08832323.2011.569592
Journal of Education for Business
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
College of Business Faculty Views on Gift
Authorships in Business Journals
Edgar J. Manton , Donald E. English & Thomas Brodnax
To cite this article: Edgar J. Manton , Donald E. English & Thomas Brodnax (2012) College
of Business Faculty Views on Gift Authorships in Business Journals, Journal of Education for
Business, 87:2, 79-85, DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
Published online: 15 Dec 2011.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 42
View related articles
Citing articles: 1 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=vjeb20
Download by: [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji]
Date: 11 January 2016, At: 21:57
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS, 87: 79–85, 2012
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Copyright
ISSN: 0883-2323 print / 1940-3356 online
DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
College of Business Faculty Views on Gift
Authorships in Business Journals
Edgar J. Manton, Donald E. English, and Thomas Brodnax
Downloaded by [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] at 21:57 11 January 2016
Texas A&M University–Commerce, Commerce, Texas, USA
The views of college of business faculty were sought to determine their perception on the
extent of undeserved authorship in business journals and their impact on the faculty reward
system. Six hundred ninety-eight faculty members responded to an electronic survey conducted
through Zoomerang. A total of 80% of the respondents indicated that they had been aware of
a faculty member undeservedly being carried on a published business journal article, and 58%
indicated that they had collaborated with a coauthor who had performed very little work, and
18% reported working with a coauthor who had actually done no work on a published article.
Keywords: gift authorship, undeserved authorship, unearned authorship
During the period 1960–1962 to 2000–2002, the average
number of authors per article and the percentage of multiple
authors in published business journal articles increased. A
recent study of 12 major business journals revealed that by
2000–2002 more than 70% of business journal articles had
two or more authors. This study also showed that two-author
articles had become the most common authorship arrangement and, in eight of the journals reviewed, the percentage
of three-authored articles exceeded single author articles by
2000–2002 (Manton & English, 2008).
What has caused this to happen? One reason may be that
universities and business colleges have had evolving expectations, increasing their emphasis on scholarly endeavors. At
most, university promotion, tenure, and merit increases are
increasingly based on research and other scholarly endeavors
(Bertin & Zivney, 1992). A record of scholarly production
is directly linked to securing faculty positions and obtaining promotion and tenure in higher education (Gelman &
Gibelmann, 1999). In addition, accrediting agencies have increased their emphasis on research. For example, the Association to Advance of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)
International, emphasizes in its standards that business faculty must publish or participate in other scholarly activities
to be considered academically qualified (Taylor & Stanton,
Correspondence should be addressed to Donald E. English, Texas A&M
University-Commerce, Department of Business Administration and MIS,
P.O. Box 3011, Commerce, TX 75429, USA. E-mail: donald [email protected]
2009). This emphasis on scholarly endeavors has led to increased collaboration among faculty members to strengthen
their publication records.
Furthermore, it is more difficult for individual faculty
members to possess or be capable of accessing the everexpanding body of knowledge in today’s business disciplines.
The investigation of a business research topic may require the
skills and knowledge of more than one person. Some investigations involve the disciplines of more than one business
field and require the expertise of faculty from differing fields
of business. There are also research efforts related to business, which involve other fields such as psychology, sociology, and computer science. Other reasons for collaboration
deal with people who have access to data, have knowledge
of the research and publication process, or possess software
and computer skills. All of the foregoing reasons are valid
arguments for collaboration and they lead to higher quality
research results (Schroeder, Langrehr, & Floyd, 1995).
There may be an additional reason for collaboration on a
published journal article that would be unethical. Coauthorships may be gratuitously granted by authors to aid faculty
members in furthering their academic careers even though
they had done very little work or no work on the publication.
The medical field is rife with such authorships and has attempted to quell the practice by establishing a committee of
editors from major medical journals. This committee created
criteria for appropriately identifying coauthors on medical
journal articles. To date, there has been very limited success
in the application of the criteria in limiting gift authorships
(Bennet & Taylor, 2003).
Downloaded by [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] at 21:57 11 January 2016
80
E. J. MANTON ET AL.
Medical ethicist Mott Greene (2007) stated that in most
medical journals, editors are not told which author did what
work on an article and that they may not even be aware
of who prepared the paper. He further noted that there is
no widespread pressure on the editors to accurately identify
authors.
Organizations such as the American Educational Research
Association, the American Chemical Society, the National
Academy of Sciences, and the National Institutes of Health
have established guidelines to identify authors. Disciplines
such as chemistry, physics, counseling, educational research,
psychology, and sociology also have guidelines for authorship, but even with these guidelines problems still exist with
author identification (Osborne & Holland 2009). A study of
physics research publications found that 23% of third and
subsequent authors on an article were judged inappropriate
in accordance with the American Physical Society guideline
(Tarnow, 2002). In the field of counseling, Zook (1987) indicated that the notion of publish or perish could lead to an
agreement of mutual gratuitous authorship. A study of social
work authors reported that students and junior faculty members might not be able to claim first authorship even when
they had done most of the work. The study also noted that focus groups reported instances in which senior faculty insisted
that their names be listed first on an article even when they
had participated minimally in the preparation of the paper
(Apgar & Congress, 2010).
Solomon (2009) complained about the lack of guidelines
for identifying authors in computer science journals due to
the nature of computer science research projects, which involve nonwriting contributions from many individuals. He
notes that it is a difficult task to appropriately identify the
specific contributions of all individuals, distinguishing authors from one author, and appropriately recognizing other
lesser contributors. He warned of possible publication fraud
involving the inclusion of authors who contributed little or
no work toward the published results.
Guest or gift authorship was one of the forms of misconduct considered in a study involving 231 editors of science
journals that evaluated 16 ethical issues in publication. Gift
authorship was one of the highest scored misconduct issues,
but received the lowest score from the editors for their ability
to resolve its occurrence. Although all 16 issues were rated
low in frequency of occurrence, gift authorship received the
highest frequency score (Wager, Fiack, Graf, Robinson, &
Rowlands, 2009).
Business journals do not have guidelines for determining
author identification. The listing of the authors on an article
is left to the authors themselves. To be academically qualified, the AACSB has placed enormous pressure on faculty at
accredited colleges of business to participate in scholarly activities. At many business schools, research and publication
are more important in performance considerations than the
assessment of classroom teaching (Weis, 1990). Additionally, most universities now include a mandatory scholarly
endeavor component in their faculty evaluation procedures.
To be promoted or to receive tenure, faculty must publish
(Pettijohn, Udell, & Parker, 1991). Could these pressures
lead to the practice of gift authorship in business journal
articles? In a study of a large university, it was found that
business authors were more likely to add noncontributing
authors to their articles than authors in the arts, humanities,
and the behavioral sciences (Hamilton & Grego, 1997).
There could well be other inappropriate reasons for gifting
authorships. Pressure from a superior, demand of a dissertation supervisor, a reciprocal payback arrangement, seeking
the support of a tenure or promotion committee member,
or even romance could be reasons for gifting an authorship.
Such arrangements, if undeserving of an authorship position
on a journal article, would be intellectually dishonest and
may result in unfair awards of tenure, promotion, or salary
increases. If known to other college faculty, such rewards
would be highly detrimental to morale. In view of the growing trend for business faculty to collaborate with others in
publishing endeavors, studies should be performed to determine if undeserved authorships occur in published business
articles, and if so, to what extent and impact.
METHOD
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to determine the views of business faculty from AACSB-accredited colleges on the extent
of undeserved gift authorships in business journals and their
impact on the faculty reward system. The study attempted
to determine college of business faculty perceptions on how
prevalent gift authorships are, and the extent to which gift authorships affect promotions, tenure awards, and merit salary
increases.
Procedure
One fourth, or 110 of the 440 accredited colleges of business,
were systematically selected to be included in the survey from
an alphabetical listing of the AACSB-accredited business
colleges. The e-mail addresses of all faculty members of these
schools were identified. More than 5,800 faculty members
were included in the survey. A questionnaire was developed
and loaded on Zoomerang, an online survey service, and sent
directly to the faculty.
Three hundred and eighty-seven responses were received
from the initial e-mailing. Three weeks later a follow-up
e-mail was sent, resulting in a total of 698 responses. The response rate was approximately 12%. Of the 698 respondents,
646 (93%) had coauthored a business journal article. Due to
the nature of the study, we feel that faculty who did not publish or who publish without coauthors did not respond at a
high rate. Thus, we feel that a higher percentage of coauthors
BUSINESS FACULTY VIEWS ON GIFT AUTHORSHIPS
TABLE 3
Teaching Experience (n = 698)
TABLE 1
Academic Rank of Respondents (n = 698)
Discipline
Professor
Associate professor
Assistant professor
Instructor
Other
No response
n
%
278
198
163
37
18
4
40
28
23
5
3
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
College of Business Faculty Views on Gift
Authorships in Business Journals
Edgar J. Manton , Donald E. English & Thomas Brodnax
To cite this article: Edgar J. Manton , Donald E. English & Thomas Brodnax (2012) College
of Business Faculty Views on Gift Authorships in Business Journals, Journal of Education for
Business, 87:2, 79-85, DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
Published online: 15 Dec 2011.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 42
View related articles
Citing articles: 1 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=vjeb20
Download by: [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji]
Date: 11 January 2016, At: 21:57
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS, 87: 79–85, 2012
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Copyright
ISSN: 0883-2323 print / 1940-3356 online
DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2011.569592
College of Business Faculty Views on Gift
Authorships in Business Journals
Edgar J. Manton, Donald E. English, and Thomas Brodnax
Downloaded by [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] at 21:57 11 January 2016
Texas A&M University–Commerce, Commerce, Texas, USA
The views of college of business faculty were sought to determine their perception on the
extent of undeserved authorship in business journals and their impact on the faculty reward
system. Six hundred ninety-eight faculty members responded to an electronic survey conducted
through Zoomerang. A total of 80% of the respondents indicated that they had been aware of
a faculty member undeservedly being carried on a published business journal article, and 58%
indicated that they had collaborated with a coauthor who had performed very little work, and
18% reported working with a coauthor who had actually done no work on a published article.
Keywords: gift authorship, undeserved authorship, unearned authorship
During the period 1960–1962 to 2000–2002, the average
number of authors per article and the percentage of multiple
authors in published business journal articles increased. A
recent study of 12 major business journals revealed that by
2000–2002 more than 70% of business journal articles had
two or more authors. This study also showed that two-author
articles had become the most common authorship arrangement and, in eight of the journals reviewed, the percentage
of three-authored articles exceeded single author articles by
2000–2002 (Manton & English, 2008).
What has caused this to happen? One reason may be that
universities and business colleges have had evolving expectations, increasing their emphasis on scholarly endeavors. At
most, university promotion, tenure, and merit increases are
increasingly based on research and other scholarly endeavors
(Bertin & Zivney, 1992). A record of scholarly production
is directly linked to securing faculty positions and obtaining promotion and tenure in higher education (Gelman &
Gibelmann, 1999). In addition, accrediting agencies have increased their emphasis on research. For example, the Association to Advance of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)
International, emphasizes in its standards that business faculty must publish or participate in other scholarly activities
to be considered academically qualified (Taylor & Stanton,
Correspondence should be addressed to Donald E. English, Texas A&M
University-Commerce, Department of Business Administration and MIS,
P.O. Box 3011, Commerce, TX 75429, USA. E-mail: donald [email protected]
2009). This emphasis on scholarly endeavors has led to increased collaboration among faculty members to strengthen
their publication records.
Furthermore, it is more difficult for individual faculty
members to possess or be capable of accessing the everexpanding body of knowledge in today’s business disciplines.
The investigation of a business research topic may require the
skills and knowledge of more than one person. Some investigations involve the disciplines of more than one business
field and require the expertise of faculty from differing fields
of business. There are also research efforts related to business, which involve other fields such as psychology, sociology, and computer science. Other reasons for collaboration
deal with people who have access to data, have knowledge
of the research and publication process, or possess software
and computer skills. All of the foregoing reasons are valid
arguments for collaboration and they lead to higher quality
research results (Schroeder, Langrehr, & Floyd, 1995).
There may be an additional reason for collaboration on a
published journal article that would be unethical. Coauthorships may be gratuitously granted by authors to aid faculty
members in furthering their academic careers even though
they had done very little work or no work on the publication.
The medical field is rife with such authorships and has attempted to quell the practice by establishing a committee of
editors from major medical journals. This committee created
criteria for appropriately identifying coauthors on medical
journal articles. To date, there has been very limited success
in the application of the criteria in limiting gift authorships
(Bennet & Taylor, 2003).
Downloaded by [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] at 21:57 11 January 2016
80
E. J. MANTON ET AL.
Medical ethicist Mott Greene (2007) stated that in most
medical journals, editors are not told which author did what
work on an article and that they may not even be aware
of who prepared the paper. He further noted that there is
no widespread pressure on the editors to accurately identify
authors.
Organizations such as the American Educational Research
Association, the American Chemical Society, the National
Academy of Sciences, and the National Institutes of Health
have established guidelines to identify authors. Disciplines
such as chemistry, physics, counseling, educational research,
psychology, and sociology also have guidelines for authorship, but even with these guidelines problems still exist with
author identification (Osborne & Holland 2009). A study of
physics research publications found that 23% of third and
subsequent authors on an article were judged inappropriate
in accordance with the American Physical Society guideline
(Tarnow, 2002). In the field of counseling, Zook (1987) indicated that the notion of publish or perish could lead to an
agreement of mutual gratuitous authorship. A study of social
work authors reported that students and junior faculty members might not be able to claim first authorship even when
they had done most of the work. The study also noted that focus groups reported instances in which senior faculty insisted
that their names be listed first on an article even when they
had participated minimally in the preparation of the paper
(Apgar & Congress, 2010).
Solomon (2009) complained about the lack of guidelines
for identifying authors in computer science journals due to
the nature of computer science research projects, which involve nonwriting contributions from many individuals. He
notes that it is a difficult task to appropriately identify the
specific contributions of all individuals, distinguishing authors from one author, and appropriately recognizing other
lesser contributors. He warned of possible publication fraud
involving the inclusion of authors who contributed little or
no work toward the published results.
Guest or gift authorship was one of the forms of misconduct considered in a study involving 231 editors of science
journals that evaluated 16 ethical issues in publication. Gift
authorship was one of the highest scored misconduct issues,
but received the lowest score from the editors for their ability
to resolve its occurrence. Although all 16 issues were rated
low in frequency of occurrence, gift authorship received the
highest frequency score (Wager, Fiack, Graf, Robinson, &
Rowlands, 2009).
Business journals do not have guidelines for determining
author identification. The listing of the authors on an article
is left to the authors themselves. To be academically qualified, the AACSB has placed enormous pressure on faculty at
accredited colleges of business to participate in scholarly activities. At many business schools, research and publication
are more important in performance considerations than the
assessment of classroom teaching (Weis, 1990). Additionally, most universities now include a mandatory scholarly
endeavor component in their faculty evaluation procedures.
To be promoted or to receive tenure, faculty must publish
(Pettijohn, Udell, & Parker, 1991). Could these pressures
lead to the practice of gift authorship in business journal
articles? In a study of a large university, it was found that
business authors were more likely to add noncontributing
authors to their articles than authors in the arts, humanities,
and the behavioral sciences (Hamilton & Grego, 1997).
There could well be other inappropriate reasons for gifting
authorships. Pressure from a superior, demand of a dissertation supervisor, a reciprocal payback arrangement, seeking
the support of a tenure or promotion committee member,
or even romance could be reasons for gifting an authorship.
Such arrangements, if undeserving of an authorship position
on a journal article, would be intellectually dishonest and
may result in unfair awards of tenure, promotion, or salary
increases. If known to other college faculty, such rewards
would be highly detrimental to morale. In view of the growing trend for business faculty to collaborate with others in
publishing endeavors, studies should be performed to determine if undeserved authorships occur in published business
articles, and if so, to what extent and impact.
METHOD
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to determine the views of business faculty from AACSB-accredited colleges on the extent
of undeserved gift authorships in business journals and their
impact on the faculty reward system. The study attempted
to determine college of business faculty perceptions on how
prevalent gift authorships are, and the extent to which gift authorships affect promotions, tenure awards, and merit salary
increases.
Procedure
One fourth, or 110 of the 440 accredited colleges of business,
were systematically selected to be included in the survey from
an alphabetical listing of the AACSB-accredited business
colleges. The e-mail addresses of all faculty members of these
schools were identified. More than 5,800 faculty members
were included in the survey. A questionnaire was developed
and loaded on Zoomerang, an online survey service, and sent
directly to the faculty.
Three hundred and eighty-seven responses were received
from the initial e-mailing. Three weeks later a follow-up
e-mail was sent, resulting in a total of 698 responses. The response rate was approximately 12%. Of the 698 respondents,
646 (93%) had coauthored a business journal article. Due to
the nature of the study, we feel that faculty who did not publish or who publish without coauthors did not respond at a
high rate. Thus, we feel that a higher percentage of coauthors
BUSINESS FACULTY VIEWS ON GIFT AUTHORSHIPS
TABLE 3
Teaching Experience (n = 698)
TABLE 1
Academic Rank of Respondents (n = 698)
Discipline
Professor
Associate professor
Assistant professor
Instructor
Other
No response
n
%
278
198
163
37
18
4
40
28
23
5
3