Who Are Coauthors and What Should Be Their Responsibilities?T. Prabhakar Clement*

Environmental Program, Department of Civil Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama 36849, United States

Environmental scientists and engineers, who endeavor tosolve complex problems, are yet to address a simple

question: who should be coauthors in their journal articles?While some disciplines (e.g., medical sciences) have hadextensive debates, most applied sciences and engineeringdisciplines have not. The authorship issue has always beenshrouded in mystique partly because the word “author” ispoorly defined in the context of publishing journal articles. Thisword was coined several centuries before academic journalsstarted publishing research articles. Moreover, the number ofcoauthors has gone up dramatically in recent years, addingfurther vagueness to its meaning. A random data set comparingthe number of coauthors in a 1980 ES&T issue (Vol. 14, Issue11) with a recent 2014 issue (Vol. 48, Issue 21) shows that theaverage number of coauthors (total number of authors dividedby total articles) has roughly doubled in ES&T (from about 3to 6) in 35 years. Over the years, the title “author” has alsobecome a prestigious designation with an inherent assumptionthat journal articles make unique contributions and henceauthors are entitled to some credit.1 Basic questions, such aswho should be a coauthor and what should be their order, arethen viewed as a process of dividing this credit. However, theauthorship coin has two sidesone side is credit and the otheris responsibility.1 The objective of this note is to focus on theresponsibility side of authorship and discuss why authorsshould be more explicit about openly disclosing what each didin the formation of an article.Focusing on credits is a relatively easy task since this

approach views an article as a bag with infinite amount ofcredits. This can be illustrated by reviewing our current practice

of allocating citation credits. When a multiauthor paper is cited,every coauthor claims this citation credit; hence the more theauthors, the more credit, a perfect win−win model! However,the limitations of this credit paradigm are glaringly exposedwhen an article is found to be flawed. The John Darsee story isan excellent example for this. In the late 1970s, Dr. JohnDarsee, a researcher associated with both Emory and HarvardUniversities, published two key articles. A few years later,ethical investigations completed at Harvard and Emory foundDarsee had fabricated data, and he was forced to retract thesepublications. Darsee admitted his misdeeds and stated thefollowing in his retraction:2

I am deeply sorry for allowing these inaccuracies andfalsehoods to be published in the Journal and apologize tothe editorial board and readers of the New England Journal,to Emory University, and to my coauthors. Dr. Nutter andDr. Heymsfield are impeccably honest researchers, whosenames appeared on these papers in good faith. Neither ofthem was aware of any of the inaccuracies nor were theyresponsible for any of them.With these words Darsee took full responsibility for the

flawed articles, while his co-authors appear to have safelyabandoned the work and took little or no responsibility. For thesake of argument, what if these two papers were selected for anaward and Dr. Darsee made these hypothetical statements: Myco-authors names appeared on these papers in good faith, andneither of them was aware of the accuracy of these ef forts nor werethey responsible for any of them. I am sure his coauthors wouldhave furiously rebutted these statements and fully owned theresponsibility for the effort to claim their share of the credit.The Darsee story reveals that a true author is someone who

is willing to shoulder the responsibility for the work, even whenthere is a problem. Therefore, when deciding authorship oneshould adopt a responsibility paradigm and perhaps concep-tually view a journal article as a “flawed product” that deservessome shame or penalty (see Figure 1). Using this invertedresponsibility paradigm, the authorship problem can be reduced

Received: January 23, 2015

Figure 1. Comparison of credit and responsibility paradigms.

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© XXXX American Chemical Society A DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00415Environ. Sci. Technol. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX

to answering these questionswhat are the responsibilitieseach coauthor is willing to own and how much shame/penaltyis he or she willing to share? To document these responsibilitiesone could use any of the quantitative or qualitative approachessuggested in the literature.3,4 Among available approaches, therecently proposed matrix method is a relatively simplemethodology that conceptually divides a journal article intofour basic components:3 (1) ideas, (2) work, (3) writing, and(4) stewardship. Quantitative fractions can then be assigned tothese components to estimate how much responsibility eachcoauthor is willing to own for the flaws in each component.Clement3 has integrated these steps within a spreadsheetenvironment and has demonstrated its application using adetailed case study.The overall focus of this note is to inspire authors to own

their responsibilities when they place their name in the bylineof a journal article. Every author should make an effort toexplicitly disclose their responsibilities to the readers by usingqualitative statements, such as John conducted experiments,completed f ield work, developed ideas, and wrote the manuscript, orby using some quantitative metrics.3 Several interdisciplinaryjournals already require such statements. Rennie4 reviewed thispractice and concluded that it increases author accountability.Perhaps it is time for every journal to make coauthorsaccountable for their contributions.I fully admit that authorship has several intangible elements

which are difficult to quantify. The title “author” is like the title“sculptor” and such titles simply cannot be conferred onsomeone.1,5 These titles can only be earned by an artist bycreating a product. “Author” is someone who goes on anintellectual journey full of twists and turns to create a uniqueproduct of his mind; he then shoulders the responsibility toproduce a near perfect product.5 Potential coauthors who claima share of this creative effort should ask themselves certainquestions: Was I part of a significant stretch of this intellectualjourney? Is this effort a near-perfect product of my mind? Can Ishoulder some unique responsibilities and defend them? If theanswers are yes then he or she should be a coauthor.

■ AUTHOR INFORMATIONCorresponding Author*E-mail: clement@auburn.edu.NotesThe authors declare no competing financial interest.

■ REFERENCES(1) Rennie, D.; Flanagin, A. Authorship! Authorship! Guests, Ghosts,Grafters, and the Two-Sided Coin. JAMA, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 1994, 271(6), 469−471.(2) Darsee, J. R. A Retraction of Two Papers on Cardiomyopathy. N.Engl. J. Med. 1983, 308 (23), 1419.(3) Clement, T. P. Authorship matrixA rational approach toquantify individual contributions and responsibilities in multi-authorscientific articles. Sci. Eng. Ethics 2014, 20, 345−361.(4) Rennie, D. Integrity in scientific publishing. Health Serv. Res.2010, 45, 885−896.(5) Huth, E. Authorship from the reader’s side. Ann. Int. Med. 1982,97, 613−614.

Environmental Science & Technology Viewpoint

DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00415Environ. Sci. Technol. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX

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