What’s the Point of Authors?

Who should be the author(s) of an academic paper? This question is becoming increasingly pressing due to the increasing prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration and the corresponding diversity of authorship practices in different disciplines and sub-disciplines. This article addresses the conceptual issues underlying authorship, with an eye to ameliorating authorship practices. The first part of the article distinguishes five roles played by authorship attributions: allocating credit, constructing a speaker, enabling credibility judgements, supporting accountability, and creating an intellectual marketplace. The second part of the article argues that distinguishing these functions helps us see that at least some of the confusions around authorship are due to tensions between these functions. The final part of the article suggests a way to resolve these conceptual confusions. This proposal suggests replacing authorship with a bundle of roles tailored to the functions of authorship—contributor, spokesperson, writer, and guarantor—which can be distributed in a number of different ways.