scientific publications

Redressing imbalances in the kind of research that gets done and who gets credit for it

If we want good work to get done, we should credit those who do it. In science, researchers are credited predominantly via authorship on publications. But many contributions to modern research are not recognized with authorship, due in part to the high bar imposed by the authorship criteria of many journals. “Contributorship” is a more inclusive framework for indicating who did what in the work described by a paper, and many scientific journals have recently implemented versions of it. I will consider the motivation for and specifics of this change, describe the tenzing tool we created to facilitate it, and how we might want to support and shape the shift toward contributorship