© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
From the Editor |
Authorship Intricacies
For persons whose primary appointments are in academia, the matter of authorship on scholarly publications is perhaps one of the most fundamental to their success, including upward mobility within the academy (i.e., tenure and promotion). Unfortunately, authorship—despite its fundamental importance to matters as significant as job security—is a highly subjective issue, because knowing whether a person should be represented as an author of a work can often be unclear and even ambiguous. The matter is particularly acute for articles with multiple authors. For AJSLP, single-author articles are unusual (e.g., representing only three of the 31 articles, or <10%, published in Volume 18), and multiple-author research articles are the norm (the average number of authors on articles in Volume 18 was three, with a range of one to nine). In every writing collaboration, and even when one is working solo on a publication, high-stakes decisions need to be made about who is to be included as an author. Yet, too often, such decisions are made implicitly, perhaps in some cases haphazardly, without thorough discussion, and the rules on which such decisions rest are very open to interpretation.
In part, the problem lies with the construct—that is, authorship itself. To some, "authorship" might equate to the actual act of writing. By this definition, the person who does the most writing on a publication is not only assured authorship but perhaps automatically receives the desirable first-author slot. However, as straightforward as this may seem, the flaws in this definition become evident in consideration of the use of ghostwriters within certain industries, as described recently in The New York Times (Singer, 2009). The Times article described a disconcerting trend in the medical field, particularly pharmaceuticals, in which corporate ghostwriters were penning scientific articles (for $25,000 per!) and naming academics as the lead authors, who in return provided general intellectual guidance. Such instances make it clear that the actual act of writing can and should not simply equate to authorship, and they also highlight the inherent ambiguities of the role of general intellectual guidance and determination of authorship.
Matters of authorship become particularly acute, if not overtly ambiguous, in the matter of students. Typically, academic advisors will provide ongoing intellectual guidance to students as they generate scholarly publications, although the students may be responsible for the conduct of any research described and the entire writing task itself (as in the case of dissertation-based manuscripts). Here, it seems that anything goes: Some advisors do not want to be included as authors on such manuscripts, whereas others expect to be first or second author. Likewise, students have their own expectations about authorship and may expect to be solo authors of publications resulting from their dissertation irrespective of the intellectual guidance provided by advisors (Tryon, Bishop, & Hatfield, 2007). Because the contributions of advisors to student research can vary tremendously depending on a student's skill set as well as other factors, adherence to explicit processes for discussing and determining authorship is particularly critical.
Yet, discussions of authorship seem to make many people uncomfortable (leading to avoidance), perhaps because we have few models of what such decision-making processes should look like, and many of us are undereducated on the rules governing authorship (leading to idiosyncratic behaviors). Added to this mix are the inherent power differentials often involved in collaborative publications, as when a junior academic writes with a more senior colleague, or when a student writes with an advisor. By way of modest remedies, I offer a few proposals:
- Become familiar with all formal guidelines about authorship, to include the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association [APA], 2010, see pp. 18–19) and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (2009) Guidelines for the Responsible Conduct of Research: Ethics and the Publication Process.
- Engage any and all collaborators, including students, in early, ongoing, and explicit negotiations about authorship; this should include working out the details of who is doing what in collaborative projects, and how such efforts will be recognized in authorship. Consider using an authorship agreement that outlines these decisions.
- Initiate authorship negotiations whenever you offer substantial intellectual guidance to others in their publication activities, including students, colleagues, and advisors. The APA Publication Manual offers a specific description of activities constituting intellectual guidance.
- Junior and senior academics must ensure that students are educated early and well about the matter of authorship. At the least, authorship can be included as a substantive topic in research courses as well as seminars. Discussion of case studies involving authorship on student publications, such as those appearing in Fine and Kurdek (1993), can be very useful for heightening students' awareness of the subjectivity of authorship and the need to negotiate authorship on all written works for which they are collaborators.
 Top References |
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- American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2009). Guidelines for the responsible conduct of research: Ethics and the publication process [Guidelines]. Available from www.asha.org/policy
- Fine, M., & Kurdek, L. (1993). Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations. American Psychologist, 48, 1141–1147.[CrossRef]
- Singer, N. (2009, August 4). Medical papers by ghostwriters pushed therapy. The New York Times, Retrieved from www.nytimes.com.
- Tryon, G. S., Bishop, J. L., & Hatfield, T. (2007). Doctoral students' beliefs about authorship credit for dissertations. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 1, 184–192.[CrossRef]
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