In all my life, I have met dozens if not dozens of dozens of people who
were left off papers and felt they belonged on the manuscript. In every
case the situation caused problems.
In all my life, I have NEVER, NOT ONE SINGLE TIME EVER, met someone who
got irate because they were included as an author on a manuscript, period.
In fact, I cannot recall a single time that someone held a grudge or was
upset because they were included on a paper. It is well understood that a
manuscript's authorship is distributed in regard to effort, but it is also
distributed according to responsiblity. Anyone thing the 200th author on
the Human Genome Project is remembered or targeted anymore than the 199th
author? I doubt most people will see those names beyond the first author,
maybe the last.
When a paper goes to press, easily 90% of the responsiblity is born by the
lead author. I get the distinct feeling there is nothing political or
otherwise warranting concern about protecting anyone in this case.
I personally feel that most people are over-whelmingly selfish/stingy with
distribution of effort, and most guidelines are simply provided by people
who are more concerned about other people's activity than there own.
Further, they put way to much weight on being 10th author on a 20 author
manuscript.
IF more people concerned themselves with publishing their own papers,
producing their own results, and actually contributing to science, then this
entire issue would be mute.
Do what you think is fair.
On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 11:19 PM, Jeff Houlahan <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Gary and all, this one's an interesting one. Your position is one I
have a lot of sympathy for - it's generous and gives credit where it's due.
What makes this tricky is that it also gives responsibility that somebody
might not want to accept. I know it's unlikely and not that common but
there may be instances where somebody would prefer not to have their name on
a paper where they've done enough work to warrant authorship. If my name
showed up on a paper without me ever being aware that it had been submitted
I would be a little bothered. If I read the paper and didn't agree with the
interpretation I would be very unhappy. That said, the idea of not giving
credit to somebody who deserves it just seems wrong. This is a rock and a
hard place. Best, Jeff Houlahan
________________________________
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
<[email protected]> on behalf of Gary Grossman
<[email protected]>
Sent: August 20, 2016 12:04 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Query on authorship
Querido Jorge, this is a murky area of co-authorship except for one
point. Coauthorship is *earned* and should not be taken away because of some
other circumstance outside of the project responsibilities. Given that the
second student completed the work while they were at your institution, the
simple solution, given that they did indeed earn coauthorship, is to put
them on the paper with your institutional address. If you're worried about
someone contacting them then just asterisk their name and in the footnote
put "current address unknown". !Eso! g2
On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Jorge A. Santiago-Blay
<[email protected]> wrote:
Query on authorship
Dear Colleagues:
I am writing a small paper resulting from research done with two
undergraduates many years ago (and, later on, involving several other
colleagues using cutting-edge technology). As the results became obvious,
both of the students agreed (orally, in person) with me that we should get
the research published. As far as I remember, there was no email or letter
documenting that and, there was no manuscript, only the data and the methods
we were using.
The problem: I have located one of the former students (now a researcher
at a major research institution), who is excited about getting the research
published, but not the second student.
Question: How to handle the contribution (including authorship) of the
other person? Here are some options I see.
a. Omit the name of the person that has not been located and indicate
that another person was involved in the data collection but we were hot able
to locate him/her to get his/her approval to use his/her name as an author.
Under these circumstances, would it be OK to name the person in the
Acknowledgments? Lately, I am asking permission to do that because sometimes
some people prefer to remain anonymous.
b. Include the name of the person I cannot locate as an author, an act
of fairness and good faith on my part. If the person does not like the idea
(and the paper is published) retract the name of the person in an erratum,
later on, and assume responsibility for my error. A kind colleague did that
to me once and, subsequently, it has resulted a long standing collaboration
(and co-authorship in many papers, with my knowledge) :)
c. Nor use the data garnered by the person I cannot locate. Although I
am pretty sure I am authorized by the institution to use the data, as a
general personal; preference, I like to ask permission.
If you have something constructive to comment, kindly direct your
comments to me, [email protected] ,
Apologies for potential duplicate emails.
Sincerely,
Jorge
Jorge A. Santiago-Blay, PhD
blaypublishers.com
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