The document discusses problems with traditional authorship practices in scientific publishing and proposes contributorship as an alternative. Traditional authorship obscures individual contributions, allows honorary authorships, and does not support growing specialization in science. Contributorship would provide a formal record of specific contributions using a standardized taxonomy and address issues of fairness, accountability, and efficient allocation of resources.

1. Redressing imbalances in the kind of science
that gets done, and who gets credit for it
Alex.Holcombe@sydney.edu.au
@ceptional

2. Redressing imbalances in the kind of science that gets done and who gets credit for it
Abstract: If we want good science to get done, we should give credit to those who do the work involved.
Scientists seek credit particularly for intellectual contributions and for what Robert Merton called priority –
discovering something new or being the first to describe an important theory. Being an author on a scientific
publication is critical for these, but more broadly, authorship provides the only formal record of any kind of
scientific work. This attribution system that we have inherited from the 17th century is prone to leave out some
who do work critical for the increasingly collaborative sciences of today. I’ll describe these problems with
traditional authorship and make the case for a new system, one that is already partially implemented at hundreds
of journals: contributorship.
Bio:
Alex Holcombe is a professor of psychology at the University of Sydney. Inside the lab, he studies capacity limits on human visual
processing. Outside of the lab, he has been active in open science initiatives at PLoS ONE, CurateScience.org, PsyOA.org, and the preprint
server PsyArxiv.org. Five years ago, he co-founded a new article type, the Registered Replication Report, and two years ago he co-founded
the new Association for Psychological Science journal Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, which welcomes
various kinds of contributions to improve our science.

3. Scientific norms
• Universalism
• Scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/
attributes of its participants
• Communalism
• Common ownership of findings and data
• Disinterestedness
• Focus on identifying the truth and not about money or one’s
own advancement
• Organized skepticism
• Evidence required, which is scrutinized
“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
Detailed methods descriptions, data sharing
Admit problems with one’s theory and studies
Critical peer review

4. What are we doing about it?

5. https://www.flickr.com/photos/eileansiar/3815341988

6. https://www.flickr.com/photos/eileansiar/3815341988
• Certification of responsibility for content
• Assignment of credit
• Hiring and promotion, prestige, grant-getting
Authorship is important

7. Norms and values
Need to know who did what
Traditional authorship
Contributorship
https://www.cell.com/pb/assets/raw/shared/guidelines/CRediT
-taxonomy.pdf
https://sydney.edu.au/medicine/fmrc/about/index.php

9. Merton’s Scientific norms
• Universalism
• Scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/
attributes of its participants
• Communalism
• Common ownership of findings and data
• Disinterestedness
• Focus on identifying the truth and not about money or one’s
own advancement
• Organized skepticism
• Evidence required, which is scrutinized
Priority
Intellectual contributions
“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
Data sharing, detailed methods descriptions
Admit problems with one’s theory and studies
Critical peer review

10. “Intellectual contribution”
https://www.gs.unsw.edu.au/policy/documents/researchauthorproc.pdf
•Substantial contributions to the conception or design
of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or
interpretation of data for the work; AND
•Drafting the work or revising it critically for
important intellectual content; AND
•Final approval of the version to be published; AND
•Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the
work in ensuring that questions related to the
accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are
appropriately investigated and resolved.
Authorship criteria

11. it is possible that even this single author might not 'deserve' authorship according
to the replaceability principle! This might be the case, e.g., for an an extremely
straightforward and obvious followup experiment to previous work (perhaps even
explicitly suggested by the authors of an earlier prominent publication): here, if one
researcher hadn't conducted the project, others certainly would have, and likely
without many substantive differences -- so that even the lone researcher wouldn't
be irreplaceable!
http://perception.yale.edu/Brian/misc/musings/bjs-authorship.html
the 'Replaceability Principle'
Authorship criteria
“Intellectual contribution”
Replication
studies would not
have any authors
listed.
"What marks out modern science is not the conduct of
experiments", but rather "the formation of a critical community
capable of assessing discoveries and replicating results."
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific
Revolution, by David Wootton

12. Resource allocation

13. https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/jul/14/academics-concerned-over-exploitative-global-research-partnerships
https://www.ocregister.com/2013/11/07/uci-pharma-professor-helps-students-balance-gpa-and-life/
• Universalism
Who does the science?
Universalism
Diversity and inclusion

14. Authorship
Writing-based
Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia
“Intellectual contribution”

15. •Substantial contributions to the conception or
design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or
interpretation of data for the work; AND
•Drafting the work or revising it critically for
important intellectual content; AND
•Final approval of the version to be published; AND
•Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the
work in ensuring that questions related to the
accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are
appropriately investigated and resolved.
The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the
following 4 criteria:
All those designated as authors
should meet all four criteria for
authorship, and all who meet the
four criteria should be identified
as authors.
http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html
Writing-based
“Intellectual”

16. •Substantial contributions to the conception or
design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or
interpretation of data for the work; AND
•Drafting the work or revising it critically for
important intellectual content; AND
•Final approval of the version to be published; AND
•Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the
work in ensuring that questions related to the
accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are
appropriately investigated and resolved.
The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the
following 4 criteria:
All those designated as authors
should meet all four criteria for
authorship, and all who meet the
four criteria should be identified
as authors.
The criteria are not intended for
use as a means to disqualify
colleagues from authorship who
otherwise meet authorship
criteria by denying them the
opportunity to meet criterion #s
2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals
who meet the first criterion
should have the opportunity to
participate in the review,
drafting, and final approval of
the manuscript.
http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

17. https://twitter.com/ADAlthousePhD/status/1103749592410144769

18. Resource allocation
• To those doing important work of replication
• To specialists needed for today’s science
Writing-based
“Intellectual”

19. An author is considered anyone
involved with
initial research design,
data collection and analysis,
manuscript drafting,
and final approval.
Sophia Cruwell Ekaterina Damer

20. “We surveyed close to 6000 of the top cited authors in all
science categories with a list of 25 research activities”
Patience, G. S. et al. (2019). PLOS ONE, 14(1), e0198117.
• Strong disagreement
• Can there ever be agreement
on any particular set of criteria?

21. Authorship and authorship order: Not a good indication of who did what

22. The problem of honorary authorship
Examples of activities that alone (without other
contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship
are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a
research group or general administrative support…
An author is considered anyone involved with
initial research design, data collection and
analysis, manuscript drafting, and final approval.
However, the following do not necessarily qualify
for authorship: providing funding or resources,
mentorship, or contributing research but not
helping with the publication itself.
“the prevalence of HA is challenging to assess but seems to be
between 14.3% and 41.4% in top dermatology journals.” 44.0% of responders “reported at least one co-author who
only performed tasks which should not merit actual
authorship according to the ICMJE guidelines”
Honorary Authorships in Surgical Literature https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00268-018-4831-3
Kayapa, B., Jhingoer, S., Nijsten, T., & Gadjradj, P. S. (2018). The prevalence of honorary
authorship in the dermatological literature. British Journal of Dermatology.

23. Norms and values
• Priority
• Intellectual contribution
Need to know who did what
• Fairness
• Efficient resource allocation
Traditional authorship
• Obscure, little-understood criteria and widely-varying interpretations
• High disagreement on what is sufficient for authorship
• “Honorary” authorship is rife.
• Doesn’t reveal who did what.
• Lack of accountability for individual facets.
• Impedes quantification of facets
• Impedes specialization
https://www.cell.com/pb/assets/raw/shared/guidelines/CRediT
-taxonomy.pdf
https://sydney.edu.au/medicine/fmrc/about/index.php

24. Specialization

25. Norms and values
• Priority
• Intellectual contribution
Need to know who did what
• Fairness
• Efficient resource allocation
Traditional authorship
• Obscure, little-understood criteria and widely-varying interpretations
• High disagreement on what is sufficient for authorship
• “Honorary” authorship is rife.
• Doesn’t reveal who did what.
• Lack of accountability for individual facets.
• Impedes quantification of facets
• Impedes specialization
Contributorship
https://www.cell.com/pb/assets/raw/shared/guidelines/CRediT
-taxonomy.pdf
https://sydney.edu.au/medicine/fmrc/about/index.php

26. CRediT – Contributor Roles Taxonomy
Contributorship: Who did what

27. Contributorship: Who did what

28. CRediT – Contributor Roles Taxonomy
Contributorship
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02084-8
Allen et al. (2014)

29. 1 Conceptualization Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
2 Data curation
Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for
interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
3 Formal analysis Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesize study data.
4 Funding acquisition Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
5 Investigation
Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
6 Methodology
Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
7 Project administration
Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
8 Resources
Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis
tools.
9 Software
Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of
existing code components.
10 Supervision Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
11 Validation
Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research
outputs.
12 Visualization Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
13 Writing – original draft
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
14 Writing – review & editing
CRediT – Contributor Roles Taxonomy

30. Publishers
American Association of Petroleum Geologists
BMJ
British Psychological Society
Cell Press
Dartmouth Journal Services
De Gruyter Open
Duke University Press
eLife
Elsevier
Evidence Based Communications
F1000 Research
Geological Society of London
Health & Medical Publishing Group
International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology
The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery
KAMJE Press
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
MA Healthcare
MIT Press
Oman Medical Specialty Board
Oxford University Press
Public Library of Science (Plos)
SAE International
ScholarOne
SLACK Incorporated
Springer
Springer Publishing Company
Wiley VCH
Wolters Kluwer
Integrators
Allen Press/ Peer Track
Aries Systems/ Editorial Manager
Clarivate Analytics/ ScholarOne
Coko Foundation/ PubSweet
River Valley/ ReView
Publishing Outlets
Gates Open Research
HRB Open Research
Wellcome Open Research
Institutions
University of Glasgow
https://twitter.com/CatrionaFennell/status/1147119169831350272

31. Benefits of adopting a standardized contributorship system
1. A reduction in honorary authorship and the ambiguity
of researcher contributions.
2. Those interested in specific kinds of contributions can
assess researchers on that specific basis.
3. Cross-disciplinary and cross-subfield collaborations will
be facilitated.
4. The development of scientific software will be
facilitated.
5. The contributions of statisticians and others in
“specialist roles” will be more appropriately recognized
(and eventually, rewarded).
6. Meta-science will be greatly facilitated.

33. Balazs Aczel Marton Kovacs

34. Norms and values
• Priority
• Intellectual contribution
Need to know who did what
• Fairness
• Efficient resource allocation
Traditional authorship
• Obscure, little-understood criteria and widely-varying interpretations
• High disagreement on what is sufficient for authorship
• “Honorary” authorship is rife.
• Doesn’t reveal who did what.
• Lack of accountability for individual facets.
• Impedes quantification of facets
• Impedes specialization
Contributorship
https://www.cell.com/pb/assets/raw/shared/guidelines/CRediT
-taxonomy.pdf
https://sydney.edu.au/medicine/fmrc/about/index.php