Fostering a Culture of Openness and Transparency with Institutional Authorship Policies

协作和共同作者是建立科学信用和问责制的必要条件，与之相关的共同作者争议和不道德行为日益受到关注。此外，作者身份争议在涉及的各方相对权力方面往往是不对称的，系统性地使争议中的一些当事方处于不利地位。该项目是一项为期多年的干预研究，旨在测试机构作者政策和伦理作者培训的有效性，以促进伦理作者实践，并改善研究型大学STEM学科对研究文化和气候的看法。将在一所研究型大学制定和宣传机构作者政策，并将使用实验测试来验证不同形式的干预措施的有效性，以鼓励STEM学员和教师完成高质量的作者协议，并提高他们对道德作者实践和机构研究文化的认识。这项研究将产生一个基于最佳实践的模范机构作者政策，可以被其他机构使用，新的培训材料用于教育研究人员关于道德作者，和开源材料，以促进在研究密集型机构中实施开放的研究文化和作者实践。该项目开发并测试了校园范围内的机构作者政策的效果，以评估其对道德作者实践的影响，并改善对道德研究气候的看法。为此，将制定一项机构作者政策，并设计有关政策和道德作者实践的教育工具。然后招募STEM博士和博士后学员与其研究顾问完成作者协议。参与者被随机分配到低参与或高参与的治疗中，并进行调查，以实验方式测试每种培训方法对完成高质量作者协议以及对机构作者实践和道德文化的看法的相对影响。该项目得出了可概括的证据，证明了不同参与策略在鼓励研究人员采用伦理过程来确定作者身份方面的有效性，以及解决作者身份伦理问题的机构努力是否可以改善作者身份和研究伦理的机构氛围。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Collaboration and co-authorship are essential for establishing credit and accountability in science, and co-authorship disputes and unethical behavior related to it are a growing concern. Moreover, authorship disputes are often asymmetrical in terms of the relative power of those involved, systematically disadvantaging some parties in the dispute. This project is a multi-year intervention study designed to test the efficacy of institutional authorship policies and ethical authorship training for promoting ethical authorship practices and improving perceptions of research culture and climate across STEM disciplines at research universities. An institutional authorship policy will be developed and publicized at a research university, and an experimental test will be used to the effectiveness of different forms of the intervention for encouraging STEM trainees and faculty to complete quality authorship agreements, and for improving their perceptions of ethical authorship practices and the institutional research culture. This research will produce a model institutional authorship policy based on best practices that can be used by other institutions, new training materials for educating researchers about ethical authorship, and open-source materials to facilitate the implementation of open cultures of research and authorship practices at research-intensive institutionsThe project develops and tests the effects of a campus-wide institutional authorship policy to assess its effects on ethical authorship practices and improving perceptions of ethical research climates. To do so, an institutional authorship policy will be created and educational tools regarding the policy and ethical authorship practices are designed. STEM doctoral and post-doctoral trainees are then recruited to complete an authorship agreement with their research advisor. Participants are randomly assigned to a low-engagement or high-engagement treatment and surveys would be administered to experimentally test the relative effects of each training approach on the completion of quality authorship agreements and perceptions of institutional authorship practices and ethical culture. This project results in generalizable evidence about the effectiveness of different engagement strategies for encouraging researchers to adopt ethical processes for determining authorship and if institutional efforts to address authorship ethics can improve the institutional climate for authorship and research ethics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.