Falconer, Adam Ferner, Monica Gamez, Mikkel Gerken, Katherine Hawley, Matthias Heyman, Klemens Kappel, Ethan Landes, Hélène Landemore, Benedikt Loewe, Dan Lunt, Ursula Martin, Chris Meyns, Louise Millard, Dann Mitchell, Samir Okasha, Andrew Peet, Richard Pettigrew, Jeroen de Ridder, Robert Ross, Pierre Saint-Germier, Mona Simion, Anya Skatova, Fenner Tanswell, Daniel Whiting, Alan Wilson, K. Brad Wray, Dilara Yeşilova, Joshua Habgood-Coote
Institution: University of Leeds
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: High Energy Physics
OpenAlex ID: W2908780200