The author demonstrates a fair understanding of the ethical issues associated with assigning authorship to a manuscript or scientific report. The author shows that establishing authorship is through building significant contribution to an article (Handyman 2011). The author also indicates that all authors named in a publication should play a substantial role in all the steps that are mandatory for publication of the work.
However, the author does not mention the critical area of fictitious authorship. Fictitious authorship occurs when a non participant takes authorship credit; when articles include forged results or include previously published information (“The imagined author” 2000, p.31).
Fraud in scientific authorship is an area worth mentioning. The author ought to discuss this issue and give probable solutions. Subjecting authors to anonymous interviews to determine who did and who did not partake of the research beats logic if the actual work is counterfeit.
The author proposes all the problems concerning authorship and possible resolutions as recommendations to the Research Integrity Officer of Melbourne University.
The author suggests that the solutions apply to other institutions as well and probably as global paradigms for recognizing authorship. In all these recommendations, the author mentions responsibility, accountability, and transparency as the fundamental themes.
The article demonstrates scholarship. The author comprehends the conventions of the scientific world well, hence demonstrating that they read into the subject. The author gives feasible solutions on how to avoid listing non participants as authors through conducting anonymous interviews. The author uses relevant examples to support ideas.
For example, the author uses a movie analogy to demonstrate the assigning of authorship to scientific works and gives examples of various types of authors in the paper. The author also uses detailed examples of help given to scientists in coming up with scientific publications (general bench work and writing examples).
The author states their own opinions regarding authorship. They state that an author is the main person behind the design, subject, and conception of a paper and that anybody else who adds value to a paper should be listed only as a helper.
The author, however, acknowledges that it is rational to recognize these assistants. Adding a helpers’ list stating the names of all those individuals who contribute to the research project on the first page of the publication helps achieve recognition of the helpers. This article is of good quality.
The article is well written. The introduction and conclusion are succinct. There is a smooth transition of ideas from one paragraph to the next. The author uses straightforward lingo that is easy to comprehend. There are no typographical errors in the paper. However, the paper has a few mistakes in grammar.
For example, the author writes “practises” (verb) instead of “practices” (noun) in the sentence containing the words “knowledge practises.” The author makes punctuation errors, for example, the introductory phrases “On one side” and “On the other side” do not have commas after them. There is unnecessary capitalization of words like “how,” “what,” and “who” in the paper.
References
Handyman, K. J. 2011, Research tips – Authorship ethics. Web.
“The imagined author” 2000, in Jones, A. H. & McLellan, F (eds.), Medical issues in biomedical publications, JHU Press, Maryland, pp 31-35.