【 以下文字转载自 Faculty 讨论区 】
发信人: YangCN (老杨), 信区: Faculty
标 题: 自然杂志：No more first authors, no more last authors
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Fri Oct 5 12:49:07 2018, 美东)
倡议：
If we really want transdisciplinary research, we must ditch the ordered
listing of authors that stalls collaborative science, says Gretchen L. Kiser.
全文：
Every academic scientist has heard a tale of someone being shafted on an
authorship list, or had it happen to them. Less appreciated is how much the
attribution of credit impedes cross-disciplinary approaches to difficult
questions. It creates a negative feedback loop that hinders research.
Most scientists agree that research questions and approaches have become
more complex, so the need to engage in expanded team science has increased.
I’ve found, however, that there is great reluctance among faculty members
to join such efforts. I find myself asking, ‘What if we completely blow up
the way in which we attribute authorship?’ I suspect that if we got rid of
first authors, last authors and the fight for asterisks, we might interrupt
the negative feedback loop and see more innovation.
Since 2012, I’ve led the Research Development Office at the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF). One of our goals is to bring together
researchers of varying backgrounds to encourage innovative thinking and new
approaches. My team identifies and cajoles ‘champions’ to invite
colleagues to participate in team-building events. We offer financial and
logistical support; we bring in interesting speakers; we provide drinks and
food (and not just pizza!) — all to get scientists to talk to each other
about their research, needs and ambitions. But the resource that really
matters is not mine to dispense: credit for scientific contributions.
There are real successes: one of our ‘speed-networking’ events at UCSF
introduced neurologist Dena Dubal, who investigates the molecular mechanisms
of longevity and neurodegenerative disease, to psychologist Aric Prather,
who researches the effects of stress on health. That led to a project that
revealed an association between chronic psychological stress and lower
levels of a longevity hormone. They published that work and continue to
collaborate (A. A. Prather et al. Transl. Psychiatr. 5, e585; 2015).
Other teams we’ve helped have received follow-on support from external
funders such as the US National Institutes of Health. Surveys tell me that
faculty members enjoy our team-building events, even when they did not
expect to, and that they would recommend them to others.
Nevertheless, there seems to be an undeclared disincentive for researchers
to build unconventional collaborations. I get frustrated with the disconnect
between what we say about the need for transdisciplinary teams to solve
complex problems and the reluctance to try something new to build those
teams.
The assessment of publications during promotion and tenure decisions is a
big part of the problem. Although these processes often have some mechanism
to recognize a researcher’s team contributions, the culture remains largely
unchanged from 50 years ago. The gravitas associated with ‘first’ and ‘
senior’ authorship is entrenched. What about the middle author who might
have significantly altered the approach? Or the fourth-place author who
linked different disciplines? Often these researchers are left to find only
self-satisfaction.
Many journals now allow, and even require, statements that explain
contributors’ roles in their publications. Taxonomies and standardized
vocabularies for describing authors’ roles have been developed. Similarly,
promotion and tenure committees are using contribution narratives in their
assessments. These changes are helping. They capture a fuller spectrum of a
researcher’s productivity so that evaluators can consider more than where
someone sits in an author list.
Still, I’ve had senior faculty members tell me that, even though they look
at the contribution narratives, they still expect to see first-author and
then senior-author papers when assessing candidates.
Meanwhile, research projects are starting to incorporate data that no one on
the immediate team collected, and there are no settled conventions for
crediting outside researchers or incentivizing that valuable work.
We need a cultural shift to recognize and reward scientists who make their
work useful to others, including researchers who might never meet but whose
data are used. One way to make this happen is to get rid of ordered author
lists. By developing author contribution taxonomies and narratives, we have
already acknowledged the need to reflect the multifaceted nature of
authorship. Large consortia and organizations are adopting contribution
frameworks to reflect author roles and participation more accurately. We are
also moving to use repository tools that assign authorship to different
types of research output, such as data sets. More effort, creativity and
diversity of thought are needed. We should stop trying to apply old
attribution models to the innovative ways we now generate data.
If we can reveal the shape of proteins at atomic resolutions, tweak genes to
order and detect cosmic signals from the beginning of time, then surely we
can work out better ways to represent author contributions. We already send
complex basic research and clinical data into ‘information commons’ and
build computational ‘knowledge network’ tools to inform patient
diagnostics and therapeutics. A well-annotated data set might be combined
with other data to expand its impact synergistically. Can we imagine an
author attribution method that would use cutting-edge computational tools
similar to those being applied to scientific research itself? A tool that
gives credit where credit is due?
If we acknowledge the products of research in more-innovative ways, the
value of ‘team-ness’ might grow in academic culture and the cutting edge
will get sharper. Perhaps, then, I won’t have to cajole anyone to
participate in team-building activities.
