The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a perplexed reader writes:

What are the standards of honest co-authorship in philosophy? I have recently been asking around to fellow grad students, and in one case, one person reported drafting the entire paper by themselves, receiving feedback by their supervisors, and being asked to add their names as co-authors. In another case, the student recounted a similar story, except this time they acknowledged that the more senior person's ideas were what made the paper worth submitting to a journal in the first place, even though the student wrote the draft entirely by themselves. In a third case, the student researched and wrote all but the introductory/'background' sections of the paper, but the paper is still billed as an even co-authorship. Are these students being exploited, or is this normal?

These are excellent questions. Given that co-authorship is relatively uncommon in philosophy (but seemingly increasing!), I'm hoping we can have a good discussion. One reader submitted the following response:

I work on authorship, and I have co-authored with a number of people, junior, senior, and peers. This is a complex set of questions you ask. Further, one cannot reliably know what happened if you just hear one person's story. The other co-authors might see things very differently. If the various students you mention feel exploited, then they need to talk with an ethics person on campus, that is, someone involved in research integrity. At many universities there is usually a committee. But they can initially talk with a member of such a committee.

I think this follow-up is broadly correct: co-authorship is complex, and as a spouse of someone who works in a STEM field, I've experienced many of these complexities second-hand. My sense is that in science, there doesn't seem to be any exact standard of how to settle co-authorship (including the order of co-authors listed). Instead, there appear to be some general rules of thumb that co-authors often broadly negotiate these matters according to, but which are not always respected (and indeed, in some cases–all too many cases, in fact–abused). Allow me to explain, and then open things up for discussion.

Although I could be wrong, here's one general rule of thumb that often seems to me to be used in science:

1. The person who comes up with the main paper idea (i.e. study or experiment idea) should presumptively be first-author. 

Here, in turn, is the rationale for this rule: the paper wouldn't even exist without them! Consequently, sometimes first authors aren't the main people actually drafting the paper. They are instead the person whose ideas inspired the paper, and it may fall in large part to the second, third, or fourth authors to do much of the drafting and data analysis. However, again, the above only seems to be a rule of thumb. For there are other rules of thumb, like this one: 

2. The person who does the most amount of the work contributing to the paper should be first author. 

Oftentimes, (1) and (2) will single out the same person. For example, the person who comes up with the main paper idea may also be the person primarily responsible for developing the study's methodology, data collection, or even data analysis. Consequently, in cases like these (where rules of thumb 1 and 2 converge), the person who should be listed as first-author will generally be clear to everyone. Responsibilities for drafting the paper may fall mainly to the second, third, and/or other author(s), as in science at least, paper drafting is often less work than coming up with paper ideas, experimental designs, data collection, and so on–all in broad conformity with the following, third rule of thumb:

3. Order of authorship should be broadly decided in terms of (a) amount and (b) quality of contribution to the final product.

Of course, this rule of thumb is open to a lot of interpretation–and my sense is that good co-authors usually try to sort these things out in ways that everyone involved believes to be broadly fair. This doesn't always happen, however, and my sense is that it is not uncommon in science for some people to think "I should have been first author" or "I did more work than the second author, and think it's a bit unfair that I'm listed as third author." But, oftentimes, my sense is that people don't raise too much of a fuss over these things unless it is really clear that things are amiss. Finally, though, there can be serious issues of power imbalances and abuses thereof, such as 'famous advisors' or early-career hotshots in need of tenure who notoriously put themselves as 'first author' on their grad students work. My sense is that these kinds of things are unfortunately common in science, and that bad actors are fairly widely known but little is usually done because of their positions of power and prestige (and furthermore, that often the safest recourse for grad students is to simply avoid having these people as dissertation advisors or mentors). On the flip side, my sense is that in the sciences, people generally think of 'good advisors' as erring in the opposite direction–that is, in the direction of listing students as first-authors, even if in reality it's probably the advisor who deserves that position. Whether this is a good thing is another story, as I've heard the obvious worry that it is deceptive, passing off the advisor's ideas as the students in order to help the student get first-authored publications (and, of course, a job!). These, I think, are all 'moral hazards' endemic to co-authorship, and I don't know of any foolproof method in the sciences for avoiding them. It is, as they say, what it is. 

Anyway, that's my broad impression of how things tend to be dealt with in science. It is another question of how well the above rules of thumb extend to work in philosophy, and what should be done in philosophy. Here, I'm not sure. I've heard there are some examples of co-authors writing in a footnote something like 'both authors contributed equally to this paper.' But, I'm not entirely sure that I like this, as it seems to me a bit 'nickel and diming' to fuss over who contributed how much. I've co-authored a couple of pieces–one with a faculty colleague at another university, and one with an undergraduate student–and in both cases the works have been deeply collaborative, the result of us working through ideas together in conversation and in paper drafts. Consequently, in both cases, the very idea of an 'order of authors' actually seems to me to make little sense. It can be hard to get any determinate sense of who should be listed as first-author, given the way the project evolved–and so, it seems to me, the proper thing to do is to simply have the co-authors negotiate these things with each other with integrity, erring (I think) on the side of correcting for any power imbalances. But, of course, things don't always go so well, and people can abuse power imbalances–just as, again, occurs all too often in the sciences. I don't have any clear solutions to these kinds of problems, and to be frank, it seems to me that people working in the sciences often don't have any great solutions to them either–making 'problem cases' fairly common, but what should be done about them deeply unclear.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. What are yours?