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Journal of Education for Business
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
College of Business Faculty Views on Gift
Authorships in Business Journals
Edgar J. Manton , Donald E. English & Thomas Brodnax
To cite this article: Edgar J. Manton , Donald E. English & Thomas Brodnax (2012) College of Business Faculty Views on Gift Authorships in Business Journals, Journal of Education for Business, 87:2, 79-85, DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
Published online: 15 Dec 2011.
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CopyrightC Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0883-2323 print / 1940-3356 online DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
College of Business Faculty Views on Gift
Authorships in Business Journals
Edgar J. Manton, Donald E. English, and Thomas Brodnax
Texas A&M University–Commerce, Commerce, Texas, USA
The views of college of business faculty were sought to determine their perception on the extent of undeserved authorship in business journals and their impact on the faculty reward system. Six hundred ninety-eight faculty members responded to an electronic survey conducted through Zoomerang. A total of 80% of the respondents indicated that they had been aware of a faculty member undeservedly being carried on a published business journal article, and 58% indicated that they had collaborated with a coauthor who had performed very little work, and 18% reported working with a coauthor who had actually done no work on a published article.
Keywords: gift authorship, undeserved authorship, unearned authorship
During the period 1960–1962 to 2000–2002, the average number of authors per article and the percentage of multiple authors in published business journal articles increased. A recent study of 12 major business journals revealed that by 2000–2002 more than 70% of business journal articles had two or more authors. This study also showed that two-author articles had become the most common authorship arrange-ment and, in eight of the journals reviewed, the percentage of three-authored articles exceeded single author articles by 2000–2002 (Manton & English, 2008).
What has caused this to happen? One reason may be that universities and business colleges have had evolving expec-tations, increasing their emphasis on scholarly endeavors. At most, university promotion, tenure, and merit increases are increasingly based on research and other scholarly endeavors (Bertin & Zivney, 1992). A record of scholarly production is directly linked to securing faculty positions and obtain-ing promotion and tenure in higher education (Gelman & Gibelmann, 1999). In addition, accrediting agencies have in-creased their emphasis on research. For example, the Associ-ation to Advance of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International, emphasizes in its standards that business fac-ulty must publish or participate in other scholarly activities to be considered academically qualified (Taylor & Stanton,
Correspondence should be addressed to Donald E. English, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Department of Business Administration and MIS, P.O. Box 3011, Commerce, TX 75429, USA. E-mail: donald [email protected]
2009). This emphasis on scholarly endeavors has led to in-creased collaboration among faculty members to strengthen their publication records.
Furthermore, it is more difficult for individual faculty members to possess or be capable of accessing the ever-expanding body of knowledge in today’s business disciplines. The investigation of a business research topic may require the skills and knowledge of more than one person. Some inves-tigations involve the disciplines of more than one business field and require the expertise of faculty from differing fields of business. There are also research efforts related to busi-ness, which involve other fields such as psychology, sociol-ogy, and computer science. Other reasons for collaboration deal with people who have access to data, have knowledge of the research and publication process, or possess software and computer skills. All of the foregoing reasons are valid arguments for collaboration and they lead to higher quality research results (Schroeder, Langrehr, & Floyd, 1995).
There may be an additional reason for collaboration on a published journal article that would be unethical. Coauthor-ships may be gratuitously granted by authors to aid faculty members in furthering their academic careers even though they had done very little work or no work on the publication. The medical field is rife with such authorships and has at-tempted to quell the practice by establishing a committee of editors from major medical journals. This committee created criteria for appropriately identifying coauthors on medical journal articles. To date, there has been very limited success in the application of the criteria in limiting gift authorships (Bennet & Taylor, 2003).
80 E. J. MANTON ET AL.
Medical ethicist Mott Greene (2007) stated that in most medical journals, editors are not told which author did what work on an article and that they may not even be aware of who prepared the paper. He further noted that there is no widespread pressure on the editors to accurately identify authors.
Organizations such as the American Educational Research Association, the American Chemical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Institutes of Health have established guidelines to identify authors. Disciplines such as chemistry, physics, counseling, educational research, psychology, and sociology also have guidelines for author-ship, but even with these guidelines problems still exist with author identification (Osborne & Holland 2009). A study of physics research publications found that 23% of third and subsequent authors on an article were judged inappropriate in accordance with the American Physical Society guideline (Tarnow, 2002). In the field of counseling, Zook (1987) in-dicated that the notion of publish or perish could lead to an agreement of mutual gratuitous authorship. A study of social work authors reported that students and junior faculty mem-bers might not be able to claim first authorship even when they had done most of the work. The study also noted that fo-cus groups reported instances in which senior faculty insisted that their names be listed first on an article even when they had participated minimally in the preparation of the paper (Apgar & Congress, 2010).
Solomon (2009) complained about the lack of guidelines for identifying authors in computer science journals due to the nature of computer science research projects, which in-volve nonwriting contributions from many individuals. He notes that it is a difficult task to appropriately identify the specific contributions of all individuals, distinguishing au-thors from one author, and appropriately recognizing other lesser contributors. He warned of possible publication fraud involving the inclusion of authors who contributed little or no work toward the published results.
Guest or gift authorship was one of the forms of miscon-duct considered in a study involving 231 editors of science journals that evaluated 16 ethical issues in publication. Gift authorship was one of the highest scored misconduct issues, but received the lowest score from the editors for their ability to resolve its occurrence. Although all 16 issues were rated low in frequency of occurrence, gift authorship received the highest frequency score (Wager, Fiack, Graf, Robinson, & Rowlands, 2009).
Business journals do not have guidelines for determining author identification. The listing of the authors on an article is left to the authors themselves. To be academically quali-fied, the AACSB has placed enormous pressure on faculty at accredited colleges of business to participate in scholarly ac-tivities. At many business schools, research and publication are more important in performance considerations than the assessment of classroom teaching (Weis, 1990). Addition-ally, most universities now include a mandatory scholarly
endeavor component in their faculty evaluation procedures. To be promoted or to receive tenure, faculty must publish (Pettijohn, Udell, & Parker, 1991). Could these pressures lead to the practice of gift authorship in business journal articles? In a study of a large university, it was found that business authors were more likely to add noncontributing authors to their articles than authors in the arts, humanities, and the behavioral sciences (Hamilton & Grego, 1997).
There could well be other inappropriate reasons for gifting authorships. Pressure from a superior, demand of a disserta-tion supervisor, a reciprocal payback arrangement, seeking the support of a tenure or promotion committee member, or even romance could be reasons for gifting an authorship. Such arrangements, if undeserving of an authorship position on a journal article, would be intellectually dishonest and may result in unfair awards of tenure, promotion, or salary increases. If known to other college faculty, such rewards would be highly detrimental to morale. In view of the grow-ing trend for business faculty to collaborate with others in publishing endeavors, studies should be performed to deter-mine if undeserved authorships occur in published business articles, and if so, to what extent and impact.
METHOD
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to determine the views of busi-ness faculty from AACSB-accredited colleges on the extent of undeserved gift authorships in business journals and their impact on the faculty reward system. The study attempted to determine college of business faculty perceptions on how prevalent gift authorships are, and the extent to which gift au-thorships affect promotions, tenure awards, and merit salary increases.
Procedure
One fourth, or 110 of the 440 accredited colleges of business, were systematically selected to be included in the survey from an alphabetical listing of the AACSB-accredited business colleges. The e-mail addresses of all faculty members of these schools were identified. More than 5,800 faculty members were included in the survey. A questionnaire was developed and loaded on Zoomerang, an online survey service, and sent directly to the faculty.
Three hundred and eighty-seven responses were received from the initial e-mailing. Three weeks later a follow-up e-mail was sent, resulting in a total of 698 responses. The re-sponse rate was approximately 12%. Of the 698 respondents, 646 (93%) had coauthored a business journal article. Due to the nature of the study, we feel that faculty who did not pub-lish or who pubpub-lish without coauthors did not respond at a high rate. Thus, we feel that a higher percentage of coauthors
TABLE 1
Academic Rank of Respondents (n=698)
Discipline n %
from the surveyed business colleges are represented in the responses than the overall response rate would indicate.
RESULTS
Faculty Statistics
A total of 460 (66%) respondents were men and 234 (33.5%) were women. Four of the respondents did not indicate gen-der. Table 1 shows the academic rank of the respondents. The majority of the respondents—278, or 40%—were full professors, whereas 198 (28%) were associate professors.
The disciplines of the faculty respondents are presented in Table 2. The largest field was management, with 123 (18%) of the respondents citing this area. When management-related disciplines such as organizational behavior and production management are added, the management respondents totaled to 195 and represent 28% of the respondents. Accounting and marketing each represent 15% of the respondents. There was a broad representation from all business disciplines.
Table 3 reports that 371 (53%) of the respondents had more than 15 years of teaching experience. Only 14% were relatively new faculty who had had five or less years of experience. This indicates a group of faculty who may have experience in observing the possibility of undeserved author-ships and who may hold views on the topic. Table 4 indicates the tenure status of the respondents. The majority of the fac-ulty members (64%), were tenured and 24% were on tenure
TABLE 2
Discipline of Respondents (n=698)
Discipline n %
Management information systems 58 8
Production management 41 6
Organizational behavior 31 4
Other, please specify 80 11
No response 7 1
TABLE 3
Teaching Experience (n=698)
Number of years n %
More than 25 188 27
No response 7 <1
track, whereas only 7% were nontenure track. This profile is a further indication of experienced respondents who may have witnessed the practice of undeserved or gift authorships during their careers.
Faculty Views on Gift Authorships
All participants in the survey were asked whether it is ethical to grant a gift authorship. Seventy-five percent indicated that the practice is unethical; 371 (53%) of the faculty indicated that it is an unethical practice, whereas 153 (22%) said it is unethical, but it is the way things are done. Only 8% indicated that it is acceptable (see Table 5).
The Extent of Gift Authorships
The major purpose of the study was to determine business college faculty views on the extent and the impact of un-deserved authorships in business journals. The respondents were asked whether during their academic career they were aware of a faculty member carrying another faculty member who had done very little or no work as a coauthor on a pub-lished business journal article. Table 6 shows that 561 (80%) indicated that they were aware of this happening. Only 12% indicated that they were not aware of this occurring, whereas 8% stated they did not know whether this happened.
The 561 respondents indicating an awareness of the act of an author carrying a coauthor on a published article were then asked their perception of this behavior and to what extent this behavior is being practiced. Table 7 records their responses. A total of 27% believed that the practice is extensive or
TABLE 4
82 E. J. MANTON ET AL.
TABLE 5 Ethical Practice (n=698)
Response n %
It is unethical—and should not be done. 371 53 It is unethical—but the way things are done. 53 22 It is an acceptable practice. 56 8
Other, please specify 118 17
very extensive. A total of 39% of the faculty respondents indicated the practice is somewhat extensive. Another 22% reported that the occurrence of carrying a coauthor is rare.
The Impact of Gift Authorships on Faculty Rewards
Table 8 presents the perceptions of the 561 faculty members, who indicated awareness of gifting authorships, on the per-centage of faculty rewards that are based at least partially on an undeserved publication record. The percentages of faculty reporting that more than 10% of faculty rewards are being at least partially impacted by gift authorships was of particular interest.
Considering merit increases, 162 (28%) of the respon-dents indicated that more than 10% of the merit increases are at least partially due to undeserved authorships. Eighty-one (50%) of these respondents believed it is more than 20%. When asked about promotions, 173 (30%) of the faculty re-sponding indicated that more than 10% of promotions are at least partially due to gift authorships and of these 173 faculty, 81 reported that it is greater than 20%. As to the granting of tenure, 173 (∼31%) of the respondents stated that more than 10% for the awards of tenure are at least partially due to undeserved authorships and almost half of these respondents felt that it was greater than 20%.
The fact that about 30% of the respondents believe that more than 10% of faculty rewards are impacted at least par-tially by an undeserved publication record and that of these nearly half of them believe the figure is greater than 20% would seem to present a concern to business colleges. It is in-teresting to note that more than one fourth of the respondents reported that they did not know the impact of undeserved authorship on faculty rewards. They report that it occurs, but are not sure to what extent.
TABLE 6
Are Coauthors Ever Carried? (n=698)
Response n %
Yes 561 80
No 83 12
Don’t know 54 8
TABLE 7
Extent of Gifting Authorships (n=698)
Response n %
Coauthorships Involving Little or No Work
All respondents were asked whether they had ever coauthored an article with another faculty member. The overwhelming majority of the faculty, 646 (93%), reported having done so. This led to the belief that nonpublishing faculty and single-author faculty did not respond at high rates to the survey due to the nature of the study. As previously indicated, it is believed that the respondents represent a greater portion of the population of coauthors than indicated by the survey response rate. The 646 respondents who had collaborated on published article were asked whether they had ever worked with a coauthor on a published article, who had done very little work, undeserving of an author designation. Three hun-dred seventy-two (58%) respondents indicated that they had worked with such a coauthor. These respondents were then asked to identify the reasons for doing so. They were pro-vided a listing citing possible reasons for working with a coauthor that had performed very little work on a published article in a business journal. They were asked to check all the reasons that applied. The responses and percentages are presented in Table 9.
The main reason checked by 200 of the 372 respondents (54%) was that the collaborating faculty members did not perform up to expectation, but were not removed as an author of the article. Twenty-eight percent of respondents stated that they did so to advance a faculty member’s overall career. Providing recognition for a dissertation advisor or a superior was cited by 20% and 15% of the respondents, respectively. To assist a faculty member in obtaining a promotion was noted by 7% of the respondents, while helping to achieve tenure was indicated by 14%. Ten percent stated that they had done so to repay for being included as an author on another’s work.
Next, they were asked whether they had ever worked with a coauthor who had performed no work on a published jour-nal article. One hundred-fifteen (18%) of the respondents indicated this had occurred. Again, the main reason for in-cluding undeserved coauthors who had performed no work on a published business journal article was due to authors not performing as was agreed on and they were not removed from an authorship position. This reason was cited by 47 (41%) of the 115 coauthors. Providing recognition for a superior was indicated by 30%. To assist a faculty member in their overall
TABLE 8
Rewards at Least Partially Based on Gift Authorship (n=561)
Merit increases Promotions Tenure status
Response n % n % n %
career was cited by 20%. Recognizing a dissertation advisor was noted by 14%, while assisting a faculty member in re-ceiving tenure was reported by 11%. Paying back a faculty member was cited by 5% (see Table 10).
Other Considerations
All 698 respondents were asked whether university reports and accreditation reports regarding faculty research produc-tivity are accurate. It was felt that undeserved authorship might result in overstating faculty research achievements. Table 11 depicts that 171 (24%) of the respondents answered that these types of reports overstate the level of faculty pro-ductivity. Only 3% felt that these reports understate faculty productivity. The highest percentage of respondents, 42%, indicated that they did not know the answer. This probably reflects a lack of knowledge of the contents of these types of reports on the part of the general faculty.
All respondents were asked whether gift authorships are ever justified. Thirty-eight percent stated that there are
ex-TABLE 9 Reasons for Little Work
Reason n %
Coauthor did not perform as was agreed on—was not removed from article
200 54 To assist a faculty member in his/her overall career 106 28 To provide recognition for dissertation advisor 75 20 To provide recognition for a supervisor (department head,
dean, vice president)
54 15 To assist a faculty member seeking tenure 53 14 To payback a faculty member for identifying me on an
article
36 10 To assist a faculty member seeking a promotion 26 7
To provide access to data 19 5
To assist a faculty member in receiving a salary merit increase
12 3 To support AACSB academic qualifications 11 3
Other, please specify 82 22
tenuating conditions exist under which a gift authorship may be justified, whereas 40% stated that they are never justified. Several respondents indentified death or illness as justified reasons to gift an authorship. Another reason is when a per-son provides the data for a study. Others feel that if a perper-son has the idea for the study, but does very little or no work that they are still eligible to be identified as a coauthor. Still others feel that even a small contribution deserves identity as a coauthor. In general, these situations would not merit identification as an author and perhaps are more properly recognized by an acknowledgment of the contribution by a footnote.
Should guidelines be established to identify authors? Forty-five percent (315) of the 698 respondents stated “yes”. Who should establish these guidelines? Thirty-nine percent of these respondents stated that journal editors should be the responsible group. Ranked second was the AACSB, at 23%. A large percentage felt that the faculty authors should lead the effort to identify guidelines (see Table 12).
TABLE 10 Reasons for No Work
Reasons n %
Coauthor did not perform as agreed—was not removed from article
47 41 To provide recognition for a supervisor (department head,
dean, vice president)
35 30 To assist a faculty member in his/her overall career 23 20 To provide recognition for dissertation advisor 16 14 To assist a faculty member seeking tenure 13 11 To payback a faculty member for identifying me on an
article
6 5
To assist a faculty member seeking a promotion 5 4
To provide access to data 4 3
To support AACSB academic qualifications 3 2 To assist a faculty member in receiving salary merit increase 1 0
Other, please specify 22 19
84 E. J. MANTON ET AL.
TABLE 11
Accuracy of Scholarly Activity Reports (n=698)
Accuracy of reports n %
Overstated 171 24
Who Should Establish the Guidelines? (n=315)
Individual to establish guidelines n %
Journal editors 122 39
Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business 73 23
Faculty authors 63 20
Business deans 35 11
Other university administrators 1 0
Other, please specify 19 6
No response 2 <1
CONCLUSIONS
The purposes of the study were to determine business col-lege faculty views on undeserved authorships in published business journal articles, and their perceptions on the extent and impact of this practice on the faculty reward system. Seventy-five percent of the 698 respondents indicated that gift authorships are unethical. However, 22% of these re-spondents said that, although unethical, it is “the way things are done,” indicating that gift authorship is a routine practice. Eighty percent of the respondents stated that they had observed an author of a published article undeservedly adding a colleague as a coauthor. Twenty-seven percent of these respondents believed that the practice is extensive or very extensive. Almost 30% of these respondents believed that at least 10% of merit increases, promotions, and tenure awards are at least partially due to the gifting of an authorship, with about half of these indicating that the figure is more than 20%.
Of the 646 coauthor respondents, 58% indicated they had worked with a coauthor who had done very little work and 18% had collaborated with an author who actually did no work. Most of the undeserved coauthorships were due to a faculty member not performing work originally agreed on who was then not removed as an author. Other relatively high reasons for carrying a coauthor were to assist a faculty mem-ber in his or her overall career, aid in achieving tenure status, recognize a dissertation advisor, or recognize a superior.
The largest percentage of faculty respondents (40%) indi-cated that gifting an authorship is never justified. However, almost an equal percentage indicated that there were special circumstances under which such authorships would be per-missible. A coworker’s illness or death were cited. Obtaining
the study data from a person was mentioned as deserving of an authorship position on an article. Some felt that originat-ing the idea of the study was sufficient in and of itself. Such contributions are probably more appropriately handled by an acknowledgement or in a footnote reference.
There are no guidelines for identifying authors on busi-ness journals. Forty-five percent of the respondents believed that guidelines should be developed and most believe that the business journal editors should develop them. Such an agreement on authorship criteria would provide guidelines for appropriate identification as an author.
A major concern is that undeserved authorships may re-sult in overstating accreditation reports on faculty scholarly productivity. Business colleges may turn a blind eye to the practice of gift authorships to boost faculty productivity for university and accreditation reports. However, the AACSB and regional accreditation agencies stipulate that business colleges must report accurate data in their self-studies. This study has shown that a relatively high percentage of business faculty have witnessed the gifting of authorships. Further, they perceive that in some cases these authorships have led to undeserved rewards from the university rewards system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to express their appreciation to Mr. Anvit Dubey and Mr. Emmaneale Mendu for their assistance in the preparation of this manuscript. They aided in gathering and recording the data for the study, entered the data into a query language, developed statistics and tables, performed statistical tests, and prepared the document in proper format to submit for publication.
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