Water Institute Seminar by Prabhakar Clement

The Water Institute is hosting a seminar by Prabhakar Clement, Professor and Groome Jr. Endowed Scholar of Civil Engineering, Auburn University. He will speak on Authorship and Author Rank - Misuses, Misunderstandings and a Meaningful Solution.

Abstract

Who should be recognized as a co-author of a multi-author scientific article?  Surprisingly, scientists and engineers who have solved several challenging problems have not fully answered this seemingly simple question. This is because authorship questions involve issues related to human emotions that are difficult to quantify. Therefore, authorship decisions are typically made using arbitrary procedures that allow many to get credit without assuming any serious responsibility for the work. This is especially true in physical sciences and engineering fields where there have been little discussion about authorship responsibilities. Medical and biological fields have had multiple debates on this topic that have led to
the development of formal authorship guidelines. In this talk, he will review some of these guidelines and will make a case for a paradigm shift and explain why we should view authorship in terms of "responsibilities" rather than "credits."  He will then present a rational framework that can be used to conceptually divide a scientific contribution into four fundamental basic components namely: ideas, work, writing, and stewardship. These elements will be used as the basis to develop an approach to quantify individual responsibilities in multi-author articles. The outcome of this quantitative approach will be used to answer several nagging questions related to the authorship dilemma.

This talk will be based on the following two journal articles:
1.    Clement, T.P. (2015), Who are co-authors and what should be their responsibilities?  Environmental Science and Technology, v. 49 (6), pp 3265-3266.  DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00415.
2.    Clement, T.P. (2015), Who are co-authors and what should be their responsibilities?  Environmental Science and Technology, v. 49 (6), pp 3265-3266.  DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00415.
 

About T. Prabhakar Clement

Dr. Prabhakar Clement is currently the Harold Vince Groome Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering at Auburn University.  Before, he worked at the Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Western Australia for 3 years (2000-2002), and
at the Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Washington for 7 years (1994-2000).  Dr. Clement is the lead author of the widely used MODFLOW-family groundwater model RT3D.  He has authored over 85 journal articles with an H-index of 23; he is an elected ASCE Fellow.  He has served as associate editor for several leading environmental journals including Water Resources Research, and has served on several National Academy and NSF panels.