Colloquia: Research Collaboration and Co-Authoring: Possibilities and Potential Pitfalls

I have put the colloquia notice below. It will be a round table discussion on the issues below. It is being held on Friday, Feb. 25th at 2:30-3:45pm in BRNG1254:

Title: Research Collaboration and Co-Authoring: Possibilities and Potential Pitfalls (Feb. 25, 2005)

Faculty Participants: J. Boyd, M. Dutta-Bergman, E. MacGeorge, S. Matei
Graduate Student Participants: A. Basu, M. Gill, A. Graves, K. Lucas

Questions about Collaboration
1. What are collaborative research projects, and what forms can they take?
2. Why might it be important/worthwhile for a graduate student to be involved in collaborative research projects (both those seeking academic and non-academic careers)?
3. What does a professor have in mind in terms of benefits (for self as well as for student), expectations, perils, etc. when approaching a student about collaborating on a project?
4. What are the expectations that faculty and students bring to the table and how are these expectations negotiated? What type of faculty expectations would be outside the bounds of what is appropriate? What about student expectations?
5. How might varying cultural norms affect research/authorship relations between a professor and a student?
6. How can students established cross-disciplinary collaborative research relationships with scholars outside of our own department (in other disciplines at Purdue or elsewhere)?

Questions about Co-Authorship
1. How should authorship be negotiated at the beginning of a project? What should occur if expectations/contributions change as the project unfolds?
2. Should my thesis/dissertation advisor automatically be my co-author on every publication that uses data from that project? And, if so, how much can I reasonably expect him/her to contribute or assist me with the post-defense analyzing/writing/editing activities?
3. Should my professor be my co-author if s/he gave me help and feedback on a paper I wrote in a course?
4. If my advisor/professor helps me navigate my way through the conference/publication processes (e.g., selecting an appropriate conference/division or journals, responding to editors’ and reviewers’ comments, etc) should s/he be my co-author?
5. What amount and/or kinds of work constitute co-authorship vs. acknowledgement/thanks in the publication “byline” vs. feedback/instruction that is considered part of a class rather than a collaboration?
6. What should happen if two co-authors (e.g., professor and graduate student) find themselves in strong disagreement about how data from the project should be interpreted, what conclusions are warranted, what findings should be reported, etc.?
7. To what extent should graduate students be encouraged to get single-authored publications out of collaborative projects? Is this ethical/fair in the first place?
8. Are there norms/codes regarding collaborative research and authorship/publication in U.S. academia? How could these be made available to get international students (or domestic students or faculty) up to speed on U.S. academic culture?

Resources
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition). Washington, DC: APA. See Sections 1.03 “Authorship” (pp. 6-7), 8.05 “Ethics of Scientific Publication” (especially pp. 350-351) and Appendix C, 6.23 (pp. 396-396).
Nagy, T.E. (2000). Ethics in plain English: An illustrative casebook for psychologists. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.