Page 247 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes 10. The actual writers behind the work are in the background, and they must represent the
corporation.

13.6 Conflict of Authorship

Conflicts about authorship have been increasing, research shows. According to a 1998 study in
the Journal of the American Medical Association by Linda Wilcox, the ombudsperson at Harvard’s
medical, dental, and public-health schools, the percentage of complaints about authorship at the
three institutions rose in the 1990s. Such grievances ranged from people feeling that they were
not being given credit as first author, even though they were promised it, to people feeling that
their work merited first authorship even though they merely performed experiments and did
not design or write up the research. Wilcox’s research found that authorship-related queries to
her office rose from 2.3% of total complaints in 1991 to 10.7% in 1997. Between 1994 and 1997,
46% of the queries were from faculty and 34% were from postdoctoral fellows, interns, or
residents.

Other studies, cited by Eugene Tarnow, point to the issue of plagiarism as a problem, too. A 1993
study looked at perceived misconduct in a survey of professors and graduate students in four
disciplines over a period of five years. Inappropriate co-authorship was slightly greater than
plagiarism as a problem. Plagiarism was a problem of graduate students, while inappropriate
co-authorship was a problem mostly of faculty.

If a conflict arises between a junior scientist and a senior scientist regarding authorship, experts
recommend that the disagreement should first be addressed within the group of authors and the
project leader. Should that not lead to a satisfactory solution, the junior scientist can seek guidance
from other members of the department, student organizations, representatives in an office of
postdoctoral affairs, or the ombudsperson at the institution.

The ombudsperson is a neutral party who, if he or she is a subscriber to the standards of the
national ombudsperson’s organization, will discuss the situation and will not keep records of
the conversation. The ombudsperson can discuss the concerns confidentially, help identify the
issues, interpret policies and procedures, and offer a range of options for determining who
deserves authorship or whether there are other issues. Interpersonal problems (such as personality
problems between a senior scientist and a junior scientist), jealousy (such as regarding a new
person in a laboratory getting the senior scientist’s attention), and cultural issues (foreign scientists
may have different criteria for authorship) may be factors in authorship disputes.

!
Caution One of the options that the ombudsperson might suggest is mediation, in which
the two parties meet with the ombudsperson and attempt to come to a mutual agreement.
If negotiation and mediation fail to work, the injured party may then choose to make a
more formal complaint with the dean’s office, which would have a committee that
investigates these kinds of issues.

Individuals must be able to distinguish between disagreements over allocation of credit and
misconduct, Kathy Barker writes in Science’s Next Wave in 2002. If someone has evidence of
plagiarism, fabrication, or falsification of data, that is a more serious concern, and contacting a
lawyer might be helpful as one proceeds to inform members of the institution about evidence.

All persons named as authors are assumed to have contributed substantially to both of the
following:
1. The theoretical conception and formulation of the submission, the design and
implementation of any associated empirical study, or the analysis and interpretation of
data; and

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