Abstract
Abstract. Authorship conflicts are a common occurrence in academic publishing, and they can have serious implications for the careers and well-being of the involved researchers as well as the collective success of research organizations. In addition to not inviting relevant contributors to co-author a paper, the order of authors as well as honorary, gift, and ghost authors are all widely recognized problems related to authorship. Unfair authorship practices disproportionately affect those lower in the power hierarchies – early career researchers, women, researchers from the Global South, and other minoritized groups. Here we propose an approach to preparing author lists based on clear, transparent, and timely communication. This approach aims to minimize the potential for late-stage authorship conflicts during manuscript preparation by facilitating timely and transparent decisions on potential co-authors and their responsibilities. Furthermore, our approach can help avoid imbalances between contributions and credits in published papers by recording planned and executed responsibilities. We present authorship guidelines which also include a novel authorship form along with the documentation of the formulation process for a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary center with more than 250 researchers. Other research groups, departments, and centers can use or build on this template to design their own authorship guidelines as a practical way to promote fair authorship practices.
Highlights
Collaborative and interdisciplinary research has been on the rise over the last few decades and has increased the number of occasions on which authorship has to be negotiated among collaborating researchers (Van Noorden, 2015; Szell et al, 2018)
Authorship conflict can arise as a result of unethical conduct or due to different perceptions of what is considered fair authorship practices (Floyd et al, 1994; Smith et al, 2020)
These differences in perceptions and practices can cause authorship conflicts, including disputes over who should be included in an author list and the authorship order (Abbott, 2002)
Summary
Collaborative and interdisciplinary research has been on the rise over the last few decades and has increased the number of occasions on which authorship has to be negotiated among collaborating researchers (Van Noorden, 2015; Szell et al, 2018). Authorship disagreements disproportionately and negatively affect those lower in the power hierarchies due to their gender, sexuality, cultural background, and more These discriminations can be overt or subtle. Gani et al.: Clear, transparent, and timely communication for fair authorship decisions people above all others – is prevalent (Boustani and Taylor, 2020; Worthen, 2016) Racism is another important and often underplayed factor in research institutions (Harper, 2012) and manifests itself in knowledge production and resources being advantageous to past and present colonizers (Musila, 2019). Formulating an institute’s guidelines should be viewed as a key part of committing the community to fair authorship practices and engaging individual researchers to think about the ethical dimensions of knowledge production
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