To Whom I Should Make Co-Author in Research Paper?

To Whom I Should Make Co-Author in Research Paper?

-Dr. Lalit Kumar Setia*

In each research, the major part played by a single person that is researcher. But the research paper is guided by a supervisor or multiple supervisors. During research, there is role played by Data Entry Operator who type and do all settings in content. During evaluation, role is played by evaluators. But it is wisdom of researcher to decide who is to be shown co-author in the research paper going to be submitted for publication. A few cases have been found where researchers showed their school-going children as co-authors1.  The law restricts to show or list someone as an author when he or she didn't contribute in research. The co-authors are benefited in terms of being eligible in attaining performance in their bio-data to be considered in recruitment. Even the school-going students also get benefited in getting admission if they contributed in the research papers as co-author. Such contributions become part of extra-curricular activities of the students.

The universities of science and technology consider the contributions of students in score used to give admissions to the students. The listing of teenage children as co-authors have become a practice and such corruption is obvious on the part of researchers. Due to such weightage, a trend of being multiple co-authors and even the publishers of journals started taking publication fees on the basis of number of co-authors. A research paper with 3–4 authors is normally given preference in publication because the publication fees of that research paper will be more than papers with less number of authors. However there may be research papers with multiple co-authors but how to decide whether anyone has contributed & therefore being shown as author or not?
Let's understand difference between lead author and co-authors. A lead author is one who did most of the work associated with research but deciding who did the most work and who didn't is again very difficult. The lead author gets autonomy to decide the co-authors of the research paper.
The university's professors due to seniority easily get credit in research papers as co-authors because students sometimes in order to please them, made them co-authors.
It is generally assumed that taking a senior professor as co-author helps in getting research paper published easily. The influence and credibility of the professor also works whenever the research paper is considered for publication. The publishers of journals also prefer some professors to realize other favours from them. Indirectly, there are chances of corruption or mal-practices in the publication process. The juniors try to please seniors and seniors feel grateful and take advantage at the same time, pass on benefits by making unfair or biased conduct in their functions. Since it is difficult and mal-practices cannot be disclosed; the role of enforcement authorities becomes challenging.

*Copyright © 2018 Dr. Lalit Kumar. All rights reserved.