Authorship order

Abstract

Considering the fact that authorship order plays such a significant role as a basis for scientific merit, this paper looks into the practices of authorship order from a research ethical perspective. We conclude that there is a wide variety of practices and no common understanding of what the different authorship positions signify. Authorship guidelines do not provide much help. We recognize that, regardless of what system for valuing authorship positions is used, it will be misleading and unfair in most applications because relative contributions vary in ways that are not captured by fixed value assignments to authorship positions. In theory, assigning percentage figures reflecting the relative contributions of the authors would solve that problem, but we argue that such a scheme is not likely to work in practice. It can also be questioned whether relative, rather than absolute, contributions should be the basis for scientific merit. Contributorship is discussed as an alternative, but is recognized to be insufficient both in communicating absolute and relative contributions, as standardly used. However, there may be a way forward with contributorship, but then, the level of detail needs to increase considerably and its application be standardized.

How diverse is your reading list? Exploring issues of representation and decolonisation in the UK

“…This meant, for example, examining whether women were evenly represented across the author positions (as sole or co-authors) (West et al 2013). The practice of authoring papers and attributing authorship, however, varies across disciplines and so comparison remains difficult (Helgesson and Eriksson 2018). Further, in multiple author publications, authorship and author order remains a 'vexed issue ' (McCann and Polacsek 2018) with no consensus on how scientific merit is attributed to individuals (Helgesson and Eriksson 2018).…”

“…The practice of authoring papers and attributing authorship, however, varies across disciplines and so comparison remains difficult (Helgesson and Eriksson 2018). Further, in multiple author publications, authorship and author order remains a 'vexed issue ' (McCann and Polacsek 2018) with no consensus on how scientific merit is attributed to individuals (Helgesson and Eriksson 2018). Therefore, without clear guidance on how to interpret authorship order, it remains difficult to draw inferences on the intersection of author contribution and demographics.…”

Authorship order and effects of changing bibliometrics practices

“…Previous papers have noted that there is no unison understanding of the significance of different authorship positions. In fact, there is a wide variety of interpretations (Brand et al, 2015;Cutas and Shaw, 2015;Helgesson and Eriksson, 2019;Rennie et al, 1997;Wager, 2007). This is far from ideal, partly because there is no guarantee even that the same interpretation is given on different occasions within a single research field -and partly because transfers between research areas, and therefore evaluation contexts, may have the consequence that one's research portfolio is thoroughly reinterpreted, while this has nothing to do with the nature of one's contributions.…”

Journal development: Why and how?

“…Starting at the beginning of the publishing process, Helgesson and Eriksson () discuss authorship in this issue. For many years, the International Committee on Medical Journal Ethics (ICMJE) guide has been considered the gold standard for describing authorship.…”

“…Starting at the beginning of the publishing process, Helgesson and Eriksson (2019) discuss authorship in this issue.…”