Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations.

Abstract

S cholarly activity is an expected and rewarded enterprise for many professionals (Keith-Spiegel & Koocher, 1985). In academic settings, decisions regarding promotion, tenure, and salary are heavily influenced not only by the number of publications in peerreviewed journals but also by the number of first-authored publications (Costa & Gatz, 1992). Similarly, in applied settings, professionals with strong publication records are often considered to have more competence and expertise than their less published counterparts.Clearly, authorship credit and authorship order are not trivial matters. Because of the importance of authorship credit, dilemmas may arise when more than one person is involved in a scholarly project. In this article, we specifically address collaborative efforts between faculty and undergraduate or graduate students. The importance of authorship in the faculty-student research context was underscored by Goodyear, Crego, and Johnston (1992), who found that authorship issues were among the "critical incidents" identified by experienced researchers in faculty-student research collaborations.The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussions regarding the determination of authorship credit and order of authorship-in the faculty-student research context. There are six parts to the article. To provide a context for the discussions, the first part presents four hypothetical cases. Because the final authorship decisions in these cases are based on considerations reviewed later in the article, the cases end before the final decisions were determined. The second part reviews available guidelines for determining authorship credit and order. The third part describes ethical issues related to authorship credit and authorship order when faculty and students collaborate. The fourth part of the article highlights several ethical principles that may provide assistance in resolving authorship dilemmas. The fifth part provides tentative recommendations for faculty who collaborate with students on scholarly projects. The final part revisits the four hypothetical cases with our opinions regarding what authorship decisions would have been appropriate. Hypothetical Cases Case IA student in a clinical psychology doctoral program conducted dissertation research at a practicum site. The initial idea for the study was developed between the practicum supervisor (a psychologist) and the student. The dissertation committee was composed of the chair, who was a psychology faculty member in the student's graduate department; the practicum supervisor; and another psychology faculty member in the same department. After the dissertation was approved, the chair of the committee raised the possibility of writing a journal article based on the dissertation. The student agreed to write the first and subsequent drafts of the manuscript, the committee chair agreed to supervise the writing process, and the practicum supervisor agreed to review drafts of the paper. On initial drafts, the student, practicum supervisor, and co...

Guidelines for Authorship Credit, Order, and Co-Inquirer Learning in Collaborative Faculty-Student SoTL Projects

“…However, they provide no guidelines for specifically how to weight Winston's model. Although the Fine and Kurdek (1993) guidelines provide an excellent general approach, their lack of clearly establishing how to define "relative" contributions in an objective or quantifiable way limits their utility.…”

“…Perhaps ironically, a framework for conceptualizing research skills proposed by Australians Willison and O'Regan (2007) For any research project, it is possible to locate the project itself on one of seven levels for each of the six facets, and to specifically identify the level on each facet that any collaborator is performing. This Framework provides a way to easily identify the relative contributions of each collaborator as recommended by both Fine and Kurdek (1993) and the APA (2010), and maintain a focus on the process of research (Childress, 2015;Gilpin, 2009;Malachowski, 2012;Temple et al, 2010) and the primacy of student learning in SoTL research. Below, I outline one way to integrate this processoriented approach into existing product-oriented disciplinary guidelines to create a new set of guidelines for best practices, authorship credit, and authorship order in collaborative faculty-student SoTL projects.…”

“…Finally, Fine and Kurdek (1993) developed what is likely the most widely used set of guidelines specifically for working collaboratively with students, cited over 200 times. They identified the key issue in determining student authorship:…”

“…Determining authorship credit and order in collaborative research projects has been the subject of much disciplinary debate in higher education (Fine & Kurdek, 1993;McGlynn, 2015;Winston, 1985;Zare, 2014), and conflicts between collaborators over authorship are not uncommon (Sandler & Russell, 2005). For SoTL scholars, many of whom engage in interdisciplinary research, the problem becomes even more acute because there are no established guidelines for working across disciplines (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2006).…”

“…For SoTL scholars, many of whom engage in interdisciplinary research, the problem becomes even more acute because there are no established guidelines for working across disciplines (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2006). Further, SoTL has increasingly embraced involving students, especially undergraduates, as co-inquirers into SoTL scholarship (Bovill, Cook-Sather, & Felten, 2011;Felten, 2013;Felten, Bagg, Bumbry, Hill, Hornsby, Pratt, & Weller, 2013), and research collaborations between faculty and students involve unique inequalities and power dynamics (Fine & Kurdek, 1993;Thompson, 1994). Additionally, unlike Boyer's (1990) other three scholarships (i.e., discovery, integration, and application), SoTL is uniquely focused on research into student learning.…”