Ethical Issues Related to Authorship Credit: A Study of Social Work Educators’ Beliefs

Dawn Hall Apgar
Developmental Disabilities Planning Institute
Center for Architecture and Building Science Research
New Jersey Institute of Technology
323 Martin Luther King Boulevard
Newark, New Jersey  07102
(973) 642-7616
(973) 596-8443 (fax)
hall@admin.njit.edu
 
Elaine Congress
Fordham University
 
Purpose:
Scholarly activity by social work researchers is expected and rewarded and the basis for promotions, tenure, and salary decisions.  Multiple-authored publications are becoming increasingly frequent, although professional literature has been virtually silent in providing guidance with regard to the ethical issues, such as authorship order, that result from such collaboration.  This study examines social work researchers’ decisions about authorship order and views on other authorship issues (i.e., limits on the number of authors for a given article, publication of multiple articles from the same data, etc.).

Methods:
A random sample of 189 Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) members from the 2002 Membership Directory (62.8 percent) participated in the study.  Participants completed self-administered questionnaires which asked them to identify authorship order of given scenarios and indicate their attitudes towards:  (1) placing limits on the number of authors for a given journal article; (2) using written agreements between researchers and/or point systems to delineate authorship; and (3) guidelines regarding publication of articles derived from the same data.

Results:
In many instances, there was a lack of consensus among respondents regarding authorship order.  Clearly the writing of the manuscript (including the quantity and quality of writing) was viewed as the most important element in making decisions about authorship order.  In addition, the majority  (60.1 percent) believed that a written agreement is helpful before beginning research, while slightly more than a third of respondents (38.3 percent) believed that using a point system to decide authorship order was worthwhile.  Differences due to gender and prior authorship experience were found.

Implications:
There appears to be strong support for the development of written agreements to assist with authorship decisions.  Efforts should be made to develop guidelines for such agreements and assist with further clarifying authorship decisions.  More research on this important issue is needed.