NCSU Libraries Focus Online
Volume 26 number 1 - Fall 2005
Exploring the "Who Dunnit?" of Scholarly Work
By Katherine Dexter Willis, Research and Information Services
Blaise Cronin, dean of the School of Library and Information Science
and Rudy Professor of Information Science at Indiana University,
was the featured speaker at the 2005 I. T. Littleton Seminar, held
on April 13, 2005, at the NCSU Libraries. Cronin, educated in Ireland
and a frequent speaker and writer on topics relating to scholarly
communication, academic scholarship, and collaboration in science,
discussed “Who Dunnit? Agency, Attribution, and Authority
in an Age of Hyper-authorship.” He described the differences
in publishing regimes and norms across disciplines, issues of formal
and informal collaboration in science, the growth of coauthorship,
and the ways in which cognitive and material contributions to scholarship
can be acknowledged and quantified.
During his presentation, Cronin discussed evolving trends in authorship
and the issues involved in tracking and itemizing individual contributions
to academic work. Hyperauthorship--in which as many as several
hundred people can be listed as authors of a single research paper--is
becoming increasingly prevalent in academia, particularly in the
physical sciences. With increases in collaboration and multiauthor
papers, both on a national and international level, traditional
views of scientific research are shifting. Academics and librarians
are faced with the growing challenge of how to specify, measure,
and organize the details of collaborative authorship. Cronin specifically
addressed the issue of acknowledgments. Authors include valuable
information about collaboration in the acknowledgements of their
publications, but these acknowledgements are currently not tracked
or quantified in any regulated way. Cronin says, “these developments
in collaboration, in coauthorship; and this under-recognition of
the contributions--all of these significant others who inhabit
acknowledgments--are going to have to be taken into account” by
the academic community. Attendees of the talk, which was followed
by a reception, found it to be an engaging and thought-provoking
presentation. A lively and substantive question-and-answer session
followed Cronin’s remarks.
The annual I. T. Littleton Seminars are funded by an endowment
established in 1987 to honor former library director I. T. Littleton
upon his retirement from NC State. The series addresses major issues
that affect libraries across the nation and provides an exploration
of diverse perspectives. The event is coordinated and hosted by
the North Carolina State University Librarians Association (NCSULA).
Members of the NCSULA Steering Committee for 2004–2005 were
Katherine Dexter Willis, chair; Scott Warren, vice chair and chair-elect;
Monica Lopez, secretary; and Carol Vreeland, liaison to the NCSU
Libraries’ Staff Association.
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