Academic authorship

Academic authorship of journal articles, books, and other original works is a means by which academics communicate the results of their scholarly work, establish priority for their discoveries, and build their reputation among their peers. Through authorship, researchers, assistants, interns, students, and other involved parties (e.g., citizen scientists, academic consortia) receive credit for their contributions and can be held responsible and accountable for the quality and integrity of the work.[1]

Authorship is a primary basis that employers use to evaluate academic personnel for employment, promotion, and tenure. In academic publishing, authorship of a work is typically claimed by those making intellectual contributions to the research described in the work. However, many scholarly journals also require that potential authors contribute to the writing of the article about the work, not just the work itself.[2] Such requirements, as well as other norms around authorship in disciplines, can be controversial. In these contexts, authorship can encompass activities other than writing the article; a researcher who comes up with an experimental design and analyzes the data may be considered an author, even if she or he had little role in composing the text describing the results. According to some standards, even writing the entire article would not constitute authorship unless the writer was also involved in at least one other phase of the project.[3]

  1. ^ Shamoo, Adil E.; Resnik, David B. (2022). Responsible conduct of research (Fourth ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-754712-0.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Holcombe2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Dickson, J. G.; Conner, R. N.; Adair, K. T. (1978). "Guidelines for Authorship of Scientific Articles". Wildl. Soc. Bull. 6 (4): 260–261. JSTOR 3781489.