Authorship Credit in Supervisor-Student Collaboration: Assessing the Dilemma in Psychology

Abstract

Clear guidelines for authorship credit are not only important to ensure that a researcher gets the academic recognition he or she deserves, but also to avoid personal conflict and even lawsuits. It is therefore regrettable that relatively little research has been done on this topic and that few academic and research institutions seem to have formal guidelines in this regard. To assess the situation in South Africa concerning authorship credit in supervisor-student collaborations, more than 1000 questionnaires were distributed to academic psychologists, non-academic psychologists and psychology students undergoing professional training. The questionnaire consisted of sketches of four hypothetical cases to which the respondent had to respond quantitatively and qualitatively. The results are presented and discussed, and guidelines for determining authorship credit are suggested.