Ethical norms governing fair credit in research, field-dependent conventions, and guidelines from particular journals as to how authors, editors, and reviewers are to behave.
A graduate student presents a draft of a paper and is told that the professor funding a project is always the final co-author regardless of his contribution to the paper.
A graduate student writes a paper and submits it to the Device Research Conference with his professor which does not mention others who had contributed to the research.
A graduate student identifies the weaknesses of a researcher's research and sends him a technical note concerning the topic. She is willing to publish her work and co-author with him.
A professor discusses a paper he is working on with a graduate student. The graduate student offers information to the professor from his thesis work that the professor then includes in the paper. The student would like to be listed as a co-author.
A post-doc discovers a synthesis procedure during her research and discusses it with her boss who includes it in a paper he is working on. The professor does not include her as a co-author on the paper.
A professor publishes a paper using his graduate students' data that has not been published elsewhere. The students question whether they have been adequately acknowledged.
A post-doctoral student is working with two professors on two projects that overlap. One of the professors wants to publish a paper without notifying the other professor.
A Ph.D. student arranged collaborative research with a professor from another university. The professor and the student disagree on authorship convention for a paper the student is working on.
A doctoral student is working on her dissertation. She begins a paper for publication with three months more research needed. The doctor in charge of the lab fabricates data in order to finish the paper sooner so that he will receive a grant that will keep the lab open.
New York: Cambridge University Press. Other keywords for this article: ethics and prudence; preferences vs. values; negligence; trust, distrust; ambiguity; moral ambiguity; responsibilities, general; professional responsibility; public safety; worker safety; laboratory safety; design process; engineering competence; environmental issues, global; environmental issues, chemical; conflict of interest; ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies; harassment, sexual harassment and aggression; workplace relationships; research misconduct; falsification and fabrication; plagiarism; human subjects in research; animals in scientific research.
If you do biomedical research, it is useful to read the following brief sections of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" This statement was published in 1997 in the New England Journal of Medicine 335: 309-315, and was updated May 2000.
The "Obligations of Authors" section of the Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research by the American Chemical Society (ACS). These guidelines have served as a model for many other societies, including the Optical Society of America and the American Geological Society. This is the January 2000 version.
Three sections from the second (1995) edition of On Being a Scientist (OBAS) from National Academy Press:
Council of Biology (CBE) Editors Editorial Policy Committee (John C. Bailar, Marcia Angell, Sharon Boots, Karl Heumann, Melanie Miller, Evelyn Myers, Nancy Palmer, Sidney Weinhouse, and Patricia Woolf). 1990. Ethics and Policy in Scientific Publication. Bethesda, Maryland: Council of Biology Editors, Inc.
This volume contains descriptions of ethical problems and abuses that arise or are discovered in the process of publishing scientific research, together with the results of an empirical study of the frequency with which scientific journal editors encounter them. Topics include redundant publication, data-dredging, conflicts of interest, withdrawal of an accepted paper, prior publication in a "throwaway" journal, prior publication in a non-English journal, disputes over authorship. Note that the Council of Biology Editors has now become the Council of Science Editors.
Croll, Roger P. (1984) "The noncontributing author: An issue of credit and responsibility." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 27 (3): 401-407.
An early and influential article about the problem of "honorary authorship", a problem that has spurred some scientific societies to issue statements of standards for authorship.
Jones, Anne Hudson and Faith McLellan (Editors). (2000) Ethical Issues in Biomedical Publication. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
This collection of essays includes several that specifically address issues of authorship including: "Changing Traditions of Authorship," "The Imagined Author," and "Conflicts of Interest." Also included are essays about remedies and responses to problems which include attention to authorship issues.
Merton, Robert K. (1968) "The Matthew effect in science." Science 159: 56-63.
The title evokes the passage in the gospel according to Matthew according to which those that have get more. The article argues that name of a prestigious person as author tends to enhance the visibility of a publication and perceived legitimacy of its findings, so others are likely to seek collaboration or at least co-authorship with such people, but the credit tends to then go to the well-known person.
Rennie, Drummond; V. Yank and Linda Emanuel. (1997) "When authorship fails: A proposal to make contributors accountable." J Amer. Med. Assoc. 278: 579-585.
A proposal for a policy change to make investigators less likely to seek or accept credit through the mechanism of undeserved authorship.