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Misused honorary authorship is no excuse for quantifying the unquantifiable
Journal of Medical Ethics
|September 8, 2012
Summary
Attributing publication contributions is complex and unreliable. Researchers may game evaluation systems, necessitating a critical review of how academic performance is measured.
Area of Science:
- Bibliometrics
- Research Evaluation
- Scientific Publishing Ethics
Background:
- Current systems evaluate researchers based on publications, often treating co-authored papers as equivalent to sole-authored ones.
- Honorary authorship and the 'publish or perish' culture can distort research evaluation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To critically examine the proposal of quantifying co-author contributions to publications.
- To analyze the implications of current research evaluation metrics on academic integrity.
Main Methods:
- Conceptual analysis of authorship attribution and research performance metrics.
- Review of existing literature on scientific publishing and evaluation systems.
Main Results:
- Quantifying individual contributions to multi-authored papers is not reliably possible.
- Attempts to quantify contributions are unlikely to resolve issues of honorary authorship or evaluation gaming.
- Relative merits of publications are also not objectively quantifiable.
Conclusions:
- Proposals to quantify authorship proportions are flawed and should not be implemented.
- Research administrators must acknowledge that evaluation systems are susceptible to manipulation by researchers seeking personal gain.
- A fundamental re-evaluation of how research performance is assessed is necessary to ensure fairness and integrity.
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