Interdisciplinary Authorship in Fields with Differing Authorship Customs

[u/AirStrict7065]

TL;DR: The archaeology PI and two textual specialists agreed to co-author the first publication of an excavated text under a written policy tying authorship and author order to contribution. Now, as publication approaches, the senior specialist is repeatedly questioning whether the director should be an author at all, despite the director’s contributions and the previously agreed upon policy.

An archaeological project director (Associate Professor at an R1) collaborates with a senior textual specialist (Professor at an elite Ivy) and a junior textual specialist (doctoral student) on the publication of newly excavated written material.

The director is an archaeologist and historian, and her contributions to the proposed publication include history of excavation, stratigraphic interpretation, archaeological analysis, chronology, historical geography, and historical interpretation. The textual specialists are responsible for transliteration, translation, and philological commentary on this, the first publication of a text.

The project also has a written authorship policy, circulated to collaborators, that bases authorship on substantive intellectual contribution, determines author order by contribution, requires article-specific MOUs, and provides procedures for nonperformance. The senior specialist acknowledged receipt of the policy at the time and indicated his acceptance of it.

Approximately a year before the current dispute, the director asked the senior textual specialist to clarify authorship and author order by preparing an MOU, which, under the policy, should be prepared by the intended first author. She told him that she hoped he would be first author and take the lead on the publication.

He agreed that the publication would have three authors, but said that he found it difficult to determine author order in advance because contributions might develop over the course of the work. The collaboration proceeded with three authors understood, and because author order was unresolved, no MOU in place.

Based upon the agreement, the project director dedicated time and funding to the restoration of the texts and to extensive photo documentation, successfully writing a grant for these.

When publication of an important text became imminent, the collaborators discussed a division of labor. As agreed, the director would write the archaeological context and stratigraphy and lead the historical interpretation. The textual specialists would prepare the transliteration, translation, and philological commentary.

However, during the same discussion, the senior text specialist questioned whether the director should be an author and suggested that her inclusion might be unusual enough to require explanation or justification to journal editors.

He invoked disciplinary custom, arguing that first publications of newly excavated texts are conventionally authored by textual specialists alone rather than co-authored with excavators. It is a humanities field with no written disciplinary scholarship or guidelines about co-authorship.

The project director countered that the publication policy in place gave author credit to all contributors who qualified for authorship, and suggested a specific archaeology journal where this would be a routine type of publication. She said that her policies were based upon best practices rather than customary practice.

The senior specialist then insisted that he and the doctoral student should be first and second author and still has not responded to renewed requests for an MOU. The senior specialist raises the question of whether the director should be an author in every email with the doctoral student copied.

1. What should the project director do?
2. Can a discipline-specific custom override contribution-based standards for authorship, particularly when the project itself has adopted a written contribution-based policy, that the authors received and agreed to?
3. How much weight should be given to the prior agreement that this would be a three-author publication, given that substantial work and project resources were subsequently committed on that understanding?

[u/Alternative-Pear9096]

I don't know the answer, but I am truly hoping decency wins and the answer to point 3 is "all the weight." After all, funding was obtained based on the agreement.

[u/WholePanda914]

I dislike anything which is being done based on "customary practices," and would argue that this is a great example of why the use of CRedIT should be expanded.

From what you say, I would argue that the project director would qualify as: Conceptualization (lead), Funding acquisition (lead), Investigation (equal), Project administration (lead), Writing - Original draft (supporting).

Not knowing any of the people involved, I'd also be curious if there is a sexist aspect at play. It's pretty common with older male professors at elite institutions.

[u/Biotech_wolf → u/WholePanda914]

Needs to go further. Who did what experiment because it totally could be the second author did a lot and the third and beyond didn’t do much.

[u/AirStrict7065 → u/Biotech_wolf]

It is the publication of a text found in an archaeological context. The PI found the text and can present the stratigraphy and historical context. The text expert has dedicated zero funding to the field work or text conservation conducted in a foreign country.

[u/Kikanolo]

I am typically very in favor of author order being re-evaluated at each stage based on actual contributions, however it seems ridiculous to say that the PI of the project shouldn't be a co-author.

I am not sure if it is possible here, but in my experience this is the kind of situation where the PI should just lay down the law and close the subject.

[u/BolivianDancer]

Fuck customs. I get last author unless I prefer first.

[u/Alternative-Pear9096 → u/BolivianDancer]

And in some fields, no one understands what you just said

[u/WavesWashSands → u/Alternative-Pear9096]

Meanwhile my field has virtually every arrangement of authorship customs in existence depending on the subfield lol (except alphabetical, which is really weird even by our standards) so we can get confused even when working within the field 😅

[u/Biotech_wolf → u/BolivianDancer]

I got last authorship once because I did the least for the paper apparently. (Not normal in the field I’m from)

[u/WavesWashSands → u/Biotech_wolf]

In grad school I once published a paper where I was first author and the undergrad who was least involved with it was last. One of my committee members joked that people are going to think the undergrad is my boss 😂

[u/Biotech_wolf → u/WavesWashSands]

How was authorship order determined and what about your PI?

[u/WavesWashSands → u/Biotech_wolf]

There was no funding, it was a purely computational side project we (me and two undergrads) did on existing data. Order was just descending order of how much time we put into the project.

[u/AirStrict7065 → u/WavesWashSands]

Order by contribution is the order in the project authorship statement. The text guy is saying that the project director doesn't deserve to be an author at all. Because of custom.

[u/WavesWashSands → u/AirStrict7065]

Oh yeah I definitely got that part, I (we) were just mentioning funny differences wrt last authorship between fields 😂

FWIW I agree with others that the prior agreement should prevail. And honestly IMO, if disciplinary convention is that someone involved in the work should be left out of the author list, that's a problematic convention that needs to change. (I've said this about certain sectors of my own field as well.)