Standard: RR: Authors Without Borders: Continuing Investigation of International Authorship Norms among Scientists and Engineers

Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, Inc., Triangle Park NC

Investigators

Abstract

In science, authorship of a research article or report is widely used as an indicator of scientific success. This can result in significant conflict in any collaboration, but international collaborations pose unique challenges with respect to ethical issues and conflict related to scientific authorship. Social norms about scientific authorship differ markedly across national contexts in ways that may create confusion or conflict to an extent not typical in domestic forms of scientific collaboration. This project will explore these issues by studying international norms surrounding scientific authorship, sources and explanations for conflict surrounding authorship in international collaborations, and the extent to which the society in which a researcher lives shapes their ideas about authorship practices. In doing so it will identify roadblocks to effective international collaboration, and develop a set of best practices and a set of guidelines to address sources of conflict in scientific authorship. Findings will also be used to develop educational materials on these issues for domestic and international scientists. This cross-national study of authorship norms and of conflict surrounding issues of scientific authorship will develop a social survey for national and international dissemination across a wide array of scientific disciplines. This project will expand upon a previous study by these investigators in which they researched these issues in two disciplines across four nations. Surveys for this project will be based on those from the pilot study and will be translated into thirteen languages and administered to scientists working in eighty-two nations in a wide-variety of disciplines. The survey will consist of demographic questions, open-ended responses, and Likert-scale survey items measuring levels of agreement and disagreement about authorship practices in international collaborations. The survey will yield qualitative and quantitative data that will be analyzed using established qualitative and quantitative analysis software. Findings from the study will be disseminated in publications and conferences, and through their integration into existing training modules for promoting responsible conduct of research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.