Authorship ethics: an overview of research on the state of practice

TL;DR

This paper reviews empirical research from 2014 to 2020 to understand authorship practices and issues across different research disciplines, highlighting the complexities and ethical considerations involved.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of how various disciplines handle authorship practices and the associated ethical issues based on recent empirical studies.

Findings

Discipline-specific authorship practices vary widely.

Common issues include authorship disputes and lack of clear guidelines.

Research highlights the need for standardized authorship policies.

Abstract

Authorship ethics is a central topic of discussion in research ethics fora. There are various guidelines for authorship (i.e., naming and order). It is not easy to decide the authorship in the presence of varying authorship guidelines. This paper gives an overview of research on authorship practices and issues. It presents a review of 16 empirical research papers published between 2014 -- 2020. The objective is to learn how various research disciplines handle authorship. What are the authorship practices in various research disciplines, and what are the issues associated with these practices?