Rethinking Authorship in the Era of Collaborative Research

Abstract

The size and complexity of research teams continues to grow, especially within the realms of science and engineering. This has intensified already existing concerns about relying on traditional authorship schemes as the way to allocate credit for a contribution to a research project. In this paper, we examine current authorship problems plaguing research communities and provide suggestions for how those problems could potentially be mitigated. We recommend that research communities, especially those involved in large scale collaborations, revisit the contributor model and embrace it as means for allocating credit more authentically and transparently.