Co-authorship or Sole Authorship: Tradition or Freedom of Choice?
The article seeks to provide an overview of Russian and international practices of publishing scientific papers in co-authorship or in sole authorship. Nowadays, most scientific research results are obtained in collaboration, making it difficult to know who can claim the right of authorship in scientific papers. In the international scientific community there are certain rules which give every scientist the right to be named a co-author or to claim sole authorship. The process is controlled by scientific and educational organisations, scientific journals and ethical committees at various levels. Nevertheless, in some cases the issue of authorship is regulated by traditions accepted in a research team. There arealso unfair practices (guest, honorary, gift authorship). The relevance of this empirical sociological research lies in the clear regulation of the scientist’s right to authorship. The aim of the article is to study exercising the right to authorship in academic papers, to set measures to counteract unethical behaviour in the academic sphere.Methodology and research methods. The empirical sociological research uses the method of expert interviews with 107 full-time employees of Russian universities.Results. The number of co-authors assigned to an article is an important ethical consideration for the fi of a research team. There are two most common practices: (1) all team members are assigned the authorship of the research paper; (2) only those who actually prepared the paper and analysed the empirical material are listed as authors. Collaborative work and a large number of co-authors are typical for certain scientifi fi (technical, medical, archaeological, geographical and other studies). Philosophers, mathematicians, cultural experts and others are often solitary authors.When listing co-authors, the order in which they are named is important. Often the grant manager is listed as the lead author, regardless of their contribution to the paper. In modern academic practice, it is typical to list the author who has made the greatest contribution to the paper first. Other authors are mentioned (1) according to the degree of contribution to the text preparation, (2) alphabetically,with the scientific supervisor of the project (or other person occupying the highest position in the scientific hierarchy) being the last author listed, guaranteeing the credibility of the paper.