Parasitism is a type of relationship between two species where one species, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Dan Longo and Jeffrey Drazen first introduced us to ‘research parasites’ in their editorial in 2016. They defined that these individuals (parasites) “had nothing to do with the design and execution of the study but use another group’s data for their own ends, possibly stealing from the research productivity planned by the data gatherers, or even use the data to try to disprove what the original investigators had posited”. The authors mainly raised the issue of secondary data analysis in the scientific process.
According to Darwin, parasites are fascinating examples of adaptation which can be seen how these parasites (in this case higher authorities in science arena) compel the host [original scientist(s)] to kneel down or succumb before them. As consequences a long tail of of authorships followed in even primary research publications now-a-days. If we look at the research publications of early 1900’s to mid 1900’s we will find majority of publication having one, two, three or at best four authors in a publication. But now you will find a long tail of authorships even for a small research note.
Scientific publications are principle means to assess the researchers. These are used to decide grants, jobs, promotion, tenures, etc. CVs are supposed to be assessed not only for quantity but quality too. Although there are many assessment systems such as peer review system that is in place for long time, but policy in authorship of research publication remain loose, informal and personal. However, this is an important to relations between graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and their supervisors (Altmann, 1994). In a scientific organization, this becomes a bone of contention among the co-workers and hierarchical superiors. The scenario is not very different in the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) that has a large pool of scientific researchers and often due to this loose policy hierarchical heads become pest on the work of actual worker(s) by greatly undermining their efforts by unethical credit sharing. I remember, in one of the directors’ meeting in the Horticulture division one of the DDGs once raised this issue and appealed the directors not to be the pest but with no result in sight. One more issue is also becoming rampant i.e. syndicate formation for authorships. You give me authorship and I also reciprocate the same. Interestingly, they don’t share the research projects but share the publications. This happened because there is no rigid publication policy by which such unethical forced sharing could be avoided. The ICAR has many review systems such as IRC; RAC; QRT but none of these review committees look into such important issue to fix.
Let us see some glaring cases in the ICAR
1. I have once pointed out a case of research publication in an institute where a director’s name was included in a publication just within few weeks after his joining when he was neither involved in any of the activities of research nor in preparation of the manuscript.
2. I have also seen a proposal for variety identification wherein breeder was advised to include names of all the scientists from AICRP centres where it was tested including name of the PC and also a nodal scientist of the PC cell. One can image the plight of the poor breeder(s) who spent their precious time (4-6 years) to breed a variety and the PC and his nodal scientists want to be parasite and eat away the credit of the scientist(s) just by including it in multi-location testing platform that has been created by the council for this purpose only. Similarly, what is the sanctity of including the name of scientists from the centre who just mechanically did a trial without any intellectual input by using resources which has been created for this purpose only. It is like that a common facility is created for use by everybody and now everybody is asking for intellectual credit to be shared for their participation.
3. I have seen and raised my voice against some of the science brokers who have some connection with some journals and took authorship for getting the paper published.
4. I have seen a scientist of Agril Engineering (Farm machinery) became the author in a hard core chemistry paper. It was a case of fellow feeling credit sharing.
5. I have seen how husband gives the credit to wife and wife gives credit to husband in their publications. Institute’s screening committee overlook such unethical credit sharing.
6. I have also seen that a top level scientist claimed authorship only because funding was provided for the project. If not claimed, when he was given the undue credit by the project workers to please him, he should have resisted such temptation.
One can see the nature of dilution and the parasitism being promoted by the people who are supposed to check these.
I have so far talked about the problem now I wish to suggest some solutions of this mince or how these parasites can be controlled. I feel that a two stages process of assignment of authorships by Carlo Galindo-Leal (1991) will be appropriate if we want to clean the system from irresponsible authorship and wasteful publications.
1. Hunt (1991) proposed a system to decide the order of authorship according to their participation in various stages of research process such as: Planning and management; Execution; Analysing data; Interpretations; and Writing manuscripts. He proposed that if any worker does not score 25%, he or she cannot demand authorship and deserves to be acknowledged.
Table 1. Research activities and scoring system
2. Before the project begins, both PI and Co-PIs should write a memorandum of understanding describing their roles and responsibilities including co-authorships. This pre-research agreement could follow the Hunts’ system to score the commitment of the workers involved in the project. And could be reviewed periodically to refresh by the workers about their commitment.
I sincerely wish that this will draw attention of the DG, ICAR and he will do his best to fix this systemic problem of unethical credit sharing for the good health of the ICAR.
Satyabrata Maiti
References:
Altmann, S. (1994) The problem of multiple authorship. Animal Behaviour Society Newsletter 39:5-6.
Carlo Galindo-Leal (1991) A two stages process of assignment of authorships. Nature 352: Ecology 101-Editorial.
Longo DL, Drazen JM (2016) Data Sharing. N Engl J Med. 374(3):276-277.
