1In the scientific endeavour and search for knowledge, it could be argued that the

2most important item produced is the scientific paper it synthesises the work of
3a single/group of scientists into a unit that together with other such units,
4comprises the scientific literature that harbours all the greatest discoveries of
5the human race.
6Science is a collaborative enterprise, and it is recognised that discussion with
7peers improve the quality of work produced beyond that which could be achieved
8alone. However in a collaboration, there can sometimes be incongruence
9between credit attribution formalities on scientific papers and their desired
10effects in the scientific community. In this essay I will discuss such authorship
11concerns in the experimental High-Energy Physics (HEP) community (as an
12example of hyperauthorship), as well as in the physics community more
13generally.
14
15Experimental High-Energy Physics is well-known for its large scale international
16collaborations and thousand-long author list on papers. 3 Take the ATLAS
17experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for example it involves over
182,500 physicists at 140 institutes across 34 different countries. These physicists
19dedicate significant amounts of time to their delegated assignment. Every piece
20which is there has somebody who has thought about, has given a year of his life
21to make sure that a bolt is in the right place and has the right effect. 4 The
22complex nature of the experimental project necessitates the involvement of so
23many people, and each person is crucial to the success of the experiment.
24The traditional methods of credit attribution through paper authorship have not
25changed to accommodate the emergence of these big science projects in the
26past 50 years. Clearly an alphabetised list of thousands of names does not
27provide the required nuanced information about each physicists role, and yet to
28slim down the list to a practicable number would completely neglect the
29significant efforts of the many others evidently the authorship model has
30broken down.

31Anticipating this incapability of the paper authorship processes to acknowledge

32physicists appropriately, in 1999, CERN announced a new category of publication
33called scientific notes, in which the progress of small subgroups of large
34collaborations can be disseminated.5 The ATLAS notes are readily available online
35and look very much like traditional papers with <10 authors. 6 However,
36ultimately, these notes are often highly specialised to their experiments and not
37generalizable to physics as a whole, and as such less frequently published to
38journals.

1 Furthermore, criteria for authorship in these contexts deviate significantly from

2convention in other disciplines. This is due to the different research environment
3of HEP, where the time scale of experiments runs in decades. Thus it is
4unfeasible for many people who may contribute significantly to the experiment
5to be involved throughout all its stages (e.g. people who are leaving or entering
6the field). The time scale of the influence of an individual also lengthens e.g. a
7piece of software developed may be used indefinitely for future analysis this is
8the motivation for ATLAS allowing individuals who have left the field to be
9included as authors on papers published up to a year after their departure. 2
39The success of scientific notes in performing due credit allocation is unclear.
40The vacuum left by failure of authorship means new structures and norms need
41to form that simulate the formality of paper authorship in assigning credit. The
42scientific notes need to be a reliable source by which to judge the merits of their
43authors, leaving authors feeling appreciated by the scientific community, and
44motivated to perform at their best. The role of scientific notes in the HEP
45community is likely still evolving. That there is a replacement for the authorship
46model in HEP is crucial and this space requires ongoing monitoring.
47This still leaves the problem of who to include as author on the big discoveries
48that the thousand-strong collaborations have been working tirelessly toward.
49Authorship functions not only as a credit-attribution mechanism, but also as a
50way of ensuring accountability of the authors for their work, and thus the
51reliability of the findings. Questions such as who is responsible for the veracity of
52the scientific claims made in papers needs to be answered. In this context, the
53collaboration needs to be treated as any other type of hierarchical organisation
54with power structures. Decisions to publish are made by editorial boards, and the
55majority of members in a collaboration do not have a substantial voice in how
56papers are worded, or even fundamental aspects of experimental design.
57Complaints about overgeneralisation of results should be directed toward those
58subgroups that write the manuscript, criticisms about inadequate consideration
59of extraneous variables can be directed to planning committees, and isolated
60breaches of ethical practice within collaborations do not implicate unrelated
61branches.
62Despite the decentralisation of the many aspects involved in writing a paper to
63distinct entities across the collaboration, we can still regard the collaboration as
64a cohesive body capable of making claims to knowledge of discovery of a new
65particle, with all the credibility associated with such a large organisation. I think
66this is the picture that we should endeavour to portray of the relationship of big
67science collaborations to their publication outflow.
68I think the exhaustive listing of collaboration members as authors is intended as
69a gesture of inclusiveness, and to emphasise the crucial contribution of each
70individual to the final results.7 Whether this indeed is the message delivered, and
71whether it would be less misleading to instead do away with authorship in big
72science collaborations altogether is another question.
73
74In almost complete juxtaposition, I would now like to make some remarks about
75authorship in my home discipline, theoretical physics. Here, collaborations occur
76on the scale of usually a maximum of 5 authors. There also exist conventions to
77alphabetise author lists in a similar fashion to mathematicians. The motivation
78here is an egalitarian one, to attribute credit to all authors equally, and render all
79authors equally responsible.1 Thus all authors are expected to have a thorough
80understanding of the papers content and be able to defend it.
81This egalitarianism is the result of theoretical physics being a very idea-driven
82discipline, with progress closely tied with generation of novel ideas. A
83collaboration is then essentially an exchange of ideas, where all parties are
84heavily involved in the discussion and consecutively build upon each others
85thoughts. In many cases it would be uninformative, or even impossible to
 86disentangle the contributions of one individual from another, much less
87objectively prioritise these contributions.
88There are also cases where the contributions from co-authors are manifestly
89unbalanced for example, where a supervisor suggests a possible avenue of
90inquiry, and the student actually performs the calculations to reach the result.
91The unequal roles of the contributors would not be captured by the
92alphabetisation convention, and ethically responsible scientists would
93presumably give primary authorship to the student.

94Like any other discipline, unfortunately physics also sees incidence of ghost and
95honorary authorship. A survey conducted of over 3000 members of the American
96Physical Society (APS) who had PhDs in 2002 found that the APS criterion for
97authorship (itself a meagre few sentences in length) 10 was not used in 92% of
98publishing experiences, and there was a 23% probability that a third or
99subsequent author on the respondents most recent paper was inappropriate by
100the APS criterion.8 A survey in 1999 of around 100 physicists found that 21%
101deemed honorary authorship reasonable.9 Although more recent surveys were
102not found, I think we can conclude there likely still exists a pervasive culture of
103neglecting authorship concerns in physics. It appears that the biggest problem is
104not the resolution of authorship disputes, but rather the discussion of authorship
105considerations in the first place.
106This high incidence of inappropriate authorship results in a raft of issues.
107Honorary authorship undermines the legitimacy of authorship as a measure of
108academic productivity. If authorship is still used to make hiring and tenure
109decisions, this disadvantages young scientists and falsely builds the reputation of
110established scholars (the Matthew effect). This can create a hostile research
111environment where scientists experience unrealistic productivity expectations.
112Furthermore, ghost authorship is obviously unfair to the uncredited individual,
113and the lack of conversation around authorship means the unacknowledged
114parties are less likely to object for fear of rocking the boat.
115The best course of action to initiate change in the physics community would be
116to promote discussion of authorship concerns more widely. Institutes of physics
117can head this charge by having panels at conferences discussing what
118constitutes appropriate authorship. Physics journals should have more visible
119authorship policies such that all applicants for publication are exposed to them
120before submitting their manuscript. Universities should draft recommendations
121for procedures that can be employed throughout the planning and writing stages
122of a paper to determine authorship e.g. preliminary consensus on authorship
123prior to research commencement, and cataloguing if not the contributions of
124each individual, then at least their presence at meetings about the paper.
125Conflict resolution procedures would aim to elucidate everyones contribution,
126and evaluate the significance of those contributions objectively through a
127mediator.
128

10 In this vein, both alphabetisation and non-alphabetisation conventions exist in

11high energy theoretical physics; that there is non-uniformity in author ordering
12convention is a problem in and of itself, not discussed here.
129In conclusion, the changing landscape of HEP research associated with the
130emergence of large scale collaborations necessitates a fresh approach to the
131mechanisms that attribute credit and ensure accountability. In these contexts,
132authorship is becoming increasingly obsolete and thought needs to be given as
133to whether its preservation does more harm than good.
134In other areas of physics, authorship still plays its pivotal role as academic
135currency, yet is frequently misused, leading to an unhealthy research
136environment. The physics community needs to move in the direction of having
137open discussions about authorship, and removing any associated taboos.
138References:

1391. American Mathematical Society. (2015). The Culture of Research and

140Scholarship in Mathematics: Joint Research and Its Publication. [online] Available
141at:
142http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/JointResearchandItsPublicationfina
143l.pdf [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].

1442. Anon (2009). Atlas Authorship Policy. [online] Available at:

145http://www.fysik.su.se/~ker/CV/AUTHOR_policy_7.2_draft.pdf [Accessed 25 Apr.
1462017].

1473. ATLAS Collaboration (2012). Observation of a new particle in the search for the
148Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Physical Letters
149B, 716(1), pp.1-29.

1504. Birnholtz, J. (2008). When Authorship Isnt Enough: Lessons from CERN on the
151Implications of Formal and Informal Credit Attribution Mechanisms in
152Collaborative Research. The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 11(1).

1535. CERN Courier. (1999). New class of publications that will recognize individual
154contributions in future experiments. [online] Available at:
155http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28114 [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].

1566. CERN Document Server. (n.d.). ATLAS Notes. [online] Available at:
157http://cds.cern.ch/collection/ATLAS%20Notes?ln=en [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].

1587. Galison, P. (2014). Scientific Authorship. 1st ed. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis,
159pp.325-354.

1608. Tarnow, E. (2002). Coauthorship in Physics. Science and Engineering Ethics,

1618(1), pp.175-190.

1629. Tarnow, E. (1999). The Authorship List in Science: Junior Physicists' Perception
163of Who Appears and Why. Science and Engineering Ethics, 5(1), pp.73-88.

16410. American Physical Society. (2017). Ethics and Values: 02.2 APS Guidelines for
165Professional Conduct. [online] Available at:
166https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/02_2.cfm [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].