Authorship plays a central role in the credibility and career progression of academics. Yet as Joseph Mellors and Stroma Cole argue, restrictive authorship practices risk perpetuating inequalities and sidelining important contributions to knowledge.
Authorship in academia is more than just seeing your name in print. It’s about recognition, credibility and career progression. But while publishing is at the heart of academic success, the way authorship is assigned more often reflects power structures than actual intellectual contributions. Too often, those who do the heavy lifting (early-career researchers, industry partners and scholars from the Global South) find themselves left out of the equation.
The problem with academic authorship
For us, these challenges became apparent whilst working on FUTOURWORK, a multi-disciplinary Horizon Europe project bringing together 17 minds – later more – from across the social sciences and related fields. The project would not have come together without such wide-ranging input.
Yet, when we tried to publish a position paper, most high-ranking journals rejected both the large number of authors and the idea of group authorship. This exposed hierarchies in authorship and raised uncomfortable questions: who gets named? Whose voices are amplified? Who is overlooked?
Academic publishing is built on historical inequalities that favour certain institutions, geographies and scholars.
Academic publishing is built on historical inequalities that favour certain institutions, geographies and scholars. Publishers, editors and funding bodies shape academic impact by determining whose work gets published, funded and widely disseminated. This often privileges researchers from elite institutions in the Global North, where these groups reside. The result? A system where access to funding, networks and language skills determine recognition, rather than the actual intellectual contributions.
Invisible labour in research
One of the biggest issues is how intellectual labour is classified. Research assistants, local collaborators, and community partners, especially those from the Global South, are often seen as data collectors rather than co-creators of knowledge.
Being listed as an author isn’t just about prestige; it impacts career progression, funding opportunities and academic legitimacy.
This is far from a neutral distinction. Being listed as an author isn’t just about prestige; it impacts career progression, funding opportunities and academic legitimacy. When these contributors are left out, their work is effectively erased, reinforcing hierarchies that have long dominated academia.
This problem is particularly stark in research that spans international and linguistic divides. Many Global South scholars operate in knowledge systems that value collective authorship, yet western individualist models dominate publishing. Without systemic change, these conventions will keep marginalising scholars whose voices should be heard.
Remote research: reinforcing or redefining hierarchies?
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, remote research has become more common. This shift should have created more opportunities for local researchers to take on leadership roles in projects, as they often have the deepest contextual knowledge and direct access to communities. Instead, in many cases, it has simply reinforced existing inequalities. Scholars in the Global North increasingly rely on local researchers for fieldwork, data collection and community engagement, but when it comes to publishing, those same researchers are often relegated to the acknowledgements.
This is a missed opportunity. Remote research could (and should) be a chance to redefine academic hierarchies by giving local scholars more agency in shaping research questions, methodologies and outputs. Yet without meaningful structural changes, it risks becoming just another way for Global North academics to extract knowledge while maintaining control over publication and recognition.
We can draw lessons from personal experience. In one research project I (Stroma Cole) conducted in Sumba, Indonesia, a local scholar, employed initially as a research assistant, grew into a leading figure in the project, shaping methodologies, mentoring new researchers and driving fieldwork. Their role expanded into genuine intellectual leadership, opening up new career opportunities.
This is a powerful example of how things should work. But stories like this remain the exception rather than the rule. Without fundamental changes in how we assign authorship, academia will continue to exclude the very researchers it depends on.
Three challenges for inclusive authorship
If academia is serious about equity, it needs to rethink how authorship is assigned. This requires change in three areas. First, local researchers should be recognised as intellectual partners, not assistants. Editorial processes must challenge hierarchical authorship norms, using tools like the CRediT taxonomy carefully, as uncritical application risks making authorship more restrictive and reinforcing hierarchies. This requires collective authorship models that better reflect the realities of modern research.
Citation practices must change. Too often, marginalised scholars’ work is overlooked in favour of research from dominant institutions.
Secondly, citation practices must change. Too often, marginalised scholars’ work is overlooked in favour of research from dominant institutions. Making a conscious effort to cite and engage with diverse perspectives is a small but essential step toward a fairer academic landscape.
Finally, language barriers also play a significant role. The dominance of English in academic publishing excludes valuable perspectives and reinforces inequalities. Encouraging multilingual publications, translations and accessible platforms would go a long way in making academia more inclusive.
The first step: acknowledging the problem
The debate over authorship isn’t new, but it has become more pressing in an era of growing international and interdisciplinary collaborations. Right now, the system rewards those with institutional privilege while leaving many essential contributors behind.
Universities, publishers and funding bodies need to take action. Grant funding should support capacity-building for Global South researchers rather than serving as a means of data extraction. Journal editors should actively seek out diverse perspectives and support collaborative authorship, breaking down long-standing gatekeeping mechanisms. Change must go beyond tokenistic measures and lead to real structural shifts.
Authorship should reflect the full scope of intellectual contributions – regardless of geography, institutional affiliation or language.
Authorship should reflect the full scope of intellectual contributions – regardless of geography, institutional affiliation or language. The first step is admitting the system is broken and committing to fixing it. Only by bringing early-career researchers, senior scholars, journal editors and funders together can we create an academic environment where everyone gets the credit they deserve.
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My name is Prabu, I am currently doing a FAPESP Postdoc, University of Sao Paulo, RIbeirao Preto, Brasil. “Why restrictive academic authorship practices perpetuate inequality”. This is really happened to me at USP-Brasil.
I have raised my formal complaint to USP ethical committee.
Recently, a research article titled “Beyond Axial Symmetry: Tracking Vectorial Motion Enhances Nanoparticles Mapping With Magnetomotive Ultrasound”, [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10948439] authored by David A. Collazos-Burbano (Corresponding authors) et al., was published in IEEE Access on April 3, 2025. Despite my substantial contribution to this project, I was denied my right of due co-authorship. Instead, I was only mentioned in the acknowledgments, which I believe as an utter disregard to fair scientific practices.
I contributed significantly to the animal study phase of this project, including: Growing and maintaining tumor cells and injecting tumor cells into mice.
Regularly transporting cells and animals to the animal house through out of the pocket travel expenses.
Providing detailed protocols and documentation for animal studies.
Assisting in the preparation and execution of imaging sessions.
I am waiting for the decision of USP ethical board.
This kind of incident happened to me when I carried out my postdoc in Linkoping University, Sweden. I didn’t complain in Sweden. This is happening everywhere.
I will even explain more and that can really helpful for many researcher
I cannot agree more. A privileged is getting more privileged, and those is need are in despair. Thanks for the shout out.
As long as the institutes’ ranking will depend on research, it’s funding amount and papers published on the research done, people will fake both research and publication. At present only a handful of institutions world wide have acknowledged in their practice. The rest are blind to change. We have to suffer as a community without any respite.
The way that credit in various publications is assigned can have other consequences, too.
Take the example of the pioneering radio astronomer who discovered Pulsars, Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Despite her being the individual who had spent 2 years working to help construct & test the Interplanetary Scintillation Array radio telescope, who was responsible for analysing the data, who identified the anomalous patterns in that data & who put in the months of effort in following up these patterns – making her the actual discoverer of Pulsars by most standards – (all the while battling an extremely sexist environment where she was routinely excluded from project meetings and the senior astronomer on the telescope project was “skeptical” that the patterns in the data meant anything useful), because she was only a graduate student, the senior astronomer & project leader for the Interplanetary Scintillation Array radio telescope (despite personally having very little to do with her research & even having downplayed the patterns in the data as being man-made) received primary authorship (thus taking a great deal of the credit in the media) in the paper announcing the discovery of Pulsars. Jocelyn Bell Burnell was listed second & three other astronomers (who had worked on the overall ISA project, but contributed very little to her discovery) were also listed.
The ISA project leader (along with another astronomer who contributed only peripherally in her research) later received the Nobel Prize in Physics (1974) for the discovery of Pulsars. Her deliberate exclusion by the Nobel Committee (partially due to the infamous sexism of the Committee, but predominantly because she was “only a graduate student”) received a great deal of criticism from other scientists, including astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle & astrophysicist Feryal Özel; who noted that despite having done all the work, she was being denied the credit.
Thanks for sharing your findings. You confirm mine in my dissertation work – https://hdl.handle.net/2142/106380
Thank you to everyone who has reached out. Your stories are powerful and deeply appreciated. If you have experiences related to authorship or equity in research, I’d welcome hearing from you via my institutional profile. It would be valuable to compile these stories for potential use in future research.
I totally agree, authorship in academic areas as well as in corporate environments is very often hijacked by more senior or career thirsty individuals. An honest organic approach should be maintained with quality and accurate content and research publications. Muchrack and other author type websites offers a basic way of ensuring you claim what is yours.
The other aspect of this is the reverse problem: in the STEM disciplines primarily, people who made no contribution at all to the study are still named as authors. They may be the head of department or somebody very peripherally involved but with some status. This includes some PhD supervisors who actually didn’t do any of the writing or much work at all with the student author. This site suggests naming appropriate author contributions. https://credit.niso.org/ I have been a journal editor for over 20 years, and I find their ideas helpful.
I agree it’s not a single-issue problem. The erasure of legitimate contributions is a serious concern, but so is the inclusion of those with little or no real involvement. CRediT is designed to bring transparency to the latter, but it doesn’t make authorship claims any more verifiable. The process still relies on trust, and it feels more like a formality serving the needs of publishers and editors than a meaningful fix. Its focus on individual tasks risks obscuring collective or less visible forms of work, and I’m personally not convinced it leads to fairer authorship!