Authorship in Collective Scientific Publications: Taxonomy of Roles, Contribution Politics and Responsibility

Abstract

The study found that every year there is a growing trend towards an increase in collective publications not only in technical, but also in social and humanitarian sciences. In this article, author describes the situation regarding the essential characteristics and problems of authorship regulation in collective scientific publications. The research used methods of analysis of recommendations, regulatory instructions, requirements of scientific journals regarding the distribution of roles based on differentiation and identification of contributions in collective publications. The generalization of the obtained data made it possible to find out the motives and problems of the distribution of the roles of the lead author, co-authors and participants of the publication. The article attempts to provide answers to questions about identifying their contribution to research and publication, establishing the order of authors in the list of authors of collective publications, responsibility of the lead author, corresponding author and co-authors for research and collective publication. The author substantiates the need for culture formation and implementation the policy of contributions and responsibility into the practice of research activity of Ukrainian scientists, national specialized and other scientific publications. A methodological basis for the formation and implementation of the contribution policy has been developed, based on the differentiation of the taxonomy of roles in a collective publication. This methodology involves a combination of horizontal and vertical approaches to assessing the contribution and distribution of roles in a collective science work based on the analysis of functional and hierarchical structure of roles taxonomy. Performing a functional analysis of the horizontal level allows identifying a group of persons who correspond to the status of "author" and establish two groups of roles — “authors” and “non-authors”/”participants” of collective science publication. The next one, hierarchical analysis is carried out among all those who acquired the status of “author” as a result of horizontal structuring. It ensures the formation of a vertical substructure of the taxonomy of roles, which includes the roles of “lead author”, “corresponding author” and “co-authors” of a collective publication. The author emphasizes that an important issue of contribution policy and an integral condition for the quality and reliability of a collective scientific publication is the responsibility that rests on the lead author, corresponding author and co-authors for the collective research and content of the publication.