In the paper just published in BioScience " World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice" the author list says "WILLIAM J. RIPPLE, CHRISTOPHER WOLF, THOMAS M. NEWSOME, MAURO GALETTI, MOHAMMED ALAMGIR, EILEEN CRIST, MAHMOUD I. MAHMOUD, WILLIAM F. LAURANCE, and 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries".
This is an extremely important paper, which I have co-signed, but I would argue that I am not a co-author on the paper - I have simply agreed with the text, but have not contributed in any way for it. However, on the Research Gate version of the paper Article World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice
a discussion has started about who might be considered a co-author in such a paper, where some folks said that in fact part of the impact of the paper is precisely to be the paper with the largest number of co-authors ever, as in fact implied by the wording used when thanking the signatories: " We are making history in that we will likely have the most co-signators ever to sign a journal article."So the questions are: (1) what does it mean to be the author of a paper? (2) and when, if ever, might the rules be broken for the sake of marketing and publicity? I do wonder what Bill Ripple and the remaining 7 named authors, and even BioScience, besides the RG community in general, feel about this.
(I conclude by saying that this is just a side issue in the grand scheme of things - above all, kudos to Bill and colleagues for taking a stand - it's time to act)
Signatories are endorsers or advocates or supporters but not authors.
Signatories are endorsers or advocates or supporters but not authors.
Each co-author must add intellectual input. That was not the situation for those signing. Case closed.
Has anyone checked the coauthor line of the first ms, the one from 25 years ago? Why is this ms any different?
Just provoking a bit... being the devil's advocate to enrich debate: I see and agree that coauthors must have some intelectual participation on the paper. However, aren't several of the papers out there including coauthors that loaned samples, collected specimens or field data basically (not talking here about the ones identifying specimens or data)?
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