Beyond Tokenism: Making Lived Experience Leadership Visible in Co-Produced Research Authorship.

Area of Science:

• Health Research Methodology
• Participatory Research
• Academic Publishing Ethics

Background:

• Co-production research values lived experience (LE) but traditional authorship often ignores power dynamics.
• Existing authorship models may not fully represent the contributions of individuals with lived experience in health research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To advocate for centring lived experience (LE) collaborators as first authors in co-production research.
• To explore authorship through ethical and philosophical lenses, including power/knowledge dynamics and responsibility.
• To propose a framework for aligning co-production processes with publication practices.

Main Methods:

• Critical reflection on co-production research authorship.
• Analysis of authorship using Foucauldian, Derridean, and Levinasian ethical frameworks.
• Application of the concept of 'porous solidarity' to understand research collaboration.

Main Results:

• Centring LE collaborators as first authors redistributes epistemic authority.
• This approach shifts research from being 'about' populations to being 'by' or 'with' them.
• A tension exists between political solidarity and preserving individual voices in co-production.

Conclusions:

• Placing experience-based experts as first authors, where appropriate, is ethically responsive and practical.
• Acknowledging LE of all researchers fosters epistemic justice and solidarity.
• This aligns with the 'nothing about us without us-leading' principle, building community research capacity.