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“The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice

Questionable authorship practices in scientific publishing are detrimental to research quality and management. The existing literature dealing with the prevalence, and perceptions, of such practices has focused on the medical sciences, and on experienced researchers. In contrast, this study investig...

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Autores principales: Goddiksen, Mads Paludan, Johansen, Mikkel Willum, Armond, Anna Catharina, Clavien, Christine, Hogan, Linda, Kovács, Nóra, Merit, Marcus Tang, Olsson, I. Anna S., Quinn, Una, Santos, Júlio Borlido, Santos, Rita, Schöpfer, Céline, Varga, Orsolya, Wall, P. J., Sandøe, Peter, Lund, Thomas Bøker
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9836317/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36634045
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280018
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author Goddiksen, Mads Paludan
Johansen, Mikkel Willum
Armond, Anna Catharina
Clavien, Christine
Hogan, Linda
Kovács, Nóra
Merit, Marcus Tang
Olsson, I. Anna S.
Quinn, Una
Santos, Júlio Borlido
Santos, Rita
Schöpfer, Céline
Varga, Orsolya
Wall, P. J.
Sandøe, Peter
Lund, Thomas Bøker
author_facet Goddiksen, Mads Paludan
Johansen, Mikkel Willum
Armond, Anna Catharina
Clavien, Christine
Hogan, Linda
Kovács, Nóra
Merit, Marcus Tang
Olsson, I. Anna S.
Quinn, Una
Santos, Júlio Borlido
Santos, Rita
Schöpfer, Céline
Varga, Orsolya
Wall, P. J.
Sandøe, Peter
Lund, Thomas Bøker
author_sort Goddiksen, Mads Paludan
collection PubMed
description Questionable authorship practices in scientific publishing are detrimental to research quality and management. The existing literature dealing with the prevalence, and perceptions, of such practices has focused on the medical sciences, and on experienced researchers. In contrast, this study investigated how younger researchers (PhD students) from across the faculties view fair authorship attribution, their experience with granting guest authorships to more powerful researchers and their reasons for doing so. Data for the study were collected in a survey of European PhD students. The final dataset included 1,336 participants from five European countries (Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, and Switzerland) representing all major disciplines. Approximately three in ten reported that they had granted at least one guest authorship to “a person in power”. Half of these indicated that they had done so because they had been told to do so by the person in power. Participants from the medical, natural and technical sciences were much more likely to state that they had granted a guest authorship than those from other faculties. We identified four general views about what is sufficient for co-authorship. There were two dominant views. The first (inclusive view) considered a broad range of contributions to merit co-authorship. The second (strongly writing-oriented) emphasised that co-authors must have written a piece of the manuscript text. The inclusive view dominated in the natural, technical, and medical sciences. Participants from other faculties were more evenly distributed between the inclusive and writing oriented view. Those with an inclusive view were most likely to indicate that they have granted a guest authorship. According to the experiences of our participants, questionable authorship practices are prevalent among early-career researchers, and they appear to be reinforced through a combination of coercive power relations and dominant norms in some research cultures, particularly in the natural, technical, and medical sciences.
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spelling pubmed-98363172023-01-13 “The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice Goddiksen, Mads Paludan Johansen, Mikkel Willum Armond, Anna Catharina Clavien, Christine Hogan, Linda Kovács, Nóra Merit, Marcus Tang Olsson, I. Anna S. Quinn, Una Santos, Júlio Borlido Santos, Rita Schöpfer, Céline Varga, Orsolya Wall, P. J. Sandøe, Peter Lund, Thomas Bøker PLoS One Research Article Questionable authorship practices in scientific publishing are detrimental to research quality and management. The existing literature dealing with the prevalence, and perceptions, of such practices has focused on the medical sciences, and on experienced researchers. In contrast, this study investigated how younger researchers (PhD students) from across the faculties view fair authorship attribution, their experience with granting guest authorships to more powerful researchers and their reasons for doing so. Data for the study were collected in a survey of European PhD students. The final dataset included 1,336 participants from five European countries (Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, and Switzerland) representing all major disciplines. Approximately three in ten reported that they had granted at least one guest authorship to “a person in power”. Half of these indicated that they had done so because they had been told to do so by the person in power. Participants from the medical, natural and technical sciences were much more likely to state that they had granted a guest authorship than those from other faculties. We identified four general views about what is sufficient for co-authorship. There were two dominant views. The first (inclusive view) considered a broad range of contributions to merit co-authorship. The second (strongly writing-oriented) emphasised that co-authors must have written a piece of the manuscript text. The inclusive view dominated in the natural, technical, and medical sciences. Participants from other faculties were more evenly distributed between the inclusive and writing oriented view. Those with an inclusive view were most likely to indicate that they have granted a guest authorship. According to the experiences of our participants, questionable authorship practices are prevalent among early-career researchers, and they appear to be reinforced through a combination of coercive power relations and dominant norms in some research cultures, particularly in the natural, technical, and medical sciences. Public Library of Science 2023-01-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9836317/ /pubmed/36634045 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280018 Text en © 2023 Goddiksen et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Goddiksen, Mads Paludan
Johansen, Mikkel Willum
Armond, Anna Catharina
Clavien, Christine
Hogan, Linda
Kovács, Nóra
Merit, Marcus Tang
Olsson, I. Anna S.
Quinn, Una
Santos, Júlio Borlido
Santos, Rita
Schöpfer, Céline
Varga, Orsolya
Wall, P. J.
Sandøe, Peter
Lund, Thomas Bøker
“The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice
title “The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice
title_full “The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice
title_fullStr “The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice
title_full_unstemmed “The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice
title_short “The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice
title_sort “the person in power told me to”—european phd students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9836317/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36634045
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280018
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