"junior" authorship

From: Hilary Cantwell <hilary[_at_]deakin.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 16:35:53 +1000

I've come across the concept of "jumior" authorship, which seems to exist in the more scientific areas of research and writing.

Person A does research, writes an article or thesis or book. Person B, usually more of an authority, might provide supervision and perhaps even funding - but might never put pen to paper.

Then you see both Person A and Person B listed as authors on the published work - Person B usually taking second place - as "junior" author, as a credit for their involvement.

It's interesting, because I've been involved in a situation where Person A decided he really hated Person B and refused to let Person B be acknowledged as "junior" author. Needless to say, there isn't a proper contract which sorts all this sort of thing out. And Person B didn't actually do any of the writing. So we've got the scientific community saying that this sort of thing goes on all the time, that it's standard practice - but it is a very dodgy practice, copyright-wise.

Does this happen in the US as well??

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Hilary Cantwell

Deakin University
Geelong, Australia

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<hilary[_at_]deakin.edu.au> Received on Thu Jul 30 1998 - 06:41:20 GMT