Who Gets Credit?

Posted August 24, 2015

External Article: Inside Higher Ed

According to Inside Higher Ed, a recent study done by John P. Walsh, professor in the School of Public Policy, and Public Policy M.S. graduate Sahra Jabbehdari found that 33 percent of scholarly papers in the biological, physical, or social sciences had at least one "guest" author, or someone whose contribution did not meet some definitions for co-authorship. And 55 percent of papers had at least one "ghost" author, someone who made significant contributions but was not named.

"We are in an era of high-stakes evaluation," John Walsh said, in which professors are evaluated all the time on number of papers written, citations of those papers and so forth. Likewise departments are rated as productive (or not) based on such data. "We know authorship is important," he said. "But how do we assign credit?"

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