It is widely recognized that conceptual and theoretical innovations and the employment of new instruments and experimental techniques are important factors in explaining the growth of scientific knowledge in chemistry. This study examines another dimension of research in chemistry, collaboration and co-authorship. I focus specifically on Theodore Richards’ career and publications. During the period in which Richards worked, co-authorship was beginning to become more common than it had been previously. Richards was the first American chemist to be awarded (...) a Nobel Prize and he was at the forefront in this new trend in chemistry. He collaborated more than was typical for his time, with many scientists, in different sized groups, and he often had persistent collaborative relationships, extending over a number of years. Further, it appears that these collaborations benefited Richards, his collaborators, and the field of chemistry as a whole. (shrink)

There has been an increase in the number of journal articles that are co-authored by researchers who claim to have made equal contributions. This growth has sparked discussions in the literature, especially within medical journals. To extend the debate beyond medical disciplines and support journal editors in forming an opinion, the current review collates and explores published viewpoints about so-called Equal Co-authorship practices. The Web of Science core database was used to identify publications that mention and discuss EC. Within (...) the limited number of publications that were found on the Web of Science database, the most-cited item was used to trace other papers that discuss EC. In total, 39 papers met the inclusion criteria. This review identifies four main themes within the sample including the growth of EC, challenges of attributing EC, guidelines and policies about EC and gender issues in the attribution of EC. Based on the survey and analysis of publications that discuss EC, this review provides recommendations regarding journal policy statements, and EC indicators. Those recommendations include: journal policies should address EC; and use should be made of available functionalities to capture and indicate equal contributions. (shrink)

This book investigates the unresolved issue of democratic legitimacy in contexts of pervasive disagreement and contributes to this debate by defending a relational version of political liberalism that rests on the ideal of co-authorship. According to this proposal, democratic legitimacy depends upon establishing appropriate interactions among citizens who ought to ascribe to one another the status of putative practical and epistemic authorities. To support this relational reading of political liberalism, the book proposes a revised account of the civic virtue (...) of reasonableness along with an investigation of the epistemic-specific dimension of political equality. By engaging with political epistemology and social theory, this book explores ways to address inherent tensions within the liberal paradigm, using the following strategies of addressing these tensions: first, it defends a twofold model of legitimacy that distinguishes the goals, methodologies, and justificatory tasks of both ideal and nonideal phases of the two-level justificatory framework; second, it contends that democratic legitimacy requires an engaged and contextual critical appraisal of the injustices that characterize our daily social lives, illustrating how structural forms of injustice represent a profound betrayal of the liberal ideal of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

The present study, using a qualitative approach and interpretive phenomenological method, was conducted to examine the co-authorship experiences of faculty members as a visible aspect of scientific collaboration. Using purposive sampling and considering the theoretical saturation of the data, 15 faculty members participated in the present study. The required data were collected using a semi-structured interview and analyzed using Smith and Osborne’s method and MAXQDA 2020 software. The experiences of faculty members were interpreted in the form of two encouraging (...) and inhibiting factors in co-authorship. The encouraging factor, resulting from pleasant experiences of faculty members, was categorized as the theme of creating a scientific community and the inhibiting factor resulting from unpleasant experiences of co-authorship was categorized as the theme of reduced quality of research. The results of the study showed that co-authorship could develop the university and promote the level of social capital in the university. On the other hand, it was found that the level of co-authorships could be affected by the performance and feedback of the university which may weaken or strengthen it. The present study suggests that in order to promote co-authorship, cooperation in the university should be developed and the quality criteria in the research should be considered. (shrink)

In this article, I use the example of the novel Micro, authored by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, to tease out the relationships between an author and his work and with other authors of that work. The case presents a complication for a number of contemporary views on authorship and co-authorship, which suggest that Crichton is either not an author of the novel or an author but not a co-author—both, I suggest, are counterintuitive views. After working through the (...) leading views on the topic, I present my own view of authorship, co-authorship, and multiple authorship, centrally resting on issues of power, responsibility, and creation. (shrink)

Darren Hudson Hick has recently presented a fascinating puzzle case for theories of co-authorship: Micro. However, contrary to his goal, Hick fails to establish Michael Crichton as a co-author of Micro. Here, I explain why. Consequently, Micro is not a counterexample to the theories of co-authorship.

Co-authorship of papers is very common in most areas of science, and it has increased as the complexity of research has strengthened the need for scientific collaboration. But the fact that papers have more than an author tends to complicate the attribution of merit to individual scientists. I argue that collaboration does not necessarily entail co-authorship, but that in many cases the latter is an option that individual authors might not choose, at least in principle: each author might (...) publish in a separate way her own contribution to the collaborative project in which she has taken part, or papers could explicitly state what the contribution of each individual author has been. I ask, hence, why it is that scientists prefer to ‘pool’ their contributions instead of keeping them separate, if what they pursue in their professional careers (besides epistemic goals) is individual recognition. My answer is based on the view of the scientific paper as a piece of argumentation, following an inferentialist approach to scientific knowledge. A few empirical predictions from the model presented here are suggested in the conclusions. (shrink)

With the advancement of scientific collaboration in the 20th century, researchers started collaborating in many research areas. Researchers and scientists no longer remain solitary individuals; instead, they collaborate to advance fundamental understandings of research topics. Various bibliometric methods are used to quantify the scientific collaboration among researchers and scientific communities. Among these different bibliometric methods, the co-authorship method is one of the most verifiable methods to quantify or analyze scientific collaboration. In this research, the initial study has been conducted (...) to analyze interdisciplinary research activities in the computer science domain. The ACM has classified the computer science fields. We selected the Journal of Universal Computer Science for experimentation purposes. The J.UCS is the first Journal of Computer Science that addresses a complete ACM topic. Using J.UCS data, the co-authorship network of the researcher up to the 2nd level was developed. Then the co-authorship network was analyzed to find interdisciplinary among scientific communities. Additionally, the results are also visualized to comprehend the interdisciplinary among the ACM categories. A whole working web-based system has been developed, and a forced directed graph technique has been implemented to understand IDR trends in ACM categories. Finally, the IDR values between the categories are computed to quantify the collaboration trends among the ACM categories. It was found that “Artificial Intelligence” and “Information Storage and Retrieval”, “Natural Language Processing and Information Storage and Retrieval”, and “Human-Computer Interface” and “Database Applications” were found the most overlapping areas by acquiring an IDR score of 0.879, 0.711, and 0.663, respectively. (shrink)

The various problems associated with co-authorship of research articles have attracted much attention in recent years. We believe that this growing awareness is a very welcome development. However, we will argue that the particular and increasing importance of authorship and the harmful implications of current practices of research authorship for junior researchers have not been emphasised enough. We will use the case of our own research area to illustrate some of the pitfalls of current publishing practices—in particular, (...) the impact on the evaluation of one’s work in the area of employment or funding. Even where there are explicit guidelines, they are often disregarded. This disregard, which is often exemplified through the inflation of co-authorship in some research areas, may seem benign to some of us; but it is not. Attribution of co-authorship for reasons other than merit in relation to the publication misrepresents the work towards that publication, and generates unfair competition. We make a case for increasing awareness, for transparency and for more explicit guidelines and regulation of research co-authorship within and across research areas. We examine some of the most sensitive areas of concern and their implications for researchers, particularly junior ones, and we suggest several strategies for future action. (shrink)

Background Several studies suggest that deviations from proper authorship practices are commonplace in medicine. The aim of this study was to explore experiences of and attitudes towards the handling of authorship in PhD theses at medical faculties in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Methods Those who defended their PhD thesis at a medical faculty in Scandinavia during the second half of 2020 were offered, by e-mail, to participate in an online survey. Survey questions dealt with experiences of violations of (...) the first three of the ICMJE authorship criteria and misuse of authorship order in the thesis articles, as well as respondents’ attitudes to these matters. Both questions with fixed response alternatives and questions with free-text responses were used. Quantitative data were analysed statistically using the Table functions in SPSS 25 and Chi-2 tests. Free-text responses were analysed qualitatively using manifest content analysis. Results 287 valid questionnaires were returned (response rate: 34.1%). Almost half (46.0%) of the respondents reported that the ICMJE authorship criteria were not fully respected in at least one of the papers in their thesis, while a vast majority (96.7%) found it important that authorship is handled according to the ICMJE authorship criteria. 24.4% reported inadequate handling of authorship order in at least one paper. The qualitative results provide a wide spectrum of examples of how the ICMJE authorship criteria are circumvented. Conclusion Despite increasing educational efforts to reduce deviations from good research practice at Scandinavian universities, the handling of authorship in medical papers remains problematic. (shrink)

While much of the scholarly work on ethics relating to academic authorship examines the fair distribution of authorship credit, none has yet examined situations where a researcher contributes significantly to the project, but whose contributions do not make it into the final manuscript. Such a scenario is commonplace in collaborative research settings in many disciplines and may occur for a number of reasons, such as excluding research in order to provide the paper with a clearer focus, tell a (...) particular story, or exclude negative results that do not fit the hypothesis. Our concern in this paper is less about the reasons for including or excluding data from a paper and more about distributing credit in this type of scenario. In particular, we argue that the notion ‘substantial contribution’, which is part of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, is ambiguous and that we should ask whether it concerns what ends up in the paper or what is a substantial contribution to the research process leading up to the paper. We then argue, based on the principles of fairness, due credit, and ensuring transparency and accountability in research, that the latter interpretation is more plausible from a research ethics point of view. We conclude that the ICMJE and other organizations interested in authorship and publication ethics should consider including guidance on authorship attribution in situations where researchers contribute significantly to the research process leading up to a specific paper, but where their contribution is finally omitted. (shrink)

This article presents an in-depth analysis of past and present publishing practices in academic computer science to suggest the establishment of a more consistent publishing standard. Historical precedent for academic publishing in computer science is established through the study of anecdotes as well as statistics collected from databases of published computer science papers. After examining these facts alongside information about analogous publishing situations and standards in other scientific fields, the article concludes with a list of basic principles that should be (...) adopted in any computer science publishing standard. These principles would contribute to the reliability and scientific nature of academic publications in computer science and would allow for more straightforward discourse in future publications. (shrink)

Bülow and Helgesson discussed the practice of gift/honorary authorships and expounded on a most devious form of these, termed ‘hostage authorship’. The authors drew a parallel of such situations in research and publishing with the problem of ‘dirty hands’. In this case, acceding, albeit with regrets, may well be ‘… what we ought to do, even if it requires us to do something that is intrinsically bad’, especially if ‘this is both practically necessary and proportionate to the end’. Here, (...) I caution against this being a morally cogent, normative course of action. Tangible benefits from research not yet performed or published could not be predicted with any certainty, and as such could not be deemed sufficiently important to override moral constraints of justice and fairness. The utilitarian argument for any measure of beneficence with ‘dirty hands’ could therefore be nothing more than a self-serving act, or a self-exonerating form of moral disengagement. Such actions could have lasting ill effects on junior... (shrink)

Reviews the book, The dream of reason: A history of philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb . Seldom in the history of histories—particularly histories of philosophy—have there been authors capable of producing accessible, entertaining, insightful, and accurate treatments of their subject matter. An unfailingly pleasant read, Gottlieb’s history shows how many of philosophy’s most revolutionary breakthroughs have consistently been co-opted by other branches of learning, leading to the unfortunate illusion that philosophers never make any progress. 2012 (...) APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This article discusses gift authorship, the practice where co-authorship is awarded to a person who has not contributed significantly to the study. From an ethical point of view, gift authorship raises concerns about desert, fairness, honesty and transparency, and its prevalence in research is rightly considered a serious ethical concern. We argue that even though misuse of authorship is always bad, there are instances where accepting requests of gift authorship may nevertheless be the right thing (...) to do. More specifically, we propose that researchers may find themselves in a situation much similar to the problem of dirty hands, which has been frequently discussed in political philosophy and applied ethics. The problem of dirty hands is relevant to what we call hostage authorship, where the researchers include undeserving authors unwillingly, and only because they find it unavoidable in order to accomplish a morally important research goal. (shrink)

Objectives: To assess the knowledge and behaviour of researchers regarding criteria for authorship, and the practices of ghost and gift authorship. Design: Semidirective interviews of senior clinical researchers. Setting: University hospital. Participants: Thirty-nine main investigators of clinical research programmes. Main measurements: Awareness and use of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship, and perceptions about ghost and gift authorship. Results: A total of 48 protocols submitted by 42 principal investigators between 1994 and 1996 (...) were identified. Thirty-nine investigators were contacted; 37 (one of whom delegated a co-author) were interviewed between May 2002 and March 2003. Two co-authors of two principal investigators were also interviewed. In all, 42 studies were represented. The interviews lasted for 40–90 minutes and were conducted with openness and respect for confidentiality. The choice of names of co-authors did not follow the ICMJE recommendations. Half of the respondents stated they were aware of criteria for authorship and knew of ICMJE, but most of them did not cite any of the ICMJE criteria among those they applied in deciding authorship. Most of them disagreed with the obligation to meet the three criteria justifying co-authorship because they found these too rigid and inapplicable. Gift authorship was a common practice; 59% of the respondents had been a recipient of gift authorship. Twenty-five (64%) were aware of ghost authorship and the majority considered it questionable and blameworthy. Conclusions: The ICMJE criteria were ignored by clinicians at a university hospital. Ghost and gift authorship were frequent among them. There is a need for French guidelines for authorship to be prepared and implemented. (shrink)

We propose a rational method for addressing an important question—who deserves to be an author of a scientific article? We review various contentious issues associated with this question and recommend that the scientific community should view authorship in terms of contributions and responsibilities, rather than credits. We propose a new paradigm that conceptually divides a scientific article into four basic elements: ideas, work, writing, and stewardship. We employ these four fundamental elements to modify the well-known International Committee of Medical (...) Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines. The modified ICMJE guidelines are then used as the basis to develop an approach to quantify individual contributions and responsibilities in multi-author articles. The outcome of the approach is an authorship matrix, which can be used to answer several nagging questions related to authorship. (shrink)

Relying on data collected by the Zurich Survey of Academics, a unique representative online survey among academics in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, this paper replicates Johann and Mayer's :175–196, 2019) analysis of researchers' perceptions of scientific authorship and expands their scope. The primary goals of the study at hand are to learn more about country differences in perceptions of scientific authorship, as well as the influence of perceived publication pressure on authorship perceptions. The results indicate that academics (...) in Switzerland interpret scientific authorship more leniently than their colleagues in Germany and Austria. The findings further indicate that, as perceived pressure to publish increases, researchers are more likely to belong to a group of academics who hold the view that any type of contribution/task justifies co-authorship, including even those contributions/tasks that do not justify co-authorship according to most authorship guidelines. In summary, the present study suggests that action is required to harmonize regulations for scientific authorship and to improve the research culture. (shrink)

Kovacs argues that honorary authorship and regarding each co-author of multi-authored papers as if they were sole authors when the performance of researchers is being evaluated by their publications mean that we should require authors to identify what proportion of each publication should be attributed to each co-author. Even if such attributions could be made reliably, such a change should not be made. Contributions to authorship cannot be validly quantified, and the relative merits of different publications are also (...) neither equal nor validly quantifiable. Research administrators need to recognise that whatever criteria they adopt to evaluate the performance of researchers, researchers will find a way to game the system in order to maximise their personal benefit. (shrink)

Scholars and policy-makers have expressed concerns about the crediting of coauthors in research publications. Most such problems fall into one of two categories, excluding deserving contributors or including undeserving ones. But our research shows that there is no consensus on “deserving” or on what type of contribution suffices for co-authorship award. Our study uses qualitative data, including interviews with 60 US academic science or engineering researchers in 14 disciplines in a set of geographically distributed research-intensive universities. We also employ (...) data from 161 website posts provided by 93 study participants, again US academic scientists. We examine a variety of factors related to perceived unwarranted exclusion from co-author credit and unwarranted inclusion, providing an empirically-informed conceptual model to explain co-author crediting outcomes. Determinants of outcomes include characteristics of disciplines and fields, institutional work culture, power dynamics and team-specific norms and decision processes. (shrink)

More than 800 (co-)authors participated in a large-scale cross-sectional survey on inappropriate attribution of authorship and the use of explicit authorship guidelines in psychological science (response rate 29.6%, predominantly from Europe and North America). Almost half of the respondents had been involved in a study where someone was added as an author who did not contribute substantially (gift authorship) at least a few times. Being involved in a study where someone was not listed as an author when (...) they contributed substantially (ghost authorship) was experienced considerably less frequently. In approximately half of the respondents’ research settings, the use of explicit authorship guidelines is actively encouraged, leading to more frequent discussion of authorship in earlier stages, as well as to the perception of authorship decisions as fairer. Encouraging the use of explicit authorship guidelines is a simple yet effective intervention. Importantly, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) authorship guidelines are considerably more lenient than the widely used criteria of the Committee on Publication Ethics and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. (shrink)

DeStefano, Oey, Brockbank, and Vul explore interdisciplinary collaboration using data‐driven measures of research topics and co‐authorship, constructed from a rich dataset of over 11,000 Cogsci conference papers. Findings suggest the cognitive science research community has become increasingly integrated in the last 19 years.

Las redes sociales asociadas al conocimiento resultan de interés tanto a los estudios en Ciencia Tecnología y Sociedad, como al desenvolvimiento del pensamiento de la complejidad que se desarrolla en el país. Su análisis explica la naturaleza social de la producción científica y la existencia del capital social, cuyas características se vinculan con la satisfacción y resolución de las necesidades sociales dentro de la población cubana. Se muestra una red, conformada en torno a la Publicación Archivo Médico de Camagüey, durante (...) los años 2003, 2004 y dos bimestres del 2005 sobre el desenvolvimiento de las co autorías dentro de ella. Delineando en qué forma los investigadores se relacionaron entre sí, para valorar algunos de sus resultados. Se describen, los grupos esenciales de investigación y sus principales fortalezas. Constituye una herramienta de trabajo, al exponer los cambios que están ocurriendo en torno a la Universidad Médica Camagüeyana The social networks associated to human knowledge are useful to the studies in Science Technology and Society. Their analysis explains the social nature of the scientific production and the existence of social resources, which link the satisfaction and resolution of the social necessities inside the Cuban population. The characteristics of this networks conformed in Archivo Médico de Camagüey publication on the development of co authorship from 2003 to 2005 were presented in this article. The researchers were related to each other in this work to value in which way they function together and analyze some of their results. The essential groups of investigation and their main strengths were also described. It constitutes a work tool for further research works, to considering the changes that are happening about the scientific knowledge production in Camagüey University of Medicine. (shrink)

In the United States National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have mandated training STEM doctoral students in the ethical and responsible conduct of research to improve doctoral students' ethical decision-making skills; however, little is known about the process and factors that STEM faculty and graduate students use in their decision-making. This exploratory case study examined how four triads of chemistry faculty and their doctoral students recruited from three research universities in the eastern United States engaged in ethical (...) decision-making on issues of authorship, assignment of credit, and plagiarism. A mixed-methods approach involving the administration of an online survey consisting of three open-ended case studies followed by a think-aloud interview was utilized. Participants were found to use analogical reasoning and base their decision-making on a common core set of considerations including fundamental principles, social contracts, consequences, and discussion with an advisor, often using prior personal experiences as sources. Co-authorship did not appear to impact the doctoral students' ethical decision-making. Gender may play a role in graduate students' decision-making; female doctoral students appeared to be less likely to consider prior experiences when evaluating the vignettes. Graduate students' lack of knowledge of the core issues in the responsible conduct of research, coupled with their lack of research experience, and inability to identify the core considerations may lead them to make bad judgments in specific situations. Our findings help explain the minimal impact that the current responsible conduct of research training methods has had on graduate students' ethical decision-making and should lead to the development of more effective approaches. (shrink)

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) can be used to determine co-author responsibility for a scientific paper describing collaborative research. The objective is to deter scientific fraud by holding co-authors accountable for their individual contributions. A hiearchical model of the research presented in a paper can be created by dividing it into primary and secondary elements. The co-authors then determine the contributions of the primary and secondary elements to the work as a whole as well as their own individual contributions. They (...) can use the results to determine authorship order. (shrink)

Kovacs calls for collaborating teams to indicate the proportional credit that each author of a multi-authored paper deserves.1 This approach addresses the problem of giving each of the co-authors full credit for the article when their publication records are assessed. This problem is, however, a weakness in the evaluation system, not in the publication system, and it will not be solved by the proposed strategy.As the author notes, publication records are critical to decisions on hiring, promotion, tenure, salaries and allocation (...) of research resources. At each of these points, what matters most is the quality of the candidate's work, which cannot be adequately assessed by quick counts of articles, even when the counts are weighted by numbers of citations or impact factors. Some institutions and departments perform careful reviews; others …. (shrink)

The article starts from an examination of the authorship of the ‘Geleitwort’, the programmatic statement which appeared in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft when it came under new editors in 1904. Recently scholars have begun to view it as an important text by Max Weber recovered from obscurity, but this is a mistake. Examination of major contemporary works by Weber and Werner Sombart – the obvious co-author – as well as the first public disclosure of an entirely new MS. by (...) Weber, show that in all probability the text was drafted by Sombart and then revised fairly lightly by Weber. This story of a combined, if unequal, authorship leads into two broader seams of intellectual history: the relationship between Weber and Sombart, and the history of the Archiv as a journal. An unusual starting point thus casts fresh and unexpected light on some of the most central figures and episodes in German social science at the beginning of the 20th century, not least Weber's seminal essay on “Objectivity” in social science. ☆ This paper relies on intellectual interchange and the generosity of colleagues to a quite unusual degree. I note three particular debts: to Prof. Friedrich Lenger, for a copy of Sombart's important 1897 essay on ‘Social Scientific Journals’; to Prof. Guenther Roth for letter transcripts bearing on the Archiv from and to Edgar Jaffé, and for showing me in draft his ground-breaking work ‘Edgar Jaffé and Else von Richthofen: a biographical essay based on the family archive of Christopher Jeffrey’ [hereafter ‘Biographical Essay]; and to Dr. Edith Hanke and Prof. Rainer Lepsius (on behalf of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe). Dr. Hanke brought to my notice the existence of the MS. which I have called Weber's draft Editorial Notice (see §.IV below), and Prof. Lepsius then gave permission for me to see and to cite from this document. — Some abbreviations: AfSS for Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik; AfGS for Archiv für Soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik; Lebensbild for Marianne Weber, Max Weber. Ein Lebensbild [1926] (Tübingen, 1989); MWG for Max Weber Gesamtausgabe ed. Horst Baier et al. (Tübingen, 1984-). Letters by Weber within the MWG are cited as Briefe; ‘Nachlaß Max Weber’ for unpublished letters in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, VI. HA Nachlaß Max Weber. (shrink)

The following article investigates the hybridity of narrative identity. It explores how idem-identity and the ipse-identity interrelate through time and otherness and illustrates the process of self’s reflexive re-cognition via others. It posits that narrative identity encompasses both private and public dimensions, requiring a co-authorship that integrates collective identities. This article argues for an ethical dimension to this identity, emphasizing the reciprocal movement between self and other. It introduces the concept of followability, which involves reconstructing narratives in a resonance (...) relationship, fostering narrative hospitality and mutual transformation. The study concludes by proposing an eschatological perspective as a horizon for followability, enhancing narrative refiguration through future-oriented imagination. (shrink)

I argue that sometimes a group can author a work of art without the work being either co-authored or multiply-authored. Sometimes the group, itself, is an author, rather than any of its members alone or together. I argue that when a group is an author like this, it has mental properties that no individual member of the group possesses. For example, we can consider the groups that authored digital remixes based on a film titled #INTRODUCTIONS created by the artists LaBeouf, (...) Rönkkö & Turner. YouTubers posted their digital remixes online, and the question is: Who authored those remixes? I contend that many digital remixes are authored by groups that are capable of cognition. (shrink)

In 2012, choreographer and dancer Jill Sigman of jill sigman/thinkdance and visual artist Janine Antoni collaborated to produce Wedge, a live performance at the Albright-Knox Gallery. In this essay, I describe the collaboration and the resulting work and examine the benefits and challenges of the collaboration. The discussion touches on broader issues pertaining to collaboration, co-authorship, artists' intentions, and interpretation.

Leibniz holds that creatures require divine concurrence for all their actions, and that this concurrence is 'special,' that is, directed at the particular qualities of each action. This gives rise to two potential problems. The first is the problem of explaining why special concurrence does not make God a co-author of creaturely actions. Second, divine concurrence may seem incompatible with the central Leibnizian doctrine that substances must act spontaneously, or independently of other substances. Concurrence, in other words, may appear to (...) jeopardize creaturely substancehood. I argue that Leibniz can solve both of these problems by invoking final and formal causation. The creature is the sole author of its actions because it alone contributes the formal and final cause to these actions. Similarly, because it contributes the formal and final cause, the creature possesses what I call explanatory spontaneity. Leibniz, I contend, considers this type of spontaneity sufficient for substancehood. (shrink)

Proposals to lower the age of voting, to 15 for example, are regularly met with worries that people that age are not sufficiently ‘competent’. Notice however that we allow people that age to sign binding legal contracts, provided that those contracts are co-signed by their parents. Notice, further, that in a democracy voters are collectively ‘joint authors’ of the laws that they enact. Enfranchising some less competent voters is no worry, the Condorcet Jury Theorem assures us, so long as the (...) electorate's competence averaging across all voters remains better-than-random. (shrink)

The Schön misconduct case has been widely publicized in the media and has sparked intense discussions within and outside the scientific community about general issues of science ethics. This paper analyses the Report of the official Committee charged with the investigation in order to show that what at first seems to be a quite uncontroversial case, turns out to be an accumulation of many interesting and non-trivial questions (of both ethical and philosophical interest). In particular, the paper intends to show (...) that daily scientific practices are structurally permeated by chronic problems; this has serious consequences for how practicing scientists assess their work in general, and scientific misconduct in particular. A philosophical approach is proposed that sees scientific method and scientific ethics as inextricably interwoven. Furthermore, the paper intends to show that the definition of co-authorship that the members of the Committee use, although perhaps clear in theory, proves highly problematic in practice and raises more questions that it answers. A final plea is made for a more self-reflecting attitude of scientists as far as the moral and methodological profile of science is concerned as a key element for improving not only their scientific achievements, but also their assessment of problematic cases. (shrink)

Scientific collaboration can only be understood along the epistemic and cognitive grounding of scientific disciplines. New scientific discoveries in astrophysics led to a major restructuring of the elite network of astrophysics. To study the interplay of the epistemic grounding and the social network structure of a discipline, a mixed-methods approach is necessary. It combines scientometrics, quantitative network analysis and visualization tools with a qualitative network analysis approach. The centre of the international collaboration network of astrophysics is demarcated by identifying the (...) 225 most productive astrophysicists. For the years 1998–1999 and 2001–2006 four co-authorship networks are constructed comprehending each a two year period. A visualization of the longitudinal network data gives first hints on the structural development of the network. The network of 2005–2006 is analyzed in depth. Based on cohesion analysis tools for network analysis, two main cores and three smaller ones are identified. Scientists in each core and additionally in structurally interesting positions are identified and 17 qualitative expert interviews are conducted with them. The visualization of the network of 2005–2006 is used in the interviews as a stimulus for the interviewees. An analysis of the three most often used keywords of the 225 astrophysicists is included and combined with the other data. The triangulation of these approaches shows that major epistemic changes in astrophysics, e.g. the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, together with technical and organizational innovations, leads to a restructuring of the network of the discipline. The importance of a combination of qualitative and quantitative network analysis tools for the understanding of the interplay of cognitive and social structure in the sociology of science is substantiated. (shrink)

The debate about how neurotechnologies impact authenticity has focused on two inter-related dimensions: self-discovery and self-creation. In this paper, we develop a broader framework that includes the experimental and relational dimensions of authenticity, both understood as decisive for shaping one’s narrative identity. In our view, neurointerventions that alter someone’s personality traits will also impact her very own self-understanding across time. We argue that experimental authenticity only needs a minimum conception of narrative coherence of the self and that reversibility should remain (...) a key feature in the ethical assessment of neurotechnologies. The relational dimension of authenticity derives from the fact that a process of self-constitution is never a solitary business. The significant others act not just as subsequent judges of one’s life decisions, but as real co-authors of one’s self. We discuss relevant cases in which others are actively contributing to the meaning-making process, as to the direction one’s life is taking. We also claim that the experimental and the relational dimensions of authenticity should aim to correct each other. The relational dimension introduces socially approved standards as well as limitations to the array of available possibilities of self-fashioning or human enhancement. The experimental side enables us to avoid confusing one’s personal identity with a social and narrative construct that only bears the mark of social pressure and conformism. (shrink)

Science maps are visual representations of the structure and dynamics of scholarly knowl­edge. They aim to show how fields, disciplines, journals, scientists, publications, and scientific terms relate to each other. Science mapping is the body of methods and techniques that have been developed for generating science maps. This entry is an introduction to science maps and science mapping. It focuses on the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues of science mapping, rather than on the mathematical formulation of science mapping techniques. After (...) a brief history of science mapping, we describe the general procedure for building a science map, presenting the data sources and the methods to select, clean, and pre-process the data. Next, we examine in detail how the most common types of science maps, namely the citation-based and the term-based, are generated. Both are based on networks: the former on the network of publications connected by citations, the latter on the network of terms co-occurring in publications. We review the rationale behind these mapping approaches, as well as the techniques and methods to build the maps. We also present less-common types of science maps, including co-authorship networks, interlocking editorship networks, maps based on patents’ data, and geographic maps of science. Moreover, we consider how time can be represented in science maps to investigate the dynamics of science. We also discuss some epistemological and sociological topics that can help in the interpretation, contextualization, and assessment of science maps. Then, we present some possible applications of science maps in science policy. In the conclusion, we point out why science mapping may be interesting for all the branches of meta-science, from knowl­edge organization to epistemology. (shrink)

This article presents the first author's experiences as an Australian doctoral student undertaking a PhD by publication in the arena of the social sciences. She published nine articles in refereed journals and a peer-reviewed book chapter during the course of her PhD. We situate this experience in the context of current discussion about doctoral publication practices, in order to inform both postgraduate students and academics in general. The article discusses recent thinking about PhD by publication and identifies the factors that (...) students should consider prior to adopting this approach, in terms of university requirements, supervisors' attitudes, the research subject matter, intellectual property, capacity and working style, and issues of co-authorship. It then outlines our perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of undertaking a PhD by publication. We suggest that, in general, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. We conclude by reflecting on how the first author's experiences relate to current discussions about fostering publications by doctoral students. (shrink)

International scientific collaboration has increased both in volume and importance. In this article, the authors study the interpretation of macro-level data on international co authorship collaboration. They address such questions as how one might explain country- to-country differences in the rates of international coauthorship, networks of interna tional scientific collaboration among countries, and patterns of international collaboration in scientific fields. Attention is drawn to cognitive, social, historical, geopolitical, and economic factors as potential determinants of the observed patterns. They present (...) a methodology that gives one a measure, independent of size, of countries'propensities to collaborate internationally. (shrink)

The article conceptualizes (post) authorship in the context of the development of contemporary network technologies. The development and specifics of contemporary information technologies are considered, and their impact on culture is determined. It is noted that contemporary technologies change people, social relations, and the nature of cultural production. It emphasizes the importance of cooperation, the network method of interaction, the importance of free access, the principles of freedom in the use and dissemination of information, technologies provided, in particular, by (...) such network systems as Peer-to-peer (P2P). It is from this technological perspective that P2P (post)authorship is conceptualized. The importance of separating the concepts of copyright and author is emphasized, the nature of the change in their functions is determined in the context of the distinction between autonomy and authority. Acceleration of technology development requires constant interaction, co-authorship, which can be implemented on the basis of free access to information. This requires a change in the concept of copyright, which was formed on the basis of private property, which today only inhibits the development of social relations. Along with this, it is important to review the figure of the author, focusing not only on the significance of co-authorship in the production of cultural products, but also on the conceptualization of a kind of multiple, decentralized author or (post)author. At the same time, it is about the significant role of change in the perception of time, emphasis on timeliness and simultaneity of interaction. In such a perspective, private property and copyright lose their usual meaning. The digital, intellectual, cultural author/product goes beyond material production, virtualized as a co-author. Peer-to-peer (post)author is realized through feeding the creativity of others. (shrink)

Background: The law and literature about children’s consent generally assume that patients aged under-18 cannot consent until around 12 years, and cannot refuse recommended surgery. Children deemed pre-competent do not have automatic rights to information or to protection from unwanted interventions. However, the observed practitioners tend to inform young children s, respect their consent or refusal, and help them to “want” to have the surgery. Refusal of heart transplantation by 6-year-olds is accepted. Research question: What are possible reasons to explain (...) the differences between theories and practices about the ages when children begin to be informed about elective heart surgery, and when their consent or refusal begins to be respected? Research design, participants and context: Research methods included reviews of related healthcare, law and ethics literature; observations and conversations with staff and families in two London hospitals; audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 45 healthcare professionals and related experts; interviews and a survey with parents and children aged 6- to 15-years having elective surgery (not reported in this paper); meetings with an interdisciplinary advisory group; thematic analysis of qualitative data and co-authorship of papers with participants. Ethical considerations: Approval was granted by four research ethics committees/authorities. All interviewees gave their informed written consent. Findings: Interviewees explained their views and experiences about children’s ages of competence to understand and consent or refuse, analysed by their differing emphases on informed, signified or voluntary consent. Discussion: Differing views about children’s competence to understand and consent are associated with emphases on consent as an intellectual, practical and/or emotional process. Conclusion: Greater respect for children’s practical signified, emotional voluntary and intellectual informed consent can increase respectful understanding of children’s consent. Nurses play a vital part in children's practitioner-patient relationships and physical care and therefore in all three elements of consent. (shrink)