So, you have written your research paper and are now stuck on recognising the contributions of people other than the authors. Do not you know how to recognise someone’s contribution in research paper? NO. Okay, do not worry; this NO will not be a NO anymore after reading this article. With an increasing number of research papers being published each year, the problems of authorship have also grown a lot. Therefore, there is a need to know the ways to recognise someone’s recognition in a research paper. In today’s article, I will be talking about all the ways in detail. However, before that happens, let’s talk about the meaning of recognising the contribution of someone in your research paper.

What does it mean to recognise someone’s contribution to research?

Writing a research paper is not an easy task. Many people work on a shared goal for one or two years or even more, and it is then they are able to write a research paper. Now, each person who has contributed to the research will be mentioned in the research paper. There may be someone who has done more work than you, and his name should be the first one. So, recognising someone’s contributions in research paper is about giving him proper credit for his contribution in the form of publishing his name.

Problems associated with recognising someone’s contributions

In the past, the authorship or contribution rules were simple. The main or the primary author’s name was always at the start. Nowadays, due to global connections, research has become more advanced. Many researchers work together across the world to work on a shared goal. Due to this, the number of persons who contribute in research paper has increased. Additionally, the problem of including the honorary authors is also there. Another author is a ghost author who is often from the industry and contributes to the research and remains unrecognised. So, due to all these problems, a top dissertation writing service conducted a study and developed some ways to recognise the contributions of such authors in a research paper.

Ways to recognise someone’s contributions in research paper

Having discussed the definition and problems above, it is now time to explore the ways of recognising some’s contributions. Recently, the top publishers, along with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, participated in an effort to develop common standards for authorship. The team was pretty much successful in doing so. Below is a brief description of the key recommendations made by the team:

The Use of CRediT Taxonomy in Journals

It is the first recommendation given by the team of researchers. As the name suggests, taxonomy is all about classifying things. Using the same principle, the CRediT taxonomy captures and recognises a diverse variety of roles that leads to the contribution of someone in a research paper. These roles are data acquisition, software development, planning, and resources. This means that the person who has helped the main authors in data collection is going to be part of the research. The same is the case with the software developer and the person who planned the research.

The major drawback of this technique is that it does not talk about the definition of a sufficient contribution necessary to be mentioned in the research paper. The reason behind this, according to the researchers is the worth of contribution to different cultures. Different cultures regard the contribution differently.

Recognising contributors across the cultures

It is the most challenging authorship or contribution to defining. This mostly happens in the field of Earth Sciences, where researchers from different cultures contribute and search for a common phenomenon or feature. The international campaigns which involve students are also a part of this challenge. Those students are often a crucial part of the research and contribute a lot to the research. They often conduct field tests and perform data acquisition. What do the research funders and researchers do? They neglect their efforts and do not recognise them as potential contributors to the research.

For such authors, the Code of Research Ethics was developed. This code assigns unique responsibilities to each researcher when conducting research in different cultures. This code allows the inclusion of the following person as contributors to the research paper:

  • Key logistic support provider for the research
  • Who has acquired the field data
  • The software developer and in-kind support providers

Hence, these are the persons who are going to be credited in the research if the research is across different cultures. The Code of Research Ethics marks all other contributors as insufficient for mentioning their names. Some other key recommendations are as follows:

  1. Use of ORCID to identify the authors accurately across all the persons who contribute in research paper
  2. The corresponding author needs to perform certain duties
  3. The universities and research institutes must conduct regular seminars on the new and updated contributors and authorship ethics

Future steps about recognising someone’s contributions

The goal of the above ways is to increase the transparency around the contributions of different persons towards research. They have clearly defined the persons who are going to be part of the contributors’ list. The future steps to maintain transparency among the authorship roles are still in the research phase. More and more research is being conducted all over the world to look for ways that can be helpful in recognising someone’s contribution in research paper.

The team of researchers led by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has also recommended the discussions keep going. It has asked the publishers, researchers, and institutes to keep discussing this matter.

Conclusion

Every person who does something in research is part of the contributor’s list. However, it is also evident that the researcher cannot mention all the contributors in the research paper. There could be conflicts among the researchers. It is why the U.S. National Academy of Sciences developed the CRediT Taxonomy method to credit the contributors. Read the information above to learn about recognising someone’s contribution in research paper.