Search results

Science is subject to a normative structure that includes how the contributions and interactions between scientists are rewarded. Authorship and citations have been the key elements within the reward system of science, whereas acknowledgements, despite being a well-established element in scholarly communication, have not received the same attention. The purpose of this paper is to put forward the bearing of acknowledgements in the humanities to bring to the foreground contributions and interactions that, otherwise, would remain invisible through traditional indicators of research performance.

The study provides a comprehensive framework to understanding acknowledgements as part of the reward system with a special focus on their value in the humanities as a reflection of intellectual indebtedness. The distinctive features of research in the humanities are outlined and the role of acknowledgements as a source of contributorship information is reviewed to support these assumptions.

“Peer interactive communication” is the prevailing support thanked in the acknowledgements of humanities, so the notion of acknowledgements as “super-citations” can make special sense in this area. Since single-authored papers still predominate as publishing pattern in this domain, the study of acknowledgements might help to understand social interactions and intellectual influences that lie behind a piece of research and are not visible through authorship.

Previous works have proposed and explored the prevailing acknowledgement types by domain. This paper focusses on the humanities to show the role of acknowledgements within the reward system and highlight publication patterns and inherent research features which make acknowledgements particularly interesting in the area as a reflection of the socio-cognitive structure of research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the research contributions of authors and subauthors in order to outline how authorship, as opposed to acknowledgment, is awarded in the lab-based life sciences.

The work tasks described in author contribution statements and acknowledgments sections of research articles published in Nature Chemical Biology were classified according to a three-layered taxonomy: core layer; middle layer; outer layer.

Most authors are core or middle layer contributors, i.e. they perform at least one core or middle layer task. In contrast, most subauthors are outer layer contributors. While authors tend to be involved in several tasks, subauthors tend to make single contributions. The small but significant share of authors performing only outer layer tasks suggests a disconnect in author attribution between traditional author guidelines and scientific practice. A level of arbitrariness in whether a contributor is awarded authorship or subauthorship status is reported. However, this does not implicate first or last authorships.

Data from one journal only are used. Transferability is limited to research in high impact journals in the lab-based life sciences.

The growth in scientific collaboration underlines the importance of gaining a deeper understanding of the distinction between authorship and subauthorship in terms of the types of research contributions that they de facto represent. By utilizing hitherto unexplored data sources this study addresses a gap in the literature, and gives an important insight into the reward system of science.

In this essay, the authors explore how professional associations and the scholarly meetings or conferences they organize, such as the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), act as incubators of scholarly inquiry in Comparative and International Education (CIE), but also serve as venues for the further dissemination of the comparative approach in education to inform scholarship and practice. Via an exemplification of our history of collaboration, our commentary particularly emphasizes how conference sites, based on thematic calls, bring together academics in serendipitous ways, to forge new understandings of transformational concepts in their fields and disciplines, and contribute to new forms of educational practice that draw on such novel thematic examinations.

New technologies allow for efficient dissemination of scientific knowledge objects (SKOs). Yet they are likely to transform SKOs as well. The aim of this paper is to propose a way to structure SKOs that allows for both a clear individuation of the main scientific contributions and a fine‐grained structure of credits and evaluation.

The authors review and analyze existing practices of structuring SKOs in different disciplines.

Provisionally considering the published paper as an atomic SKO, possible subatomic structures of SKOs are investigated. It is hypothesized that SKOs are meant to satisfy two separated but interdependent sets of constraints, one related to the contribution the SKO makes to the body of knowledge, and another related to the contribution the SKO makes to the reputation of its authors. It is hypothesized that existing SKO structures are not optimal for satisfying both sets of constraints at once.

A broader analysis may be needed that covers the totality of existing practices.

Guidelines are offered. This paper, including the present abstract, is an example of what the scientific paper of tomorrow could be like.

The paper proposes better apportioning of scientific credits and evaluation; substantive evolution of the academic publishing and credit attribution models.

The idea that the communication and evaluation function of a SKO are differently reflected in their structure is novel. The proposed fine‐grained credit attribution system is novel. The molecular/atomic/sub‐atomic distinction is a new way to fix the terminology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine researchers’ motivations to publish by comparing different career stages (PhD students; temporarily employed postdocs/new professors; scholars with permanent employment) with regard to epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motives.

This qualitative analysis is mainly based on semi-structured narrative interviews with 91 researchers in the humanities, social, and natural sciences, based at six renowned (anonymous) universities in Germany, the UK, and the USA. These narratives contain answers to the direct question “why do you publish?” as well as remarks on motivations to publish in relation to other questions and themes. The interdisciplinary interpretation is based on both sociological science studies and philosophy of science in practice.

At each career stage, epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motivations to publish are weighed differently. Confirming earlier studies, the authors find that PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in temporary positions mainly feel pressured to publish for career-related reasons. However, across status groups, researchers also want to publish in order to support collective knowledge generation.

The sample of interviewees may be biased toward those interested in reflecting on their day-to-day work.

Continuous and collective reflection is imperative for preventing uncritical internalization of pragmatic reasons to publish. Creating occasions for reflection is a task not only of researchers themselves, but also of administrators, funders, and other stakeholders.

Most studies have illuminated how researchers publish while adapting to or growing into the contemporary publish-or-perish culture. This paper addresses the rarely asked question why researchers publish at all.

Authorship is the ultimate status of intellectual recognition in academic publishing. Although fairly robust guidelines have already been in place for a considerable amount of time regarding authorship criteria and credit, such as those by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors or Contributor Roles Taxonomy, the lack of reliable verification techniques hamper their accuracy, thereby reducing the validity of authorship claims in such statements. This paper aims to focus on the authorship status and responsibilities of co-first authors and co-corresponding authors.

To appreciate authorship responsibilities in this subset of authors, the broader academic authorship literature, as well as position statements, rules and guidelines, were consulted.

Academic publishing that relies on metrics is a global multi-billion-dollar business, so strict measures to assess and confirm authorship, which can be intellectually or financially “profitable” among academics that game such metrics, are needed. The current assessment is that there are inconsistent rules for equally credited authors such as co-first authors, co-corresponding authors and co-supervisors. In shared and collaborative authorship, there are also shared authorship-related responsibilities, but these are infrequently discussed, or tend to only be dealt with broadly.

Within the wider, and important, discussion about authorship, which is one of the most central issues in academic publishing, there has been a limited focus on equally credited authors such as co-first authors, co-corresponding authors and co-supervisors. This paper expands and fortifies that discussion.

Data were gathered on acknowledgements in five leading information science journals for the years 1991‐1999. The results were compared with data from two earlier studies of the same journals. Analysis of the aggregate data (1971‐1999) confirms the general impression that acknowledgement has become an institutionalised element of the scholarly communication process, reflecting the growing cognitive and structural complexity of contemporary research.