What is a scientific author? What are the different practices for making-up this elusive figure, and how do these connect? Are current modes of enacting authorship still fit for purpose and how might we imagine and enact new forms? What is understood as ‘authorship’ has varied over time and contexts yet is relevant across all fields of scholarship and science. This multiple figure is deeply interwoven with cognitive aspects of knowledge, such as creativity, originality, and invention, as well as with the institutional aspects of knowledge production, such as reward-systems, ownership and recognition. Authorship is also very much at the centre of ethical considerations in science and scholarship. Questions such as what is an appropriate contribution that warrants authorship, or how are authorship practices affected by increasing competition are of both practical and political importance. Moreover, authorship is linked to communication technologies and social networks: writing a scholarly letter for a print journal differs in important ways from authoring a submission on a Wikipedia page.     «

What is a scientific author? What are the different practices for making-up this elusive figure, and how do these connect? Are current modes of enacting authorship still fit for purpose and how might we imagine and enact new forms? What is understood as ‘authorship’ has varied over time and contexts yet is relevant across all fields of scholarship and science. This multiple figure is deeply interwoven with cognitive aspects of knowledge, such as creativity, originality, and invention, as well as...     »