In my research days, there was a time when a colleague did not want to be an author on one of our papers. They contributed to the work but disagreed with parts of the draft manuscript. It was an honest disagreement, one that we discussed professionally. I was not offended and could see where they were coming from. Long story short, we agreed they would not be an author on the final submitted paper, and life went on.
Authorship disputes can frequently happen. Without care, they can easily escalate into something toxic and career damaging. The points made in this piece aren’t new. We have shared similar pieces earlier. But we felt the points made were sensible and were shared in a very succinct manner. We suggest that your institution include this item in its research integrity further reading library. Even if your institution provides guidance materials for collaborate research, there is something said for multiple voices making the same point.
We tend to see three main ways authorship disputes happen. Sometimes a researcher (usually more junior) feels they should have been included as an author on the submitted manuscript but were not. In other disputes someone is included on a paper, but they never agreed to its content. Then there are disagreements about authorship order. The last situation appears to be more prevalent in biomedicine where the order may be dictated by the amount or nature of someone’s contributions, compared to other fields like economics or mathematics where the author order tends to be alphabetical.
Some of these authorship disputes come to our attention as research misconduct or harassment/discrimination allegations. A researcher may claim that an article was plagiarized if they are not included as an author, and thus not appropriately accredited for their work. Others may feel discriminated against for being left off the paper. Some may feel harassed if they are pressured into being an author when they do not want to be.
