Authorship Integrity and Attacks

A uthorship of research papers is a thorny and sometimes quarrelsome issue. Many long-term researchers have, at some point, encountered different cultural and ethical outlooks on authorship. Some might even have been in situations where authorship disputes occurred, perhaps due to such differences. To nonacademics and nonresearchers, the entire notion of authorship might (perhaps rightly) seem to be an odd and abstruse topic. At the same time, in the highly competitive world of academic publishing, careers can be made (or at least bootstrapped) by authorship of even a single paper in a highly ranked venue. Indeed, industry often makes hiring decisions and government agencies make funding decisions based, in part, on an applicant’s perceived quality of publication venues. This can have substantial impact on one’s career, especially considering constantly growing competition for academic and (a dwindling number of industrial research) jobs. Criteria for being a coauthor of a research paper vary widely across disciplines, cultures, and institutions. In some settings, coauthorship is superficial—earned for as little as proofreading a draft, participating in discussions, supervising one of the actual authors, or providing funding. On the other extreme, coauthorship can be substantial, earned by hard work that spans the entire lifecycle of a research paper: from early conceptual discussions all the way to writing the final version. A related issue is the number of authors. Some research communities or fields tend to have relatively few coauthors, for instance, humanities, mathematics, or computer science theory, whereas others often have many, for instance, biology, computer science systems, or experimental physics. Name ordering is another entertaining aspect of coauthorship. It can mean absolutely nothing, signify seniority, reflect magnitude of contribution or order of arrival, be grouped by affiliation, or be alphabetical. This isn’t an exhaustive list; many other ordering choices are possible. Aforementioned issues aren’t new. They’ve been studied conceptually and experimentally and many autoscientific publications have been produced. (I use the term autoscientific to denote the fact that this area of research yields research papers that analyze metadata of other research papers.) However, the purpose of this editorial isn’t to dwell on the above. Suffice it to say that most researchers willingly or grudgingly adopt the “live and let live” attitude by accepting different views on authorship. The real motivation for this editorial is to discuss authorship integrity and attacks on it. Some attacks are purely historical and are either already prevented or are easily preventable, whereas others might not have been recognized as realistic. However, before discussing specific attacks, it makes sense to ask what motivates them. I consider two motivating factors: