What's the Point of Authors?

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Who should be the author(s) of an academic paper? This question is becoming increasingly pressing, due to the increasing prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration, and the corresponding diversity of authorship practices in different disciplines and subdisciplines. This paper addresses the conceptual issues underlying authorship, with an eye to ameliorating authorship practices. The first part of the paper distinguishes five roles played by authorship attributions: allocating credit, constructing a speaker, enabling credibility judgements, supporting accountability, and creating an intellectual marketplace. The second part of the paper argues that distinguishing these functions helps us see that at least some of the confusions around authorship are due to tensions between these functions. The final part of the paper suggests a way to resolve these conceptual confusions, which we will call the CSWG proposal. This proposal suggests replacing authorship with a bundle of roles tailored to the functions of authorship—contributor, spokesperson, writer, and guarantor—which can be distributed in a number of different ways.

Author's Profile

Joshua Habgood-Coote
University of Leeds

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-01-18

Downloads
573 (#25,570)

6 months
88 (#41,632)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?