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Separate authorship categories to recognize data collectors and code developers

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, page 1610 (2019)Cite this article

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To the Editor — The current, authorship-based system for recognizing individual contributions to science only patchily recognizes the contributions of the primary data collection that underpins, and code development that supports, the entire discipline. Data collectors and code developers — scientific resource generators — are progressively being forced to donate the grant income and time and effort of generating, curating and documenting data and code to the discipline as a whole1,2,3. Yet resource users — those that re-use previously published data and codes to generate new knowledge and publications — benefit from that time and effort but are not required to recognize it in any standardized manner. We need a new way to quantify and value what is currently anonymous; the fundamental contribution to scientific progress that generating scientific resources provides.

Many scientists agree that authorship is the ultimate reward for collecting data or developing code. However, the Vancouver Protocol tellingly states that “Participation solely in the … collection of data does not justify authorship.” Citations are routinely raised as the obvious approach to solving this dilemma4,5, but it is not enough. Citations carry less value to a scientist than authorship. Moreover, citations to scientific resources are agnostic to the impact of the papers that used those resources, resource citations are commonly buried in supplementary material where they do not get picked up by citation tracking software, and published resources not associated with a published manuscript do not contribute to a scientists’ citation indices.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Silwood Park Campus, Imperial College London, Ascot, UK

    Robert M. Ewers, Cristina Banks-Leite & Carsten Rahbek

  2. Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Jos Barlow

  3. Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Carsten Rahbek

Authors
  1. Robert M. Ewers
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  2. Jos Barlow
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  3. Cristina Banks-Leite
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  4. Carsten Rahbek
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Contributions

R.M.E., J.B., C.B.-L. and C.R. co-developed the ideas. R.M.E. wrote the first draft of the manuscript and J.B., C.B.-L. and C.R. contributed to manuscript editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert M. Ewers.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Ewers, R.M., Barlow, J., Banks-Leite, C. et al. Separate authorship categories to recognize data collectors and code developers. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1610 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-1033-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-1033-9

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