Influences on Authorship Issues: An Evaluation of Receiving, Not Receiving, and Rejecting Credit

Abstract

A survey on credit issues was conducted of academic chemists in Ph.D. granting institutions in the United States. Six-hundred faculty members responded representing 16% of the survey recipients. Fifty percent of the respondents reported not receiving appropriate credit for contributions they had made to published projects. Neither the number of years after receiving their Ph.D., their fields of expertise, their total number of publications, nor their total number of single-author publications showed any significant relationship with the perception of not receiving appropriate credit. Twenty percent of the respondents had discovered that they were an author of a paper, after that paper had been submitted to a journal. Forty-nine percent reported that they had asked to have their name deleted as an author. Relationships between these perceptions and academic background factors were examined. For example, respondents who had asked to be removed from authorship were more likely to give authorship or an acknowledgement to others and were also more likely to have had an authorship problem with others, both of these factors being related to longevity as a publishing scientist.

Keywords:

• acknowledgment
• authorship
• ghost author
• guest author
• mentor
• responsible conduct of research (RCR)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Dr. R. Kirk Jonas, Chair of the University of Richmond Institutional Review Board, for his continuing prompt and thorough assistance. We thank Larry D. Claxton, Roald Hoffmann, Frank L. Macrina, Chris McCarty, William H. Myers, Gary H. Posner, David B. Resnik, Lauren Shea, Judy Stamberg, and several reviewers for very helpful comments, Jordan Southern for technical assistance, and Albert Eschenmoser, Lisa Gentile, and Albert Padwa for encouragement.