Dear Hein:

Only one of the authors of a paper can give the real information. This cannot be stopped still one picks up enough courage to stop giving authorship to those who have contributed nothing.

Subir Bandyopadhyay

thank you for your note. I have identified and quoted a historical photo of a doctoral student's dissertation. This is a picture quote, because also this photo of the doctoral student is from a source that is mentioned in his work. There is no cooperation, but only I have named the source that I have used, and this is wrong interpreted as a co-working. Thank you for your advice.

Hein

Hein Retter

Dear colleague,

This is a question that very often comes to me as well. Can you give me any information about the ethic of co-authorship?

Sometimes I decide to have co-authors so that I need help in very hard scientific work. In all cases ideas as well as general design of the contributions, stylistic elaboration of texts and sometimes even making references are made by me. Co-authors actually contribute little . However, as far as they have done at least something and this something was necessary for me, I think they should have award for their job and present them as co-authors. But the problem is that there was case when one of them began to publish works separately and presenting (with references on our joint works) ideas and conclusions expressed in these works as her/his owns. In result the impression is that in these works to me belongs minor role while the ideas and conclusions belongs to my co-author. Maybe reason of this practice is my co-author's little experience in referring correctly to the contributions of the others, but maybe it is made quite intentionally. Anyway, I think the cases like this deserve attention of academic community. Ethical issues of intellectual property is very important for all of us.

Thank you for this interesting question.

I know a high profile Scientist who simply accompanied a student in the field and when the student published a mere new variety of a species, the said Scientist claimed her name as a co-author. Nothing more to say about these greedy Scientists having no ethics and incapable of doing some original research. Yet they occupy high positions in reputed Institutions. Exploitation and plagiarism have no limits.

Tapas Chakrabarty

Mariam Chkhartishvili

Dear Colleagues, thank for your experiences. In my case, the background was that I showed the cover of a book, the source of which I mentioned, as a "photo" under the additional uploads, but of course gave all the information that one had to give for a source reference. So there was the author of the book on the cover, which I called the source. The book happened to be a dissertation written by me, it could have been another book. So it's not about someone else being involved in my essay, but about a source reference. Of course you want to support your academic students, and call them co-authors, if it is a common work of more than one. But even if she only worked as a helping student, i.e. indirectly contributed something to the essay, as an author you usually thank her in the text or in a footnote. Here, in my case, it's rather the other way around. I want to protect myself, but above all my doctoral student, from being published in ResearchGate as a co-author of an article that she neither wrote nor even knows about.

Hein Retter

I think if you are willing to give co-authorship to your students and they have no objection to be co-authors, its always wellcome because there is good relationship between you and your students.

Subir Bandyopadhyay

Dear Subir Bandyopadhyay, perhaps I didn't express myself well, but my "case" is this: Someone I mention as a reference can't or shouldn't be the co-author of my own text, even if I quoted from it. But I didn't do that at all, I show the cover of a book - and that could be a book by you or another RG-user. And you won't expect me, I am convinced, that I call therefore you a co-author if I mention an essay/ a book of you in my list of references. My statement is: We can, may, and should not claim that an author of our reference list should be - for no other reason than that - transformed to be a co-author of our text. Such a supposed favour (as one does with "recommendations" in RG), I think, is not right done for all parts. But we may have further discussions on that. I think it would be good if in our conversation - but perhaps it is a misunderstanding - we could also hear other colleagues say whether they agree or disagree with my statement.

Kind regards, Hein Retter

Thanks Hein. The author(s) cited under references cannot br co-author(s) by any means untill and unless they contribute something towards the paper.

Thanks also, dear Subir, for your statement.

Hein