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Writers Blocked: On the Wrongs of Research Co-authorship and Some Possible Strategies for Improvement

Science and Engineering Ethics volume 21, pages 1315–1329 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

The various problems associated with co-authorship of research articles have attracted much attention in recent years. We believe that this (hopefully) growing awareness is a very welcome development. However, we will argue that the particular and increasing importance of authorship and the harmful implications of current practices of research authorship for junior researchers have not been emphasised enough. We will use the case of our own research area (bioethics) to illustrate some of the pitfalls of current publishing practices—in particular, the impact on the evaluation of one’s work in the area of employment or funding. Even where there are explicit guidelines, they are often disregarded. This disregard, which is often exemplified through the inflation of co-authorship in some research areas, may seem benign to some of us; but it is not. Attribution of co-authorship for reasons other than merit in relation to the publication misrepresents the work towards that publication, and generates unfair competition. We make a case for increasing awareness, for transparency and for more explicit guidelines and regulation of research co-authorship within and across research areas. We examine some of the most sensitive areas of concern and their implications for researchers, particularly junior ones, and we suggest several strategies for future action.

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Notes

  1. Professor of social psychology at Tilburg University who had made up data which led to many research publications. This has involved several junior researchers as co-authors, whose work was thereby based on non-existent data. For more, see http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-author/diederik-stapel/ (last accessed September 2014).

  2. Researcher at the Radium Hospital in Oslo who invented hundreds of research participants and published a paper in Lancet based on data from those participants. His case also involved co-authors and has led to several retractions and the revocation of his Ph.D. title. For more, see http://www.ous-research.no/general/?k=general%252Fnews_articles&aid=5472 (last accessed September 2014).

  3. Also often cited as the “Atlas Collaboration”, each of these papers has close to 3,000 authors.

  4. For a revealing exchange on this issue of the first/last author, see Fadeel (2009) and Falagas et al. (2009).

  5. In a 2004 statement of the American Mathematical Society, it is stated that “[i]n most areas of mathematics, joint research is a sharing of ideas and skills that cannot be attributed to the individuals separately. The roles of researchers are seldom differentiated (in the way they are in laboratory sciences, for example). Determining which person contributed which ideas is often meaningless because the ideas grow from complex discussions among all partners. Naming a “senior” researcher may indicate the relative status of the participants, but its purpose is not to indicate the relative merit of the contributions. Joint work in mathematics almost always involves a small number of researchers contributing equally to a research project. For this reason, mathematicians traditionally list authors on joint papers in alphabetical order. An analysis of journal articles with at least one US based author shows that nearly half were jointly authored. Of these, more than 75 % listed the authors in alphabetical order. In pure mathematics, nearly all joint papers (over 90 %) list authors alphabetically. These traditions differ from other areas of scholarship, especially those that frequently involve large numbers of researchers working on a single research project. In areas of mathematics that are more closely associated to such areas, the culture and traditions may blend together. While these traditions are well-known to mathematicians, they are often misunderstood by other scholars whose traditions differ. Occasionally, this works against young mathematicians—especially those with names near the end of the alphabet”. The statement is available at http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement04.pdf (last accessed September 2014).

  6. Elaborated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Available at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html. According to this document, authorship “should be based on the following 4 criteria: substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND final approval of the version to be published; AND agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved”.

  7. We do not claim that the multidisciplinarity of bioethics involves only biomedical sciences and philosophy. We take this particular combination as an example, but many other disciplines are involved in bioethics scholarship. The fact that people working in bioethics have different backgrounds (law, sociology, psychology, etc.) make the case of bioethics even more illustrative.

  8. To give just a few examples: Philosophy and Public Affairs has an impact factor of 1.958; Ethics: no impact factor; Noûs: no impact factor; The Philosophical Review (according to a statement cited on its homepage, the most highly regarded philosophy journal in English—see the opening of the “Description” section. At https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Philosophical-Review/ (last accessed September 2014)): no impact factor.

  9. The other disciplines presented are literary studies (1 author), history (1.1), law (1.4), anthropology (1.9), psychology (2.8), higher education (1.8), computer science (2.7), evolutionary biology (3.8) and medicine (9.6). These numbers, along with the averages of pages and citations per discipline, prompted Sword to comment that “[f]or anyone who has ever sat on a multidisciplinary grant committee or promotion panel, Fig. 2.2 [detailing the above] offers a useful reminder that academics should never judge their colleagues’ productivity or citational practices based solely on their own disciplinary norms”.

  10. See. e.g. the contributions to the Leiter Reports blog: “Co-authoring published papers as a graduate student?” (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/02/co-authoring-published-papers-as-a-graduate-student.html), “Co-authorship rates by discipline?” (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/co-authorship-rates-by-discipline.html), and “Co-authorship in philosophy” (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/02/co-authorship-in-philosophy.html). See also “Why is co-authoring rare in philosophy?” (at http://www.newappsblog.com/2011/08/why-is-co-authoring-rare-in-philosophy.html), and “Co-writing philosophy” (at http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/05/co-writing-philosophy.html) (all last accessed September 2014).

  11. “[I]t is normally expected that applicants will have produced independently at least one important publication without the participation of their Ph.D. supervisor” (text bolded at source: http://erc.europa.eu/starting-grants.

  12. We than an anonymous reviewer of this journal for suggesting these points.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank their colleague Kristien Hens for extensive discussions and valuable suggestions in the writing and re-writing of this paper. Daniela Cutas would also like to thank the many course participants with whom she discussed co-authorship during research ethics courses. Without them, this paper would not have existed.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå Universitet, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden

    Daniela Cutas

  2. Institute for Biomedical Ethics, Universität Basel, 4056, Basel, Switzerland

    David Shaw

  3. Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, Göteborgs Universitet, Göteborg, Sweden

    Daniela Cutas

  4. Department of Health, Ethics and Society, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    David Shaw

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  1. Daniela Cutas
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Correspondence to Daniela Cutas.

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Cutas, D., Shaw, D. Writers Blocked: On the Wrongs of Research Co-authorship and Some Possible Strategies for Improvement. Sci Eng Ethics 21, 1315–1329 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9606-0

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Keywords

  • Ethics of co-authorship
  • Philosophy
  • Bioethics
  • Research independence
  • Publication ethics