People believe that scientists should be objective, logical, and honest people as they work to achieve fact-based knowledge in a scientific environment that should be transparent. However, scientists are people like everyone else, trying to make a career and forced to comply with the requirements for the publication of scientific papers; they often lie, cheat and take advantage of students (Joolaee, 2019).
The more professors move up the career ladder, the more they have to publish and curate projects. Such a situation affects junior researchers the worst, who cannot demonstrate their independence because they are forced to act in unfair co-authorship (Joolaee, 2019). For students, ruining relationships with teachers is like putting an end to their careers. Thus, young researchers need to learn about the management of authorship conflicts in order to protect themselves effectively and their careers.
International students are in a particularly disadvantaged position, for whom a university in the USA is a way to secure a better future for themselves. Such is the case of Ahmadi Mkaba from Ghana, studying economics and marketing at Columbia University. The student’s brilliant data allowed her to excel in her studies, and she was noticed by a teacher who offered to help with the revision of her article “Economic Value and Marketing Myopia in the Workplace.” Ahmadi risks the professor publishing her article himself or keeping her as a co-author, but he can write her a recommendation for admission to graduate school in exchange.
Ahmadi is rightfully worried about possible problems with the authorship of the article, as this is a hot topic in the academic environment. She should take care of this issue in advance and, begin with, initiate a discussion of the expectations of authorship with her professor. It can refer to university regulations that determine the order in which authors are listed in an article (Cooke et al., 2021). Students can defend themselves by referring to official guidelines such as the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) (Cooke et al., 2021). Ahmadi can explain this to the professor by saying that she has never co-authored articles and would like to clarify how this process works and copyrights are distributed.
Having decided to work with Professor Ahmadi, it is best to offer a way to document the contribution. Maintaining a group project document can be the basis for establishing a hierarchy of authorship, especially if a third party will also sign such a document from the faculty staff (Cooke et al., 2021). Moreover, it may allow Ahmadi to eliminate the prejudice if she sees that the teacher’s help contributed to the student’s scientific work. In turn, the professor will be more responsible for working on the article if his contribution is documented and allows them to claim co-authorship on the basis of fair rights.
Managing authorship in academia is complex and contentious, as many stakeholders compete for publication in scientific journals and want to be authors of successful papers. However, this does not mean that every professor who offers to help a promising student has fraudulent thoughts about the student’s performance. Teachers try to fulfill their direct tasks – to help develop their students’ scientific and research potential. However, there is no need to trust in this situation blindly. To avoid authorship conflict, students should take the initiative in clarifying the work conditions of the article and the authorship and documentation of the work process.
References
Joolaee, S. (2019). “Editorial Letter” Managing Authorship Conflicts: A Guide for Researchers.Iran Journal of Nursing, 32(117), 1-6. Web.
Cooke, S. J., Young, N., Donaldson, M. R., Nyboer, E. A., Roche, D. G., Madliger, C. L., Lennox, R. J., Chapman, J. M., Faulkes, Z. & Bennett, J. R. (2021). Ten strategies for avoiding and overcoming authorship conflicts in academic publishing. FACETS, 6, 1753-1770. Web.