We could perhaps say that the interactor is the author of a particular performancewithin an electronic story system, or the architect of a particular part of the virtual world, but we must distinguish this derivative authorship from the originating authorship of the system itself.

But work in the world has force. It makes a claim. It can bring power; a strange, vertiginous power of having made something that moves people and this power can change the shape of a practice. It changes the shape of a self. I am not certain I want to become whoever it is I would become if I stopped putting things away.

That’s what I’m not sure I’m ready for.

Our reporting, analysis, and commentary are human-authored

One challenge is whether – or how – this conversation becomes generative of traditional scholarship, such as a more linear, peer-reviewed article.

Defining the New Ghost

part of my love for the arts comes naturally from my profession as a writer. the irony here is that i do not have the words to adequately formulate just what this craft has given me. if i was forced to, i’d sum it up as power. these words i write are little pieces of me; it’s why i’ll never buy into the ‘separate the art from the artist’ nonsense. this work did not birth itself. it could not birth itself; it needed my pen to make it be. first there were only ideas but in my hands, stories and arguments and analysis live.

Poverty, by America

One challenge is whether – or how – this conversation becomes generative of traditional scholarship, such as a more linear, peer-reviewed article.

The collection at the Newberry includes a bound copy of “The Federalist” once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Besides penciling his initials in the book, Jefferson wrote those of the founding fathers alongside their essays, which had originally been published anonymously.

Attribution to Defoe is based on internal textual relationship to his works of proven authorship together with supporting external evidence. Cf. J. H. Moore. Defoe in the pillory. Bloomington, Ind., 1939, p. 126-188. However, see also P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens, The canonisation of Daniel Defoe, for a refutation of Defoe's authorship of this work

when we attribute a quote to a person, we are not just saying "I believe this"; we are also saying "this person supports my belief." If we attribute the quote to the wrong person, that claim is false.

Commonplace Books, Quotation and Misquotation Sources, Researching Quotes Sources for good quotations and for researching questionable quotes.

XII.

VII.

XII.

VII.

my love is young!

sweet shepherd

William Shakespeare

The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator.

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

the author of THE LAST MAN, PERKIN WARBECK &c. &c.

the preface. As far as I can recollect, it was entirely written by him.

the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity

“We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron

my hideous progeny

FRANKENSTEIN, by MARY W. SHELLEY.

regardless of their contribution to the publication

why computers work to present texts in the way that they do.

could both study and create “non-print,” “electronic,” and “visual” texts

Kuhn (1970, p. 167) commented that science education tends to elide the processthrough which knowledge has been constructed, whereas students of other subjectsare exposed to varying interpretations over time. As a result, he suggested, sciencestudents are blind to the history of their subject, seeing it only as unproblematicprogress. The interview data suggest that this is indeed a point of difference betweenthe ‘arts’ and ‘science’ students in this sample. While both of them tend to have adualistic view of science itself, the ‘arts’ students seem to be more at ease with arelativistic view of knowledge in history.

Another Human Solution

shun historical perspective in favor of future-oriented technological determinism

Identity intersects with education, education with power and power always intersects with identity. I want all of us to shine light onto these intersections and then do better because we looked and learned.

In her podcast, Audrey likened unwanted annotation to someone entering your house and writing on your walls without invitation.

One challenge is whether – or how – this conversation becomes generative of traditional scholarship, such as a more linear, peer-reviewed article.

(i) those who make only an occasional or rela- tively minor contribution to a piece of research; (ii) those not seen as, or treated as, 'proper' researchers (e.g., technicians, research assistants).

(d) those responsible for a key step (e.g., the original idea or hypothesis, the theoretical interpreta- tion);

(a) those who work together on the research project throughout its duration or for a large part of it, or who make frequent or substantial contribution; (b) those whose names or posts appear in the original research proposal ~9; (c) those responsible for one or more of the main elements of the research (e.g. the experimental de- sign, construction of research equipment, execution of the experiment, analysis and interpretation of the data 20 writing up the results in a paper).

putative criteria for distin- guishing 'collaborators' from other researchers.

one possibility would be to include as a 'collaborator' anyone providing an input to a particu- lar piece of research. However, this weak definition of collaboration would bring in such large numbers of collaborators that it would be too unwieldy for all practical purposes.

A.E. Nudelman and C.E. Landers, 1972, The failure of 100 divided by 3 to equal 333, American Sociologist 7, 9.

Using a combination of questionnaires and interviews, Nudel- man and Landers [48] found that for the case of a three-author article the first author received 75% of the intellectual credit of a single-author paper, the second author 62% and the third author 58%. Thus, a three-author paper would be given a total of nearly twice the credit of a single-author paper.

They found that scientific output as mea- sured by publications is closely dependent on the frequency of collaboration among authors.

high productivity (in terms of published output) is indeed correlated with high levels of collaboration [1-4,24,30,51,52,58,60].

A.J. Lotka. 1926, The frequency distribution of scientific productivity, Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 16, 317-323.

A pioneering insight into the productivity of sci- entists was provided by Lotka in 1926--an insight since confirmed by numerous others. He showed that the number of authors producing n papers is propor- tional to 1/n 2 [32]. Thus, the number of researchers producing just one paper in a given period of time is two orders of magnitude greater than the number of researchers producing 10 papers in the same time and four orders of magnitude greater that the number producing 100 papers. Lotka's findings have led some investigators to ask if prolific authors tend to collaborate more than less prolific authors.

We also show that co-authorship is no more than a partial indicator of collaboration

(6) International col/ahoralÍon. International col-laborative behaviour among scientists has beenstudied by Frame and Carpenter [6]. The degree ofcollaboration was found to be higher in basicfields of science (such as physics, mathematics,and chemistry) than in applied fields (such asengineering and technology, clinical medicine andbiomedical research). Frame and Carpenter fur-ther found that(a) the extent of international collaboration wasinversely proportional to the size of a country’sscientific enterprise, and(b) extra-scientific factors such as geography,politics, and language, played a strong role indetermining who collaborates with whom in theinternational scientific community.

5) Collaboration between organizations. Scien-tists and engineers employed in different organiza-tions often collaborate on research projects ofmutual interest. Such collaboration may be spurredby informal contacts or prior acquaintance of theresearchers. It is also possible that when a scientistleaves an organization and joins another, he or shemay carry on an unfinished research project in thenew organization with the continued collaborationof former colleagues. Inter-organizational col-laboration may also be necessitated by a commun-ity of concerns (as between two government agen-cies) or by the complexity of a research project, orwhen researchers in one organization may need touse expensive equipment or specialized serviceavailable at another organization. According torecent data published by the U.S. National ScienceFoundation, research collaboration between in-dustries and academic institutions has been gradu-ally increasing [ 1 1 J.

upert1isor- assistant collaboration. Earlierstudies on the sociology of science, for example, byCole and Cole [5], have shown the existence of astratified structure within the scientific commun-ity. In research projects requiring extensive use oflaboratory facilities or very specialized equipment,the principal investigator is often assisted by anarray of laboratory assistants and technicians.

(2) Collaboration among colleagues. It is a verycommon practice in corporate research centers fora number of colleagues to be working on one ormore projects, each contributing expertise in adifferent aspect of the project. In interdisciplinaryfields such as environment, energy, or space re-search, scientists and engineers from a wide varietyof specialities often collaborate. It is not uncom-mon for chemists, chemical engineers, materialsengineers, biophysicists, and other specialists to beworking together in an interdisciplinary project.Husband-and-wife teams can also be included inthis category.

( 1 ) Teacher-pupil collaboration. This is a verycommon mode of collaboration in an academicsetting. The professor in a university departmentprovides the ideas and guidance, and sometimesalso the funds from a research grant, and theresearch assistant or student does most of thebench work. The resulting project report, con-ference paper, or journal article usually carries thenames of both the professor and the student. It isnot uncommon for a professor to be guiding severalstudents in different research projects at the sametime

Bibliometric studies of research collaboration:A review

Friedlander argues that for digital humanities to thrive, "one component must be a set of organizational topics and questions that do not bind research into legacy categories and do invite interesting collaborations that will allow for creative cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques and then spur new questions to be pursued by colleagues and students"  [Friedlander 2009, 6]. As she suggests, the digital humanities need to move beyond large numbers of small, uncoordinated projects. Collaborative projects attract more resources and more attention. If properly designed, they also may be more sustainable, creating platforms on which new projects can be constructed. The plethora of boutique digital humanities projects risks the same fate as most digital learning objects. While intended for general use, they lack a common technical platform, common data structures, and common means to aggregate or decompose modules to a useful level of granularity [Borgman et al. 2008].

Negotiate and Document Your Role. Faculty members and job candidates should negotiate their responsibilities and departmental roles in the creation of digital objects and the use, development, and support of information technologies in their teaching, service, and research. Faculty members and candidates for positions that combine administrative and faculty responsibilities, including the development and support of technological infrastructures, must negotiate terms for the evaluation of their work.

deserved

Such anecdotes add to the body of evidence that the medical literature continues to be systematically manipulated to promote specific products.

With respect to the ICMJE guidelines, the “triple-lock” formula for distinguishing authors from contributors should be discarded. A model in which a variety of contributions require an individual or entity to be listed as an author should replace it.

How Industry Uses the ICMJE Guidelines to Manipulate Authorship—And How They Should Be Revised

The “triple-lock” formula also helps downplay the importance of planning and writing texts. Only in clause 2 is “drafting” acknowledged as a component of authorship, but since this clause can be satisfied by revision, it enables the planner and writer to be excluded. In reality, drafting constitutes a substantial intellectual contribution to the form and content of manuscripts. It is for this reason that industry seeks to control it, while evading the visibility of byline authorship. The “triple lock” provides ideal support for these linked objectives.

From industry's perspective, the most useful feature of the current ICMJE guidelines is the formula used to distinguish between authors and contributors (Figure 1). To qualify as an author, an individual must (1) contribute substantially to either conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; and (2) draft the article or revise it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) be responsible for final approval of the manuscript [2]. This “triple-lock” formula has become a de facto license for misrepresentation. Provided academics make some contribution to design or data analysis, some revisions to a manuscript, and approve it, they are required to be named as authors. By contrast, industry may conduct most of the design, data collection and analysis, and all the writing, but if sign-off is ceded to the academic, it is disqualified from authorship. Unsurprisingly, the practice of ceding final sign-off to academic “authors” is widespread in commercially driven publications.

Scientists and clinicians need to know the authorship, author interests, and origination of the articles they read to judge them appropriately.

Companies and writers who work on industry publications should be listed as byline authors.

hy, then, do we persist with a practice of attributing scientific con-tribution that fails to capture the true nature of the underlying collaboration – or, more precisely, to cap-ture who did what? I

Judith Singer, Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University, made the important point that in interdisciplinary collaborations a person’s name could end up in different positions in different publications despite what they did. As interdisciplinary collaborations grow, the problem will get worse. There was general agreement during the workshop that the ‘secret code’ used in author lists to signal level and type of contribution is ‘broken’ and new approaches are needed

Scientists could draw attention to their specific contributions to published work to distinguish their skills from those of collaborators or competitors, for example during a grant-application process or when seeking an academic appointment.

The Hardy-Littlewood Rule

Hyperauthorship:APostmodernPerversionorEvidenceofaStructuralShiftinScholarlyCommunicationPractices?

Historically, authorship implied writing and this associ-ation with the act of writing remains the core of the standardmodel of authorship acknowledgment. H

Whilecriticaltheoristsmayquestionthe“prestigeofauthorship”and“allmanifes-tationsofauthor-ity”(Birkerts,1994,pp.158–159)—whichhelpsexplainthepredilectionforpostmodernistandeschatologicaltitlessuchasTheDeathoftheAuthor(Bar-thes,1977),WhatisanAuthor?(Foucault,1977),andTheDeathofLiterature(Kernan,1990)—thereislittledoubtthatboththesymbolicandmaterialconsequencesofauthor

ome kind of ontolog-ical reassessment of authorship is called for to ensure thatauthority, credit, and accountability, currently apportionedin confused fashion across authors, acknowledgees and con-tributors, are henceforth distributed appropriately, parsimo-niously, and unambiguously. I

what is implied by a byline in thesecases is typically a very precise, often specialized input to acomplex, multidisciplinary project. The classical idea ofauthorship cannot credibly accommodate the legions ofcoworkers associated with large-scale collaboration, nor canit adequately reflect “the epistemic role of support person-nel” in the conduct of science (Shapin, 1995, p. 359).

day’sbiomedical journal article is the progeny of occasionallymassive collaborations, the individual members of whichmay have minimal involvement in the fashioning of theliterary end-product itself, with the act of writing beingdelegated to a subgroup or designated spokespersons. I

he “modern scriptor” (Bar-thes, 1977, p. 146) is no longer the sole conceiver, fabrica-tor, and owner of the published article.

In biomedicine, authorship has irrevocably shed some ofits craft associations:

is wiseto avoid generalizations and to concentrate instead on show-ing how interactions between coworkers, specifically theorchestration of information exchange and coauthorship, aregrounded in local culture.

iomedical collaborations are moreheterogeneous and socially diffuse in character and do notappear to have the same degree of multilayered, internalreview as HEP research collaborations. T

TheHEP research community is thus characterized by highlevels of internal scrutiny, mutual trust—witness, for in-stance, the institutionalized practice of relying upon, andciting, preprints—and peer tracking, such that it is notsusceptible to systematic fraud. Contrary

The answer probably has to do with the relative intensityof socialization and oral communication (Traweek, 1992,pp. 120 –123), along with the character of the organizationalstructures and value systems, which define collaborations inlarge-scale, high-energy physics and biomedical research.

ights (1, 3, 5) are summed to(a) estimate each individual’s overall contribution, whichcan range from 1–35 (735 being the maximum possiblescore), and (b) determine the sequence in which coauthors’names are listed on the resultant publication.

owever, it isimportant to distinguish between generic job categories andthe specification of tasks performed; the contributorshipmodel is designed to record each individual’s actual input(e.g., experimental design, data collection, statistical analy-sis, final article revision), not job title (e.g., coprincipalinvestigator, technician, systems analyst), since the lattermay on occasion mask or inflate the former (Stern, 2000).

The standard model accepts that authorship is linkedinextricably to writing. But writing is no longer a necessarycondition of coauthorship in certain cases. Thus, an alter-native to authorship is required to accommodate the manyother contributions that shape the published byproducts ofcollaborative activity, be they research reports, journal ar-ticles, conference papers, or technical reports. C

To date, more than 500 journals have adopted theICMJE’s (1997) principles of authorship as laid out in the5th edition of theUniform Requirements for ManuscriptsSubmitted to Biomedical Journals(Klein, 1999; Stern,2000). According to these concrete guidelines, candidateauthors must satisfy three conditions. They must make:“. . . substantial contributions to (a) conception and design,or analysis and interpretation of data; and to (b) drafting thearticle or revising it critically for important intellectualcontent; and on (c) final approval of the version to bepublished.” Laudable though these guidelines are, it is un-likely that they will solve the problem. A study by Hoen etal. (1998) in the Netherlands found that authors and theircoauthors did not always agree with one another’s assess-ments that the ICMJE criteria had been met. In the UK,Bhopal et al.’s (1997) survey of medical researchers dis-covered that, although most respondents concurred with thethree criteria (more than 80% in each case), a majority(62%) did not feel that all three conditions should have to besatisfied to warrant author status. F

Rennie, Yank, andEmanuel (1997) that the distinction between the two modesof credit allocation is inherently artificial. Consequently,they have argued for explicit description of all individualcontributions as a means of eliminating ambiguity. Such aproposal would remove both authorship and acknowledg-ment from the frame, a really quite significant break withscholarly publishing tradition. This alternative amounts to aradical model of authorship attribution in contrast to thestandard model

he problem with arbitrary capping, whetherof authors or acknowledgees of one kind or another, is thatsome individuals’ potentially important contributions, bethey clinical investigators (Carbone, 1992) or telescopeoperators (Cronin, 1995), may be erased. This could, con-ceivably, have negative downstream implications in termsof remuneration and promotion prospects for those—the“invisible technicians” (Shapin, 1995, p. 355)—whose ef-forts have been withheld from the public ledger. It mightalso reduce, in line with theories of reciprocal altruism(Nowak & Sigmund, 2000), potential collaborators’ will-ingness to ‘donate’ their services.

Some journals place a limit on the numberof coauthors; for example, theDutch Journal of Medicinedoes not publish articles with more than six authors (Hoenet al., 1998).

Kassirer and Angell (1991, p. 1511)of theNew England Journal of Medicinewere bemoaningnot only “ambiguous authorship” but “lengthy acknowledg-ments,” inflated by the inclusion of “everybody who hadanything to do with the study, including those who weremerely carrying out their jobs, such as technicians.”

“sub-authorship collaboration” (Patel, 1973, p. 81),

twe should not assume too much in terms of common un-derstandings: the dividing line between the two classifica-tions, author and acknowledgee, is neither universally ap-preciated nor consistently applied. Cronin (1995, pp. 85–86), for instance, has shown that interpretative disputes arenot uncommon, and that some researchers feel that theyhave been denied their just deserts by being downgradedfrom coauthor to acknowledgee. A

The explosion of coauthorship naturally raises the ques-tion why authorial surplus could not be accommodated inthe acknowledgment sections that accompany the great ma-jority of scientific articles.

I have chosen not to hide behind the cloak of anonymity, orbypass the rigors of peer review by posting a version of thispaper on my Web site;

ut before considering theICMJE’s guidelines for authorship, it may be instructive toreflect on the role of acknowledgments in the primarycommunication process, and the relationship between au-thorship and acknowledgment.

ublinCore and REACH (Record Export for Art and CulturalHeritage) prefer the terms ‘creator’ and ‘maker’ to the moretraditional ‘author’ (Baca, 1998). T

In rare cases, a questionable, published paper may acquire“orphan” status (Rennie & Flanagin, 1994, p. 469), as allconcerned try to wash their hands of it, invoking hyperlaborspecialization as grounds for exoneration. Such a scenario isinconceivable under the standard model, where authorshipand accountability are isomorphic. But when authorship/ownership of a study is distributed across multiple contrib-utors, many of whom may have zero or weak relation-ships—whether personal or institutional—with their myriadcoworkers (Katz & Martin, 1997), the practical (i.e., en-forceable) allocation of accountability may pose intractableproblems

Additionally, Ducor (2000) investigated asmall set of patents in molecular biology and their concom-itant publications in the scientific literature. Of the 40patent-article pairs examined, all but two listed more au-thors than inventors, which raises interesting questionsabout the relative stringency of the criteria employed forconferring authorship and inventorship.

Slone (1996), in a survey of “major research” articlespublished in theAmerican Journal of Roentgenology, foundthat undeserved coauthorship rose from 9% on papers withthree coauthors to 30% on papers with more than six coau-thors.

Flanagin et al.(1998) developed a multivariate logistic regression model totest the hypothesis that coauthored articles (operationalizedas papers with six or more authors) were increasing at a rategreater than would be expected when confounding vari-ables, such as the number of centers, were taken into ac-count. They found that 19% of original research reports hadhonorific authors, individuals who were garnering phantomfodder for their curricula vitae. They also discovered that11% of articles had ghost authors, which means that quite afew individuals were not receiving due credit for theircreative or material contributions to the research process—“the ghostly inferred hosts of unnamed actors who shiftedinstruments about and exerted their muscular labor’(Shapin, 1995, p. 379). Their findings, based on surveys ofcorresponding authors, are in keeping with other estimatesof honorific authorship in the biomedical literature.

here is com-pelling evidence that many individuals receive unwarrantedcoauthor status (variously referred to as ‘guest’, ‘gift,’ or‘surprise’ authorship) while others are denied legitimatelyearned author status (‘ghost’ authorship). As Slone (1996, p.578) notes, authorship “cannot be conferred but must beearned.” I

ichard Horton (1998, p. 688) editor ofThe Lancet, speaks, in fact, of “the shattered system ofacademic reward and its symptom, broken rules of author-ship,” a view which seems neither extreme nor marginaljudging by the tenor of the debate being conducted in thepages of the global biomedical literature (Klein & Moser-Veillon, 1999)

eceiving credit under false pretenses,are cause for grave concern (Anderson, 1991).

mass of editorial commentary andcorrespondence in the letters pages of major journals (e.g.,Constantian, 1999; Rennie, Yank, & Emanuel, 1997). Ho

norificauthorship and data integrity, seem to be of especial concernto the biomedical community, given widespread media cov-erage of, and speculation about, fraudulent practice, theeffects of which, in both career and personal terms, can bedevastating (e.g., Kevles, 1998).

ow, for instance, should a promotion andtenure committee view the contribution of the 99th listedauthor on a particle physics paper or the 36th author on agenome sequencing study? What may seem to constitute aminiscule portion of a single journal article may, in fact,have consumed a significant amount of that individual’sprofessional time and energy. T

owever, multipleauthorship and hyperauthorship are not problematized byphysicists as they are by the biomedical community.

t this point, the notion of authorship,literally interpreted, is effectively rendered meaningless.

ennieand Yank (1998, p. 829), when “the number of collaboratorsgrows arithmetically, it becomes exponentially harder toaffix responsibility.”

he practice of promiscuous coauthor-ship puts considerable stress on this tried and tested model.

Under the standard model, the rights and responsibilitiesof authorship are clearly apprehended by all parties: authors,editors, referees, and readers. In appending my name to thisarticle I am nailing my colors to mast; if the article attractscritical approval, is discussed, quoted, and, in due course,cited in the scholarly literature, I shall be happy to bank thesymbolic capital which accrues to me as author and origi-nator. If the paper is challenged because of exiguity oftheoretical, historical, or empirical heft, I shall simply haveto face the music: there are no coauthors to help deflectcriticism. Likewise, if I am challenged for drawing toosparingly, selectively, or generously on the ideas and workof others, I understand the possible consequences. However,I have chosen not to hide behind the cloak of anonymity, orbypass the rigors of peer review by posting a version of thispaper on my Web site; rather, I want to publicize my ideasamong my peers, and the best way to do that, and signify mytrustworthiness, is to pursue publication in an accreditedforum. As a serial author, I am fully cognizant of the rightsand responsibilities of authorship. I understand the norms ofscholarly publishing, and I am aware of the sanctions thatmay be invoked if infractions occur. Should the argumentsin this paper prove flawed, no one but myself is to blame,and that includes those whom I have named in the acknowl-edgments section. If the paper attracts attention, I shall behappy to bask in the glow.

e need toconsider how multiple authorship, in extremis—what I havechosen to term ‘hyperauthorship’— undermines commonlyheld assumptions about the nature and ethical entailments ofauthorship, and how, in exceptional cases, it can lead tofundamental questions about the integrity of the researchcommunity as a whole. Unfortunately, little effort is madein the biomedical literature to distinguish systematicallybetween what might be termed acceptable levels of multipleauthorship and unacceptable levels of hyperauthorship.Studies of coauthorship trends, as will become clear,

n the realm of periodical publications,the sovereignty of the standard model is being most hotlycontested in biomedical research fields, where intense levelsof professional collaboration and coauthorship are common-place (Croll, 1984; Rennie & Flanagin, 1994; Rennie, Yank,& Emanuel, 1997; Rennie & Yank, 1998; King, 2000).Proposals for reform, which seek to retire the concept ofauthorship and replace it with a scheme for the allocation ofspecific, task- or job-related credits (e.g., Squires, 1996;Smith, 1997) are not only being debated by editors andothers, but are being adopted by leading scientific journal

Rennie’s and Flanagin’s (1994, p. 469) beguilingly simplequestion: “. . . how many people can wield one pen?” S

he standard model of scholarly publishing, inwhich it is assumed that a work is written by an author, t

Some medical commentators (Rennie, Yank, &Emanuel, 1997, p. 582) have advocated abandoning theconcept of author altogether in favor of ‘contributors’ and‘guarantors,’ thereby freeing us “from the historical andemotional connotations of authorship.”

e well-estab-lished “conventions of impersonality” in scientific writing(Hyland, 1999, p. 355) and resulting in the erasure of styl

0authors—a leading indicator of hyperauthorship?—in-creased from 1 in 1981 to 182 in 1994 (McDonald, 1995)and that the average number of authors per paper in theScience Citation Index (SCI)increased from 1.83 in 1955 to3.9 in 1999 (personal communication with Helen Atkins,Director of Database Development, Institute for ScientificInformation, Philadelphia, 2000). To use a couple of ran-dom examples: a 1997 article inNature(cited almost 600times since then) on the genome sequence of a bacteriumhas 151 coauthors, drawn from dozens of research labora-tories scattered across twelve countries (Kunst et al., 1997).A recent (Daily et al., 2000). two-page article inScienceonthe economic value of ecosystems has no fewer than 17authors and five acknowledgees. I

s not still common prac-tice in fields such as philosophy or women’s studies (Cro-nin, Davenport, & Martinson, 1997). By way of example,Endersby (1996) has analyzed trends in, and reasons for,collaboration and multiple authorship in the social sciences.Patel (1973) has described the growth of coauthorship insociological journals for the period 1895 to 1965. Bird(1997) has found evidence of coauthorship growth in theliterature of marine mammal science (1985–1993), whileKoehler et al. (1999) found that the average number ofauthors per article in theJournal of the American Society forInformation Science(previouslyAmerican Documentation)rose from approximately 1.2 in the 1950s to 1.8 in the1990s

n a sample of 2,101 scientificpapers published between 1665 and 1800, Beaver andRosen found that 2.2% described collaborative work. No-table was the degree of joint authorship in astronomy,especially in situations where scientists were dependentupon observational data.

French science was much more profession-alized and institutionalized than was the case in either of theother European powers. Specifically, they found that morethan half of all the coauthored scientific articles in theirhistoric sample had been produced by French scientists.

Beaver and Rosen (1978) have shown how the differentialrates of scientific institutionalization in France, England,and Germany are mirrored in the relative output of coau-thored papers.

iking increase inrates of coauthorship, though the latter is only a partialindicator of the former: coauthorship and collaboration arenot coextensive (Katz & Martin, 1997, p. 1). This trend ismost noticeable in experimental high-energy physics(HEP), with its often very large teams and highly sophisti-cated collaborations (Kling & McKim, 2000). A similartrend, dating from the 1990s, can be seen in the biomedicalresearch literature, particularly with regard to publicationsarising from large, multi-institutional clinical trials (Rennie,Yank, & Emanuel, 1997; Horton, 1998). H

In some domains, path-breaking work is nec-essarily the outcome of collaborative activity rather thanindividualistic scholarship, a fact reflected in the modestproportion of federal research funds which is allocated toindividual investigators rather than teams. Collaborationsare a necessary feature of much, though by no means all,contemporary scientific research.

After World War II, collaboration became a defin-ing feature of ‘big science’ (Bordons & Gomez, 2000;Cronin, 1995, pp. 4 –13; Katz & Martin, 1997).

ncidentally, parallel,though not quite so dramatic, growth has been observed inthe number of individuals being formally acknowledged inscholarly journals for their multifarious contributions: whathas become known as subauthorship collaboration (Patel,1973; Heffner, 1979, 1981; Cronin, 1995, Cronin,2001)—an important, if underappreciated, indicator of in-formal scientific collaboration

o some extent, authorship has becomea collective activity, with numerous coauthors competingfor the byline, some of whom may not have written, strictlyspeaking, a single word of the associated work (McDonald,1995; Kassirer & Angell, 1991).

. It follows then that the machinery of the institution does not grow up to accommodate needs that are independently perceived but that, rather, the institutional machinery comes first and the needs then follow, as do the ways of meeting them. In short, the work to be done is not what the institution responds to but what it create

t "[ilf Northrop Frye should write an essay attacking archetypal criticism, the article would by definition be of much greater significance than an article by another scholar attack- ing the same approach" (Schaefer 5). The reason, of course, is that the approach is not something in- dependent of what Northrop Frye has previously said about it; indeed, in large part archetypal criticism is what Northrop Frye has said about it, and therefore anything he now says about it is not so much to be measured against an independent truth as it is to be regarded, at least potentially, as a new pronouncement of what the truth will hereafter be said to be

verningthis function is the belief that there must be - at a particular levelof an author's thought, of his conscious or unconscious desire — apoint where contradictions are resolved, where the incompatibleelements can be shown to relate to one another or to cohere arounda fundamental and originating contradiction. Fin

can easily imagine a culture wherediscourse would circulate without any need for an author. Dis-courses, whatever their status, form, or value, and regardless of ourmanner of handling them, would unfold in a pervasive anonymity.No longer the tiresome repetitions: 'Who is the real author?' 'H

other hand, Marx and Freud, as'initiators of discursive practices', not only made possible a certainnumber of analogies that could be adopted by future texts, but,as importantly, they also made possible a certain number of dif-ferences. They cleared a space for the introduction of elementsother than their own, which, nevertheless, remain within the fieldof discourse they initiated. In saying that Freud founded psycho-analysis, we do not simply mean that the concept of libido or thetechniques of dream analysis reappear in the writings of KarlAbraham or Melanie Klein, but that he made possible a certainnumber of differences with respect to his books, concepts, andhypotheses, which all arise out of psychoanalytic discourse.

I believe that the nineteenth century in Europe produced asingular type of author who should not be confused with 'great'literary authors, or the authors of canonical religious texts, andthe founders of sciences. Somewhat arbitrarily, we might call them'initiators of discursive practices'.

However, it is obvious that even within the realm ofdiscourse a person can be the author of much more than a book -of a theory, for instance, of a tradition or a discipline within whichnew books and authors can proliferate. For convenience, we couldsay that such authors occupy a 'transdiscursive' position.

author-function' is tiedto the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine,and articulate the realm of discourses; it does not operate in auniform manner in all discourses, at all times, and in any givenculture; it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a textto its creator, but through a series of precise and complex pro-cedures; it does not refer, purely and simply, to an actual individualinsofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to aseries of subjective positions that individuals of any class may

athe-matical treatise, the ego who indicates the circumstances of com-position in the preface is not identical, either in terms of his posi-tion or his function, to the T who concludes a demonstrationwithin the body of the text. The former implies a unique individualwho, at a given time and place, succeeded in completing a project,whereas the latter indicates an instance and plan of demonstrationthat anyone could perform provided the same set of axioms, pre-liminary operations, and an identical set of symbols were used. It isalso possible to locate a third ego: one who speaks of the goals of' his investigation, the obstacles encountered, its results, and theproblems yet to be solved and this T would function in a field ofexisting or future mathematical discourses. We are not dealing witha system of dependencies where a first and essential use of the Tis reduplicated, as a kind of fiction, by the other two. On thecontrary, the 'author-function' in such discourses operates so as toeffect the simultaneous dispersion of the three egos

ight object that thisphenomenon only applies to novels or poetry, to a context of 'quasi-discourse', but, in fact, all discourse that supports this 'author-function' is characterized by the plurality of egos. In a

ave a different bearing on texts with an author and 23on those without one. In the latter, these 'shifters' refer to a realspeaker and to an actual deictic situation, with certain exceptionssuch as the case of indirect speech in the first person. When dis-course is linked to an author, however, the role of 'shifters' is morecomplex and variable. It is well known that in a novel narrated inthe first person, neither the first person pronoun, the presentindicative tense, nor, for that matter, its signs of localization referdirectly to the %vriter, either to the time when he wrote, or to thespecific act of writing; rather, they stand for a 'second self whosesimilarity to the author is never fixed and undergoes considerablealteration within the course of a single book. It

ccording to Saint Jerome, there are four criteria:the texts that must be eliminated from the list of works attributedto a single author are those inferior to the others (thus, the authoris defined as a standard level of quality); those whose ideas conflictwith the doctrine expressed in the others( here the author is definedas a certain field of conceptual or theoretical coherence); thosewritten in a different style and containing words and phrases notordinarily found in the other works (the author is seen as a stylisticuniformity); and those referring to events of historical figures sub-sequent to the death of the author (the author is thus a definitehistorical figure in which a series of events converge). Alth

alue of a text by ascertaining the holiness of its author. In

There are, nevertheless, transhistorical constants in therules that govern the construction of an author.

In addition, all these operations vary according to the periodand the form of discourse concerned. A 'philosopher' and a 'poet'are not constructed in the same manner; and the author of aneighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the modernnovelist.

The third point concerning this 'author-function' is that it is notformed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourseto an individual. It results from a complex operation whose pur-pose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Un-doubtedly, this construction is assigned a 'realistic' dimension aswe speak of an individual's 'profundity' or 'creative' power, hisintentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Never-theless, these aspects of an individual, which we designate as anauthor (or which comprise an individual as an author), are pro-jections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way ofhandling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extractas pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we prac-tise.

At the same time, however, 'literary' discourse was acceptableonly if it carried an author's name; every text of poetry or fictionwas obliged to state its author and the date, place and circumstanceof its writing. The meaning and value attributed to the text de-pended on this information. If by accident or design a text waspresented anonymously, every effort was made to locate its author.Literary anonymity was of interest only as a puzzle to be solved as,in our day, literary works are totally dominated by the sovereigntyof the author. (

the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, a totally new conception was developed whenscientific texts were accepted on their own merits and positionedwithin an anonymous and coherent conceptual system of estab-lished truths and methods of verification. Authentification no longerrequired reference to the individual who had produced them; therole of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness and,where it remained as an inventor's name, it was merely to denot

exts, however, that we now call 'scien-tific' (dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine or illness,the natural sciences or geography) were only considered truthfulduring the Middle Ages if the name of the author was indicated.Statements on the order of 'Hippocrates said ..." or 'Pliny tellsus that . . .' were not merely formulas for an argument based onauthority, they marked a proven discourse. In the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, a totally new conception was developed whenscientific texts were accepted on their own merits and positionedwithin an anonymous and coherent conceptual system of estab-lished truths and methods of verification. Authentification no longerrequired reference to the individual who had produced them; therole of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness and,where it remained as an inventor's name, it was merely to denote

First, they are objects of appropriation; the form of propertythey have become is of a particular type whose legal codificationwas accomplished some years ago. It is important to notice, aswell, that its status as property is historically secondary to thepenal code controlling its appropriation. Speeches and books wereassigned real authors, other than mythical or important religiousfigures, only when the author became subject to punishment andto the extent that his discourse was considered transgressive. Inour culture - undoubtedly in others as well - discourse was notoriginally a thing, a product, or a possession, but an action situatedin a bipolar field of sacred and profane, lawful and unlawful, reli-gious and blasphemous. It was a gesture charged with risks longbefore it became a possession caught in a circuit of property values.But it was at the moment when a system of ownership and strictcopyright rules were established (toward the end of the eighteenthand beginning of the nineteenth century) that the transgressiveproperties always intrinsic to the act of writing became the force-ful imperative of literature. It is as if the author, at the momenthe was accepted into the social order of property which governsour culture, was compensating for this new status by revivingthe older bipolar field of discourse in a systematic practice of trans-gression and by restoring the danger of writing which, on anotherside, had been conferred the benefits of property

nsequently, we cansay that in our culture, the name of an author is a variable thataccompanies only certain texts to the exclusion of others: a privateletter may have a signatory, but it does not have an author; acontract can have an underwriter, but not an author; and, similarlyan anonymous poster attached to a wall may have a writer, buthe cannot be an author. In this sense, the function of an author isto characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certaindiscourses within a society

We can conclude that, unlike a proper name, which moves fromthe interior of a discourse to the real person outside who producedit, the name of the author remains at the contours of texts -separating one from the other, defining their form, and character-izing their mode of existence. It points to the existence of certaingroups of discourse and refers to the status of this discourse withina society and culture. The author's name is not a function of aman's civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach,among the discontinuities, which gives rise to new groups of dis-course and their singular mode of existence. C

To learn, for example, that Pierre Dupont does not have blueeyes, does not live in Paris, and is not a doctor does not invalidatethe fact that the name, Pierre Dupont, continues to refer to thesame person; there has been no modification of the designation thatlinks the name to the person. With the name of an author, how-ever, the problems are far more complex. The disclosure thatShakespeare was not born in the house that tourists now visitwould not modify the functioning of the author's name, but if itwere proved that he had not written the sonnets that we attributeto him, this would constitute a significant change and affect themanner in which the author's name functions. Moreover, if weestablish that Shakespeare wrote Bacon's Organon and that thesame author was responsible for both the works of Shakespeareand those of Bacon, we would have introduced a third type ofalteration which completely modifies the functioning of the author'sname. Consequently, the name of an author is not precisely a propername among others

The name of an author poses all the problems related to thecategory of the proper name. (Here, I am referring to the work ofJohn Searle,3 among others.) Obviously not a pure and simplereference, the proper name (and the author's name as well) hasother than indicative functions. It is more than a gesture, a fingerpointed at someone; it is, to a certain extent, the equivalent of adescription. When we say 'Aristotle', we are using a word thatmeans one or a series of definite descriptions of the type: 'theauthor of the Analytics', or 'the founder of ontology', and so forth.Furthermore, a proper name has other functions than that of sig-nification: when we discover that Rimbaud has not written LaChasse spirituelle, we cannot maintain that the meaning of theproper name or this author's name has been altered. The propername and the name of an author oscillate between the poles ofdescription and designation, and, granting that they are linked towhat they name, they are not totally determined either by theirdescriptive or designative functions. Yet - and it is here that thespecific difficulties attending an author's name appear - the linkbetween a proper name and the individual being named and the linkbetween an author's name and that which it names are not iso-morphous and do not function in the same way; and these dif-ferences require clarification.

It is obviously insufficient to repeat empty slogans: the authorhas disappeared; God and man died a common death. Rather, weshould re-examine the empty space left by the author's disappear-ance, we should attentively observe, along its gaps and fault lines,its new demarcations, and the reapportionment of this void; weshould await the fluid functions released by this disappearance.In this context we can briefly consider the problems that ari

Another thesis has detained us from taking full measure of the 17author's disappearance. It avoids confronting the specific event thatmakes it possible and, in subtle ways, continues to preserve theexistence of the author. This is the notion of icriture. Strictlyspeaking,.it should allow us not only to circumvent references toan author, but to situate his recent absence. The conception oficriture, as currently employed, is concerned with neither the actof writing nor the indications, as symptoms or signs within a text,of an author's meaning; rather, it stands for a remarkably profoundattempt to elaborate the conditions of any text, both the conditionsof its spatial dispersion and its temporal deployment

his problem is both theoretical and practical. If we wishto publish the complete works of Nietzsche, for example, where dowe draw the line? Certainly, everything must be published, but canwe agree on what 'everything' means? We will, of course, includeeverything that Nietzsche himself published, along with the draftsof his works, his plans for aphorisms, his marginal notations andcorrections. But what if, in a notebook filled with aphorisms, wefind a reference, a reminder of an appointment, an address, or alaundry bill, should this be included in his works? Why not? T

his conception of aspoken or written narrative as a protection against death has beentransformed by our culture. Writing is now linked to sacrifice and tothe sacrifice of life itself; it is a voluntary obliteration of the selfthat does not require representation in books because it takes placein the everyday existence of the writer. Where a work had the dutyof creating immortality, it now attains the right to kill, to becomethe murderer of its author. Flaubert, Proust, and Kafka are obviousexamples of this reversal. In addition, we find the link betweenwriting and death manifested in the total effacement of the indi-vidual characteristics of the writer;

en now, when we studythe history of a concept, a literary genre, or a branch of philo-sophy, these concerns assume a relatively weak and secondaryposition in relation to the solid and fundamental role of an authorand his works

The word work and the unity that it designates are probably as problematic as the status of the author's individuality

First of all, we can say that today's writing has freed itself from the theme of expression. Referring only to itself; but without being restricted to the confines of its interiority, writing is identified with its own unfolded exteriority. This means that it is an interplay of signs arranged less according to its signified content than according to the very nature of the signifier. Writing unfolds like a game [jeu] that invariably goes beyond its own rules and transgresses its limits. In writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor is it to pin a subject within language; it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.

I want to deal solely with the relationship between text and author and with the manner in which the text points to this figure that, at least in appearance; is outside it and antecedes it.

writing ceaselessly posits meaning but always in order to evaporate it: it proceeds to a systematic exemption of meaning. Thus literature (it would be better, henceforth, to say writing), by refusing to assign to the text (and to the world as text) a "secret:' that is, an ultimate meaning, liberates an activity which we might call counter-theological, properly revolutionary, for to refuse to arrest meaning is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law.

We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture. Like Bouvard and Pecuchet, those eternal copyists, both sublime and comical and whose profound absurdity precisely designates the truth of writing, the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing, to oppose some by others, so as never to sustain himself by just one of them; if he wants to express himself, at least he should know that the internal "thing" he claims to "translate" is itself only a readymade dictionary whose words can be explained (defined) only by other words, and so on ad infinitum

Quite the contrary, the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now. This is because (or: it follows that) to write can no longer designate an operation of recording, of observing, of representing, of "painting" (as the Classic writers put it), but rather what the linguisticians, following the vocabulary of the Oxford school, call a performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given to the first person and to the present), in which utterance has no other content than the act by which it is uttered

once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality — that is, finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol — this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins.

Who is speaking in this way? Is it the story's hero, concerned to ignore the castrato concealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it the author Balzac, professing certain "literary" ideas of femininity? Is it universal wisdom? or romantic psychology? It will always be impossible to know, for the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR / ROLAND BARTHES

Drosophila muller f elements maintain a distinct set of genomic properties over 40 million years of evolution

***By which I mean, it’s even in Wikipedia

Actually, I didn’t need Holmesian deductions to conclude that Aad et al. aren’t using a conventional definition of authorship. It’s widely known*** that at least two groups in experimental particle physics operate under the policy that every scientist or engineer working on a particular detector is an author on every paper arising from that detector’s data. (Two such detectors at the Large Hadron Collider were used in the Aad et al paper, so the author list is the union of the “ATLAS collaboration” and the “CMS collaboration”.) The result of this authorship policy, of course, is lots of “authorships” for everyone: for the easily searchable George Aad, for instance, over 400 since 2008.

Does mega-authorship threaten our concept of authorship in science? It would be easy, and fun, to write with a scandalized tone about how mega-authorship corrupts all that is good and decent about scientific publishing. But does it really matter? I think both yes and (mostly) no.

Does mega-authorship matter?

What to do when your coauthor doesn’t return your calls.

If done in good faith, four like-minded authors in the arts who agreed on a project of work could co-author four papers together and have the REF return of each sorted. If they are from different institutions, this would certainly be a more efficient way of meeting the framework's requirements. It might be viewed as a cynical exercise, but perhaps viewing it that way would be a sign that we haven't yet changed our mindset. If genuinely collaborative work became the norm, it wouldn't be viewed with suspicion.

he case for more collaborative work can be made. Indeed, most of us do it already, to some degree. We tend to discuss our ideas with colleagues and seek trusted opinions. We present talks at conferences and seminars, and use the feedback to develop ideas before publication. We solicit comments on drafts. Colleagues share a research environment that, if it is effective, contributes to the quality of all output. Yet when the work appears, the standard model is still sole ownership. A colleague could have given a lot of input, discussing ideas or providing comments on early drafts, yet their accepted reward is only to appear in the list of acknowledgements. This seems a paltry return on what can be a considerable amount of effort, an effort that is obviously a degree of collaboration. Perhaps one tries to mitigate the paltry reward by extracting a reciprocal amount of uncredited assistance in return.

Combination acts

Is mass authorship destroying the credibility of papers?

The trend of increasingly long author lists on research papers is clearly getting out of hand. In addition to being impractical, it is also threatening to the entire system in which academic work is rewarded. Radical reform is needed. One way forward could be to completely remove authors on papers and replace them with project names.

Long lists are eroding the value of being a scientific author

Despite opinions to the contrary, these data suggest that there has been no apparent increase in overall productivity per active author over the last decade. Instead, authors are using their authorship potential more wisely by becoming more collaborative in the way they work, which is driving an apparent inflation in each author’s productivity as well as author bylines. Instead, the underlying driver of the volume increase in articles published is simply the introduction of new entrants/authors into the market. That is not surprising, as the total population of researchers globally continues to rise every year, and they become increasingly subject to the principles of "publish or perish": and so the cycle continues.

This rise in ‘fractional authorship’ (the claiming of credit for authorship of a published articles by more than one individual) is most likely driven by research collaboration, and is an efficient mechanism by which each author can increase their apparent productivity from the same underlying research contributions (i.e. articles per unique author) of 0.56 articles per unique author per year.

Over the past ten years or so, the number of authorships per unique author (2.31 in 2013) has increased while the number of articles per unique author (0.56 in 2013) has declined (see Figure 2),

Results of our analysis show that there has been a consistent growth in the number of articles published over the past decade; from 1.3 million in 2003 to 2.4 million in 2013 (see Figure 1). At the same time, the number of authorships has increased at a far greater rate from 4.6 million in 2003 to 10 million in 2013.

The PDF of the paper gives a bit of a clue as to what’s going one. The author list is more modest on the title page, which lists the authors as, “Wilson Leung and Participating Students and Faculty of the Genomics Education Partnership.” So a lot of these authors are students who took a class, and probably completed part of the analysis as a course assignment.

When does authorship stop meaning anything useful?

In his blog post, Faulkes suggests a new rule: “If the number of authors on your paper can be measured in ‘kiloauthors’, having your name on the paper will not count for tenure and promotion purposes.”

Fruit-fly paper has 1,000 authors