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Chapter 17
Case Study: Patterns in Authorship: Lessons in Diversity and Justice John D’Angelo* Division of Chemistry, Alfred University, Alfred, New York 14802, United States *E-mail:
[email protected].
Authorship and how much a particular type (i.e patent, vs. books, vs. papers with collaborators, vs. papers without collaborators) of authorship is “worth” to a researcher’s career is important to navigate. Authorship has well-established guidelines that are generally agreed upon. The standards for scholarship in tenure and promotion on the other hand vary from institution to institution and sometimes between departments within an institution. Herein, a hypothetical case that illustrates an issue uncovered by a recent study is presented. Students familiar with faculty rank and the tenure and promotion processes at US academic institutions are likely to benefit the most from this case study.
Imagine This… Organic chemists Francine Malot and Kevin Usa both start in their respective tenure-track positions in a Chemistry Division at a high-profile university at the same time. Thus, their tenure clocks are synchronized with each other (see the section titled “What Is Tenure and Why Is It Important?”). Tenure time comes, and they submit their portfolios. Both tenure candidates have been active in service serving on the same number of committees and both served as co-advisors for the graduate students’ club. Both have been actively engaged in scholarship and have produced the same number of publications, though several of Francine’s have more authors as her work is interdisciplinary and thereby involves more collaborators. When their tenure and promotion decisions are announced, Kevin is awarded tenure and promotion, while Francine is not recommended for tenure © 2018 American Chemical Society Mabrouk and Currano; Credit Where Credit Is Due: Respecting Authorship and Intellectual Property ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
and promotion. The Committee cites their perception that Francine does not to have developed independence as a researcher. Francine files a grievance with the promotion and tenure committee and ultimately is granted an additional year to strengthen her tenure case. Upon being awarded tenure but not promotion the following year, she pursues a position at the University where her collaborator works and is immediately offered a position with both tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, an offer she accepts. Some Points To Ponder: • •
Did Francine behave unethically in leaving the University after being granted an extra year and ultimately tenure? Was the committee unethical in denying Francine tenure while granting tenure to Kevin, a candidate with virtually the same professional qualifications?
If you think that this sort of scenario is crazy, and that it is the 21st century and that this sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, you are sorely mistaken. Women, even today in 2018 still must fight for equal pay for equal work. Academia is not immune to this injustice. Faculty, especially in the sciences, are still predominantly male. And while in academia everyone likes to believe they are above discriminatory behavior, there is evidence that discrimination is still present. Such is the case in the next study, which can be used as an argument in favor of journals better articulating the relative contribution of authors. A so-called contributorship system may at a minimum make it harder for promotion and tenure committees to engage in such discriminatory evaluations of performance when considering raises and tenure or promotion decisions. As part of her Ph.D. studies in economics at Harvard, Heather Sarsons (1) conducted a study on tenure decisions for economics professors. Her findings were disturbing, to put it mildly. Although it is not clear that the trends she found are applicable to other disciplines, that these trends are true in any academic discipline is…disappointing, at best. In her study, she evaluated the impact of co-authored manuscripts, as indicated in the academic economists’ curriculum vitae, on their receipt of tenure. Her findings should concern everyone since she found that while sole-author papers counted the same in tenure decisions for men and women when the numbers of co-authored papers were compared (industry standard lists co-authors alphabetically), women were found to be disadvantaged and were less likely than men to receive tenure. The effect is particularly pronounced (against women) when the co-author is male. She also found in her study that in fields such as sociology where authors are listed in order of contribution and where author contribution is made clear, both men and women received equal credit for coauthored papers. That is, collaborative research does not negatively impact women. If this disparity is present in other fields (and we would be naïve to think that the sciences are immune), journals such as those published by the ACS would be just in clearly articulating the contributions of all authors for all the manuscripts they publish. Furthermore, that such a disparity is not as strong in fields that clearly articulate the contributions of authors should be a wake-up call to all fields that do 178 Mabrouk and Currano; Credit Where Credit Is Due: Respecting Authorship and Intellectual Property ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
not engage in this process. Even implying author contribution vis-à-vis relative author order may not suffice. If not for the social justice-inspired reasons, for the legal ones as it is discrimination to judge men and women unequally for the same work. Some Additional Points To Ponder: • •
• •
Should it be responsibility of the tenure candidate to articulate to a committee the nature and extent of their contributions? Do the journals have an obligation to keep such a disparity in evaluation from happening, should they make it more clear because it best represents the contributions of multiple authors, or perhaps both or neither? Should collaborative work be worth less than non-collaborative work from a professional point of view? Is collaborative work necessarily an indication of lack of true independence?
What Is Tenure and Why Is It Important? Tenure, and whether it should exist, cease to exist, or be modified, is an interesting level of job security that exists almost exclusively in Academia. A discussion of how, if at all, tenure should exist is far beyond the present discussion, but the interested reader can find a wealth of information on the subject searching on the internet. Beware of what you read, however and be sure to read articles providing multiple perspectives, that of: faculty, administrators, and the public. To provide a better appreciation for the issues in this case, a discussion of tenure and its’ benefits and impact on an individual’s academic career may be helpful. In higher education, although a tenured faculty member could be fired, the conferral of tenure on a faculty person amounts to job permanence, not dissimilar to that of a Supreme Court Justice. Once someone earns tenure (and it truly must be earned), they can typically only lose their job because: their department or program is eliminated from the institution, and there is no other position they are willing to accept on campus; their institution has declared financial exigency (effectively, this is equivalent to a College or University declaring bankruptcy); or for just cause. What constitutes just cause may vary from institution to institution but generally this means committing a serious crime; gross, sustained incompetence; or extremely inappropriate behavior (e.g. coming to class inebriated, relationships with students). In the ideal, tenure ensures academic and scholarly freedom. That is, it allows a faculty person to explore controversial pursuits without fear of losing their job. Although there are certainly some faculty, who abuse the system and either coast into the twilight of their careers or say inflammatory/incendiary things just because they feel like they can without penalty, tenure’s continued existence is necessary to move scholarly work forward. Faculty persons must not work in fear of their work itself costing them their job. Tenure helps to prevent this. And this is not only true in the scholarly work venue. It also emboldens faculty members to experiment with their teaching methods more freely as they can avoid doing out 179 Mabrouk and Currano; Credit Where Credit Is Due: Respecting Authorship and Intellectual Property ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
of concern for low teaching evaluations, in fear of “this change in how I teach may get me fired if it doesn’t work. Increasingly, the scholarship of teaching and learning is a recognized field of scholarly work. This increasing recognition of research into teaching methods is a trend that ought to continue as it will only improve teaching and thereby, education. However, teachers must feel free to take a chance on using new teaching methods. Such freedom may not be possible without tenure. Lastly, tenure also prevents age discrimination. an academic institution from saving money by purging all the experienced (and expensive) faculty persons and replacing them with younger, cheaper instructors.
References 1.
Sarsons, H. Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work. https:// scholar.harvard.edu/files/sarsons/files/full_v6.pdf (accessed May 11, 2018).
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