5.3 Ethical Issues Related to Authorship
Academic authorship involves communicating scholarly work, establishing priority for their discoveries, and building peer-reputation, and comes with intrinsic burden of acceptance of the responsibility for the contents of the work. It is the primary basis of evaluation for employment, promotion, and other honors.
There are several important research conduct and ethics related issues connected to authorship of research papers as described by Newman and Jones [7], and are summarized herewith in the context of engineering research.
Credit for research contributions is attributed in three major ways in research publications: by authorship (of the intended publication), citation (of previously published or formally presented work), and through a written acknowledgment (of some inputs to the present research). Authorship establishes both accountability and gives due credit. A person is expected to be listed as an author only when associated as a significant contributor in research design, data interpretation, or writing of the paper.
Including “guest” or “gift” (coauthorship bestowed on someone with little or no contribution to the work) authors dilutes the contribution of those who actually did the work, inappropriately inflates credentials of the listed authors [8], and is ethically a red flag highlighting research misconduct [9]. Sometimes, the primary author dubiously bestows coauthorship on a junior faculty or a student to boost their chances of employment or promotion, which can be termed as Career-boost authorship [10].
There is also an unfortunate malpractice of coauthorship that can be described as “Career-preservation authorship” wherein a head of the department, a dean, a provost, or other administrators are added as Coauthors because of quid pro quo arrangement wherein the principal author benefits from a “good relation” with the superiors and the administrator benefits from authorship without doing the required work for it [11].
Sometimes, an actual contributor abstains from the list of authors due to non- disclosed conflict of interest within the organization [10]. Such coauthorships can be termed as ghost coauthorship. Full disclosure of all those involved in the research is important so that evaluation can happen both on the basis of findings, and also whether there was influence from the conflicts. In another type of questionable authorship, some researchers list one another as coauthors as a reciprocal gesture with no real collaboration except minimal reading and editing, without truly reviewing the work threadbare.
Some authors, in trying to acquire a sole-authored work, despite relying on signif- icant contribution to the research work from others, recognize that effort only by an acknowledgment, thereby misrepresenting the contributions of the listed authors. The unrecognized “author” is as a consequence, unavailable to readers for elaboration.
All listed authors have the full obligation of all contents of a research article, and so naturally, they should also be made aware of a journal submission by the
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corresponding author. It is imperative that their consent is sought with respect to the content and that they be agreeable to the submission. In case of misconduct like inappropriate authorship, while the perpetrator is easier to find, the degree of appropriate accountability of the coauthors is not always obvious. Being able to quantify the contributions so as to appropriately recognize and ascertain the degree of associated accountability of each coauthor, is appealing.
Double submission is an important ethical issue related to authorship, which involves submission of a paper to two forums simultaneously. The motivation is to increase publication possibility and possibly decrease time to publication. Reputed journals want to publish original papers, i.e., papers which have not appeared else- where, and strongly discourage double submission.
References
1. Swazey, J. P., Louis, K. S., & Anderson, M. S. (1994) The ethical training of graduate students requires serious and continuing attention.Chronicle of Higher Education.
2. Swazey, J. P. (1993). Ethical problems in academic research.American Scientist, 542–553.
3. Nuremberg Code. (1949). Trials of war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, (Vol. 2, pp. 181–182). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office
4. Whitbeck, C. (1998).Ethics in engineering practice and research. New York: Cambridge University Press.
5. Martyn, C. (2003). Fabrication, falsification and plagiarism.QJM: An International Journal Of Medicine,96(4), 243–244.
6. Zietman, A. (2018). Falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism: The unholy trinity of scientific writing.
7. Newman, A., & Jones, R. (2006). Authorship of research papers: Ethical and professional issues for short-term researchers.Journal of Medical Ethics,32(7), 420–423.
8. Jackson, C. I., & Prados, J. W. (1983). Honor in science.American Scientist,71, 462–464.
9. Lock, S. (1995). Lessons from the Pearce affair: Handling scientific fraud.British Medical Journals,310(6994), 1547-1548.
10. Jones, A. W. (1996). Some thoughts and reflections on authorship.Alcohol and Alcoholism, 31(1), 11–15.
11. Altman, L., & Melcher, L. (1983). Fraud in science.British Medical Journal (Clin Res Ed), 286(6383), 25.
Chapter 6
Technical Writing and Publishing
As engineering researchers, we need to write things down. New knowledge is some- thing that can be written down and can be read by someone else. Writing communi- cates thoughts and ideas and, of course, new knowledge. A researcher is seen by the community primarily through writing. A researcher would want people to engage with the output of the work, new knowledge, and they do that through what has been written. Writing is not only about communicating ideas, writing is also part of the creative discovery process. Writing is not something that should take place at the end when everything else is done. It is an integral part of the research process.
In research, there are probably going to be many aspects that need to be taken into account and normally the problems that one needs to deal with are complex.
Writing is a tool that assists in problem solving. By writing, we mean all the forms of written work such as equations, drawings, graphs and, of course, what we are going to concentrate on here, writing with words.
Technical writing is connected to a variety of documents related to various aspects of engineering, and can be grouped into four major categories:
1. Reports and communications: Most engineering technical writing involves prepa- ration of various “reports” which are an important aspect of product development, technological advancement and dissemination of technical information, and often includes engineering drawings. Reports help to communicate technical viability of designs to the management as also the customers.
2. Technical papers, articles, and books for purposes of education, teaching, and information sharing: Books on technical topics need unique attributes, are gen- erally authored by academics (or professionals) in their area of experience and knowledge, and are meant for a wider audience compared to technical reports.
Papers and thesis (typically one per degree) are other reports put together by researchers. It is quite likely that an engineer would write papers throughout one’s career.
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50 6 Technical Writing and Publishing 3. Patents: Lawyers usually draft Patent, but the outcome hinges on a lot of writing and searching on the part of the inventors and so in this book, the focus would be on the inventor’s part of the patent application.
4. Operational manuals, instructions, or procedures: This sort of writing is not addressed in this book and is usually written by a technical expert with possible inputs from a legal expert.
Technical writing is integral to research methodology because whatever is not communicated in writing may be deemed to be not communicated at all. This chapter aims to provide easy to follow guidelines to engineering students and working engi- neers on writing effective reports and technical papers. Technical communication is an integral part of every researcher’s work and so this chapter aims to provide a concise guide to eliminate writing challenges and addresses technical paper writing in particular with the help of technical writing tool LaTeX. Efficiency in communi- cation of technical information is a result of organized and structured following of research methodologies.