Who deserves credit for multiple authorship published educational research? Often those who ‘deserve credit’ are attributed the title of author/s in publications. The aim of this presentation is to question the idea of the authorship in a context of measurement and performativity. The issue of authorship does not only focus on who the authors are, but also on who the first or last author is amongst a group of authors in a multiple authorship publication. This is an ethical and a justice issue, as authorship of publications often entails powerful and positionality decisions about the authorship order. Kwok (2005) argued for the so-called ‘White Bull’ effect, that senior researchers coercively assert themselves with first authorship credit, where junior researchers are abused and bullied by unscrupulous senior collaborators. Also, it has also been observed that junior or less powerfully academics can also be unfavourably impacted by the Matthew effect (Merton, 1973) where co-authors with an already established status tend to gain disproportionate credit.

Efforts are in place, such as the international standard for authorship (the Vancouver protocol) defined by the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE 2009), to aim to establish protocols in authorship publications. While the protocol originated in the bio-medical sciences in 1978, it is now applied across all academic disciplines such the social sciences and education. Several have noted the limitations of the Vancouver protocol and provided critique for it. This presentation adds another critical voice to the already available critique.

This presentation will rely on the philosophical readings of Jean-Luc Nancy to question the ‘subject of authorship’. Central to Nancy’s work was his critique of the idea of a distinct, singular individual. As he argued in Being Singular Plural (2000), a singular being is a ‘contradiction in terms.’ Nancy takes a different position from that of Descartes and argues for the ‘we’. ‘We’ is not a secondary term in relation to the ‘I’, but rather it precedes individuality. ‘Being,’ Nancy (2000) writes, ‘cannot be anything but being-with-one-another, circulating with and as the with of this singularly plural coexistence… with is at the heart of Being’ (emphasis in original, p.87). It is thus a relational being that Nancy is arguing for, and community at the heart of this being.

The above paragraph gives indications of how Nancy’s work helps us question the idea of multiple authorship, where the tension between the individual author (for example the first author) and the collective (multiple authorship) is put to question. What does it mean to talk of a ‘first author’ is a community of authors? What is the relationship between the authors in developing research and publishing it? If ‘we’ precedes the ‘I’, how can we talk of a first or last author? These all contribute to question the ethics and justice of multiple authorship. This presentation will also ask if educational research brings a uniqueness to the conversation of multiple authorship. Given the uniqueness of what education is, does this effect the I/We and community relationship that Nancy argues for?

Given the performative cultures that many academics globally work in, the focus of the presentation has relevance for a European/international dimension.

This presentation is being proposed for the Philosophy of Education network. The philosophical work of Jean-Luc Nancy will be used to question and critique the issue of multiple authorship. The international standard for authorship (the Vancouver protocol) defined by the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE 2009) will be used as the text to be deconstructed through Nancy’s ideas.

This presentation will offer a critique to the issue of multiple authorship published research and questions issues around the ethics and justice of publications that many academics are involved in on a regular basis. The outcomes will feature through questions, reflections, attitudes and acknowledgement emerging from engaging through the works of Jean-Luc Nancy on the issue of multiple authorship.

ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors). (2009). (Originally published in 1978) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication. http://www.icmje.org.urm_full.pdf. Kwok, L. S. 2005. The White Bull Effect: Abusive Co-Authorship and Publication Parasitism. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31, 554–56 Macfarlane, B. (2017) The ethics of multiple authorship: power, performativity and the gift economy, Studies in Higher Education, 42:7, 1194-1210, doi: 10.1080/03075079.2015.1085009 Merton, R. (1973). The Matthew effect in science (originally published in 1968). In The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, edited by N. W. Storer, 439–59. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nancy, J.L. (2000). Being Singular Plural. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Pruschak, G. (2021). What Constitutes Authorship in the Social Sciences? Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.655350