Work

Should authorship on scientific publications be treated as a right?

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: Sometimes researchers explicitly or implicitly conceive of authorship in terms of moral or ethical rights to authorship when they are dealing with authorship issues. Because treating authorship as a right can encourage unethical behaviours, such as honorary and ghost authorship, buying and selling authorship, and unfair treatment of researchers, we recommend that researchers not conceive of authorship in this way but view it as a description about contributions to research. However, we acknowledge that the arguments we have given for this position are largely speculative and that more empirical research is needed to better ascertain the benefits and risks of treating authorship on scientific publications as a right.

Source: Journal of Medical Ethics

DOI: 10.1136/jme-2022-108874

Authors: David B Resnik, Elise Smith

Institutions: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Language: English

Topic: Academic integrity and plagiarism

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Awards: G152203278, Ethical, social, and legal issues in environmental health research