The commodification of publication credit is a “scandal lying in plain sight,” according to Bruce Macfarlane (Education University of Hong Kong) and Jason Yeung-Tarre (University of Melbourne). The authors say that while this is a cultural norm in their field, distributing credit in any way other than by the contribution of intellectual work is ultimately fraud. They identify four types of co-authorship fraud—power gifting, power ordering, academic cronyism, and crony ordering—which they say may boost early-career authors in the short term but harm them in the long term. The authors note positive changes made by some journals, such as using equal co-authorship, and call on universities to provide more training on authorship ethics.
