When it comes to apportioning credit, science could learn from the movies. Since 1934, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, has maintained an index to film credits, now called the Motion Picture Credits Database. For every film being considered for an award, the contribution of each person who worked on it, from hair stylists to the lead actress, is documented. Science, for all its focus on assessing and quantifying, has nothing like this.
The main currency in the world of science is authorship. Authorships enable scientists to accumulate citations, which seem to be established as the 'true' measure of successful and important science. Authorships are key to getting grants and winning promotions, and are also the foundation for a recently proposed algorithm for predicting scientists' success — their future h-index (D. E. Acuna et al. Nature 489, 201–202; 2012).
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Feed: Nature - Issue - nature.com science feeds
Posted on: Wednesday, 26 September 2012 10:00 AM
Author: Sebastian Frische
Subject: It is time for full disclosure of author contributions
| It is time for full disclosure of author contributions Nature 489, 7417 (2012). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/489475a Author: Sebastian Frische Online databases could increase fairness and transparency by fully documenting the role of each contributor to a paper, says Sebastian Frische. |
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