authorship

authorship

The state of being an author; the writer of a communication.

Authorship in the sciences
The credits for a publication in the sciences are problematic; the advantages of being an author on published reports in the literature are considerable, and include peer respect, conferral of authority status and career advancement, which is often a function of how many publications a person has generated. Sharing authorship credits has the potential disadvantage of being the co-author on a report later deemed fraudulent.

Dr A Relman, emeritus editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, delineated four criteria (see table), at least 2 of which must be met to legitimately share authorship credits. Many articles, proceedings or books have multiple authors; the names of the authors following the first author are known as co-authors; corporations, government agencies and associations may also be listed as authors of a work. In ISI indexes, first (primary) and secondary (co-authors) of a source article are searchable in print and electronically—ISI also indexes all cited authors; the first cited author in each reference is searchable in all products; unique to the Web of Science is the ability to search on secondary authors in the cited reference field.

Authorship “Relman’s criteria”
• Conception of idea and design of experiment;
• Actual execution of experiment—hands-on experience;
• Analysis and interpretation of data;
• Writing the manuscript.

authorship

Science journalism The state of being an author. See Author, Author misconduct, CV-weighing, Darsee affair, Honorary authorship, Mega-author paper, Slutsky affair, Spurious authorship, Unearned authorship.