Allocating the Credit in Collaborative Research

Extract

For years journal articles from the natural sciences have been characterized by multiple authors, reflecting the collaborative nature of the research. The articles have also conformed to a professional norm in giving credit to the authors and, at least implicitly, indicating their relative contributions. Although such collaborative research has grown significantly in political science, the discipline is still wrestling with any standard to indicate who gets credit and the nature of multiple authors' relative contributions. This is an issue with which political scientists from the most junior to the most senior continue to deal.