published in Marketing Educator, vol. 16 (Spring 1997), p. 2
HJR main web page
 Contribution Calculating & Credit Counting
by
Herbert Jack Rotfeld
Professor, Harbert College of Business
Administrative Fellow to Graduate School
Auburn University, Alabama

To set the stage, we envision events in a lab or office:
 
As we finished the revisions directed by the journal editor, I mentioned to my co-author that I could not work much longer that day since I was not feeling too well. He excitedly said, "If you die, then I could publish this as sole author!"

What do you do when you hear a thing like that? Of course, I had to kill him.

The article was published last month and I am the sole author. A footnote thanks my late colleague for his "comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript."

A friend sent me the title page of a journal article that had a footnote by the list of names for the four authors: "The first three authors contributed equally." If all four had been equal partners, as some might presume, the split of credit would be 25 percent each; if the first three did "more," was it 30 percent each and the fourth did 10? Beyond the insulting and unnecessary slap at the fourth person, and the questions of just what he or she did (typist?), with four authors they are juggling very small numbers.

Many university promotion or tenure guidelines direct the supplicant to state a percentage contribution, but the pragmatic reality of our scholarly writing often makes it hard to calculate how the work loads were split. In a truly symbiotic partnership, the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts (which, I hope, is the true value of co-authored work). Scholars should often have no idea how to delineate the "percent contribution," making anyone's listed statement questionable.

And the numbers are creeping into all sorts of places where they aren't required, in personal documents, vita and article cover pages. Credit has taken priority over the work itself, or so it seems, and some authors probably fight over who gets what.

A friend reported seeing a vita that noted "66.5% contribution" by one item. Did they compare time sheets? Yet some vita note very tight percent increments on each co-authored paper listed, with a superfluous "100% contribution" beside sole authored pieces. I guess these people want it known that they never asked anyone's opinions, didn't have any comments on drafts or revisions and didn't have a graduate student or colleague help with any phase of the work.

Credit percentages, counting the number of articles, has supplanted the original purpose of scholarly publications. Apparently, journals have become the way we generate personal lists, not the way we spread ideas, and the faculty members' new career goals are a vita with a lengthy list of articles, published in service of the inter-faculty competition to have the longest vita. An impressive list on a vita makes for an impressed faculty who might scan it, regardless of whether any of the articles listed were read.

Years ago, sociologists reported on a poor country facing problems of overpopulation that taught their uneducated rural women the rhythm method of pregnancy prevention, using a bead necklace for them to count out the "safe" times to have sex. But as the necklace itself gained a mystical value, the women would simply move the beads to the "right" positions so they could have sex with their husbands.

Like these women, faculty have let the list of publications acquire a mystical value, losing track of what the publications themselves were meant to represent.

Administrators want to show accomplishments on which to base pay raises; the list itself becomes the coin of the realm for salary, teaching loads and travel money, with tenure and promotion decisions that devolved into credit assessments and line-item counts. In turn, the truth gets difficult to separate from exaggerations and sarcasm.

While talking with two colleagues at the Alfred Bester Unknown University's Department of Applied Compulsion, a third faculty member entered the room and congratulated the person whose office we occupied. "Why the congratulations?" I logically asked.

She expanded with visible pride. "I just had an article accepted in the Journal of Exalted Authors."

"Oh, congratulations. What was the article about?"

"It was published in the Journal of Exalted Authors," she repeated, surprised that my question was asked.

"Yes, you said that. But I was wondering if it might be a subject related to my own interests. Do you have a copy?"

"Well, yes. Or, uh,. . . no. It's around here somewhere. But it was accepted. I was first author and did 65.5 percent of the work. And I had to learn a whole new word processing program to put the files and figures into publication form."

 It often seems that the purpose of publications has been lost. Or worst, the goals for why we want faculty to be involved with academic writing has been warped.

Of course, there is recognition to both faculty and schools from the faculty members' variety of scholarly contributions, but that recognition grows from people reading the material, not from lines listed on their vita or annual reports. Writing and publication are encouraged as part of the academic life for scholars and educators. No one wants faculty minds to transform into tapioca while their knowledge of areas they teach becomes archaic. As Nobel prize economics honoree George Stigler noted, some colleagues can make strong positive contributions to the academic environment of a school or department despite their lack of a lengthy list of journal articles written for every evaluation period.

More importantly, recognition by peers comes from the people who read and discuss or otherwise notice interesting work, not from the people who read a vita or annual report.