Authorship

Transcript

Research findings are disseminated through articles. However, research is increasingly becoming a collaborative enterprise (Wuchty, Jones, & Uzzi, 2007).

With various researchers involved in a research collaboration the question arises: who is to be a co-author and who isn’t?

The ALLEA Code of Conduct for Research Integrity states “that authorship is based on a significant contribution to the design of the research, relevant data collection, or analysis or interpretation of the results” (ALLEA, 2017, p. 7).

But what is significant and what isn’t?

Is having only collected the data enough for authorship?

Is providing feedback on the draft version enough for authorship?

Is getting funding enough?

And apart from being an author or not; what is the order of the authors on the article?

Different disciplines have different standards; some putting the first author in front, others ordering the authors alphabetically (Marusic, Bosnjak, & Jeroncic, 2011; Pearson, 2006; Wuchty et al., 2007).

In this section we will review the various aspects of authorship.