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An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication
This article explores the impact of an Increase in the average Number of Authors per Publication (INAP) on known ethical issues of authorship. For this purpose, the ten most common ethical issues associated with scholarly authorship are used to set up a taxonomy of existing issues and raise awarenes...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Netherlands
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9126105/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35606542 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00352-3 |
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author | Hosseini, Mohammad Lewis, Jonathan Zwart, Hub Gordijn, Bert |
author_facet | Hosseini, Mohammad Lewis, Jonathan Zwart, Hub Gordijn, Bert |
author_sort | Hosseini, Mohammad |
collection | PubMed |
description | This article explores the impact of an Increase in the average Number of Authors per Publication (INAP) on known ethical issues of authorship. For this purpose, the ten most common ethical issues associated with scholarly authorship are used to set up a taxonomy of existing issues and raise awareness among the community to take precautionary measures and adopt best practices to minimize the negative impact of INAP. We confirm that intense international, interdisciplinary and complex collaborations are necessary, and INAP is an expression of this trend. However, perverse incentives aimed to increase institutional and personal publication counts and egregious instances of guest or honorary authorship are problematic. We argue that whether INAP is due to increased complexity and scale of science, perverse incentives or undeserved authorship, it could negatively affect known ethical issues of authorship at some level. In the long run, INAP depreciates the value of authorship status and may disproportionately impact junior researchers and those who contribute to technical and routine tasks. We provide two suggestions that could reduce the long-term impact of INAP on the reward system of science. First, we suggest further refinement of the CRediT taxonomy including better integration into current systems of attribution and acknowledgement, and better harmony with major authorship guidelines such as those suggested by the ICMJE. Second, we propose adjustments to the academic recognition and promotion systems at an institutional level as well as the introduction of best practices. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9126105 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Springer Netherlands |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91261052022-05-24 An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication Hosseini, Mohammad Lewis, Jonathan Zwart, Hub Gordijn, Bert Sci Eng Ethics Original Research/Scholarship This article explores the impact of an Increase in the average Number of Authors per Publication (INAP) on known ethical issues of authorship. For this purpose, the ten most common ethical issues associated with scholarly authorship are used to set up a taxonomy of existing issues and raise awareness among the community to take precautionary measures and adopt best practices to minimize the negative impact of INAP. We confirm that intense international, interdisciplinary and complex collaborations are necessary, and INAP is an expression of this trend. However, perverse incentives aimed to increase institutional and personal publication counts and egregious instances of guest or honorary authorship are problematic. We argue that whether INAP is due to increased complexity and scale of science, perverse incentives or undeserved authorship, it could negatively affect known ethical issues of authorship at some level. In the long run, INAP depreciates the value of authorship status and may disproportionately impact junior researchers and those who contribute to technical and routine tasks. We provide two suggestions that could reduce the long-term impact of INAP on the reward system of science. First, we suggest further refinement of the CRediT taxonomy including better integration into current systems of attribution and acknowledgement, and better harmony with major authorship guidelines such as those suggested by the ICMJE. Second, we propose adjustments to the academic recognition and promotion systems at an institutional level as well as the introduction of best practices. Springer Netherlands 2022-05-23 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9126105/ /pubmed/35606542 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00352-3 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. |
spellingShingle | Original Research/Scholarship Hosseini, Mohammad Lewis, Jonathan Zwart, Hub Gordijn, Bert An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication |
title | An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication |
title_full | An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication |
title_fullStr | An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication |
title_full_unstemmed | An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication |
title_short | An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication |
title_sort | ethical exploration of increased average number of authors per publication |
topic | Original Research/Scholarship |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9126105/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35606542 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00352-3 |
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