Measures and practices for ensuring, preventing and controlling appropriate academic (scientific) authorship in Lithuanian scientific community. A case of the authors’ list composition

The paper is based on the results of the research project AcadAu (2013-2015, funded by Research Council of Lithuania), aimed at establishing appropriate measures and practices, which would ensure, prevent and control ethical forms of the academic (scientific) authorship (here – the composition of a list of the authors of a scientific paper). First, the project identified the main types and forms of ethical violations in the field and reasons for violations. Second, establishing the best practices in the field and testing their appropriateness in the Lithuanian scientific community was accomplished. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire survey of the members of the Lithuanian scientific community and interviews with editors of Lithuanian scientific journals. The analytical focus was placed on organizational procedures and practices, experts’ opinions, etc. This paper is based on a small part of empirical data belonging to the previously described analytical structure – inappropriate (unethical) practices of composition of a list of the scientific paper authors: how do the members of the Lithuanian scientific community perceive outcomes of such practices and what measures could decrease abundance of such practices in the Lithuanian scientific community. Results of the statistical analysis lead to the conclusion that, in the case of composition of a list of authors, clear definitions of appropriate (i.e. ethical) authorship practices and establishment of clear sanctions for inappropriate (unethical) authorship practices are potentially most effective measures which would ensure that a list of authors of scientific papers would be composed appropriately (i.e., all persons who made adequate contribution to producing scientific text would be included in the list and those persons who did not make any contribution would not be included). Moreover, the results suggest that if the measures are applied at different levels of the science system they would have different effects. More specifically, in the case when an individual member and his/her state are treated as the most important, the definitions and sanctions should be created, disseminated and applied by the community (including scientific journals); in the case when results of scientific activities are treated as the most important, the definitions and sanctions should be implemented at the national level