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Do The Ethics Of Authorship Matter?: Exploring The Implications Of The Office Of Research Integrity's Narrow Definition Of Research Misconduct, Caroline Linvill

All Theses

Over the past 25 years, federal government entities have become involved in defining and regulating misconduct in scientific research. Consistently, these definitions of research misconduct forbid three key actions--falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism--but do not take into account other professional communication issues, mainly authorship. This lack of acknowledgement and regulation of authorship--particularly from the Office of Research Integrity, the nation's highest research ethics body--seems to imply and communicate that the ethics of authorship are not important in science. However, this thesis demonstrates, through rhetorical, historical and interview research, that authorship ethics do matter to scientists; in fact, authorship is a leading …