Who Should be an Author?

A Proposal of an Autonomy-based Authorship Standard Considering Varied Disciplinary Features for Originality

Abstract

　“Who should be an author?” is controversial in the scenes of scientific practices where many scientists collaborate and publish articles together. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors （ICMJE） publishes recommendations that set ethical and editorial standards for academic publication including authorship, and those ICMJE’s authorship standards are now adopted in most leading medical journals as well as many scientific journals of other disciplines. Against those standards, however, there are also many criticisms such that they do not consider fair evaluation of academic contribution, and they make fragile the institutional and conceptional basis of authorship. We therefore examine the original meaning of author and responsibility of author, and then propose another authorship standard relying upon autonomy of researchers that takes into consideration varied disciplinary features for originality.