Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work. (Wiki)
Now let's think of that definition in the context of authorship in science.
According to the study by Swazey, Anderson and Lewis the rates of plagiarism and inappropriate authorship were reported to be similar by both faculty and students. They found that inappropriate authorship was slightly more frequent than plagiarism with one the twist: While plagiarism was about three times more likely to be committed by students than by faculty, inappropriate authorship was about three times more likely to be committed by faculty than by students.
I think the National Academy of Sciences in the study of scientific misconduct should include the most frequent and important issue of possible misconduct relevant to the designation of authorship besides aspects like fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.
Showing posts with label authorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authorship. Show all posts
Neuroscience Peer Review
Read about this consortium of journals that enables reviews to be transferred from one journal to another!
I definitely like this concept. This will reduce the time and effort involved in the peer review of submissions and speed publications of the results. This system is completely voluntary for authors. If the reviews from the first journal do not seem likely to facilitate acceptance at another journal, the authors can send the paper directly to the second journal as a fresh submission. However, if the author feels that the reviews may be helpful,transferring them can accelerate the editorial process.
Here is a link to the participating journals.
For reviewers besides reducing the load they also have the option to release their names along with the review in the event that the paper is transferred to another journal. I like transparency and hence support this idea.
Anyways, a definite thumbs up from me for the whole process. The flexibility is the system should suffice everyone to participate in it.
I definitely like this concept. This will reduce the time and effort involved in the peer review of submissions and speed publications of the results. This system is completely voluntary for authors. If the reviews from the first journal do not seem likely to facilitate acceptance at another journal, the authors can send the paper directly to the second journal as a fresh submission. However, if the author feels that the reviews may be helpful,transferring them can accelerate the editorial process.
Here is a link to the participating journals.
For reviewers besides reducing the load they also have the option to release their names along with the review in the event that the paper is transferred to another journal. I like transparency and hence support this idea.
Anyways, a definite thumbs up from me for the whole process. The flexibility is the system should suffice everyone to participate in it.
Authorship Dilemma - Scientific Misconduct
Physicists do it by the hundred; scientists do it in groups; fiction writers mostly alone. And researchers? Rarely now do they write papers alone, and the number of authors on papers is ever increasing. However, the puzzling question here is who is the first author ?
The operative word here is "boss". It's his/her final decision. People get "cheated" out of first authorship all the time.
I agree to some extent when others that say it should be your boss's decision, although I think it is pretty lousy and unfortunately, we don't have any guidelines to go by. The lab politics and professional courtesy should not affect rewarding hard or tedious work which essentially should be looked at in the authorship decision. I don't think it's fine as long as your boss/PI spells out the exact contributions of each author in his/her letter of recommendation when it comes time for you to apply for jobs. Since according to me that seems like a small consolation although atleast it ensures you get appropriate credit with the people who matter most (especially potential future employers).
In most cases first authorship should be given to the person who did the most work, with the various types of work weighted by their values. Some work is more valuable than other. Generally, designing the research and writing the manuscript are considered more valuable than doing the statistical analysis, which is considered more valuable than collecting the data.
In this era of team-driven science I think the whole importance to the concept of first author is absurd. In fact, some journals require a final statement about the contribution of each author. I guess the tentative fix is that each author's contributions should be listed or acknowledged upon submission in every journal.
Whether or not scientific societies develop authorship policies of their own, they should undertake vigorous educational efforts to keep their new members adequately informed about the importance of authorship practices in ethical scientific research and publication. Since, it's all about research integrity.
References to articles on this topic
- APA Monitor Article, "The Authorship Dilemma," Dec., 1998
- Fine and Kurdek, American Psychologist, 48:1141-1147
- Costa and Gatz, Psychological Science, 3:354-357.
- Louw and Fouché, South African Journal of Psychology, 29:145-148.
- http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/
The operative word here is "boss". It's his/her final decision. People get "cheated" out of first authorship all the time.
I agree to some extent when others that say it should be your boss's decision, although I think it is pretty lousy and unfortunately, we don't have any guidelines to go by. The lab politics and professional courtesy should not affect rewarding hard or tedious work which essentially should be looked at in the authorship decision. I don't think it's fine as long as your boss/PI spells out the exact contributions of each author in his/her letter of recommendation when it comes time for you to apply for jobs. Since according to me that seems like a small consolation although atleast it ensures you get appropriate credit with the people who matter most (especially potential future employers).
In most cases first authorship should be given to the person who did the most work, with the various types of work weighted by their values. Some work is more valuable than other. Generally, designing the research and writing the manuscript are considered more valuable than doing the statistical analysis, which is considered more valuable than collecting the data.
In this era of team-driven science I think the whole importance to the concept of first author is absurd. In fact, some journals require a final statement about the contribution of each author. I guess the tentative fix is that each author's contributions should be listed or acknowledged upon submission in every journal.
Whether or not scientific societies develop authorship policies of their own, they should undertake vigorous educational efforts to keep their new members adequately informed about the importance of authorship practices in ethical scientific research and publication. Since, it's all about research integrity.
References to articles on this topic
- APA Monitor Article, "The Authorship Dilemma," Dec., 1998
- Fine and Kurdek, American Psychologist, 48:1141-1147
- Costa and Gatz, Psychological Science, 3:354-357.
- Louw and Fouché, South African Journal of Psychology, 29:145-148.
- http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)