Authorship Guidelines and Actual Practice: Are They Harmonized in Different Research Systems?

It is now more important than ever to be mindful that, over the last decade, the expansion by the community of science of its parameters has moved us outward, beyond individual, institutional, and national peripheries, to be more globally inclusive. Changing patterns in collaborative research networks reflect a new geography of science that is increasingly shaped by interactions between established and emerging scientific powers (16) whose cultural and political diversity are now reflected in perhaps never before thought of interactions. One illustration of such interaction may be SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), the Middle East's first major international research center. SESAME has a cutting-edge synchrotron light source facility under construction, which should attract researchers from a diversity of fields, including biology, chemistry, physics, and medicine. SESAME is multinational in leadership and in collaborative relationships (18). As the Middle East's first major international research center, SESAME has the potential to provoke even stronger shifts in the landscape of international collaborations. As commented by the president of its Council, " SESAME will foster closer links between peoples with different traditions, political systems and beliefs, in a region where better mutual understanding is much needed " (19). In fact, cross-cultural research endeavors such as SESAME are aligned with Jonathan Adams's assertion that " the best science comes from international collaborations, " based on his analysis of 25 million scientific papers published between 1981 and 2012, which concluded that citation impact is greater in " papers that are internationally collaborative " (2). The various partners in these international collaborations are likely to produce research results that should gradually lead to stronger diversity in research output. International collaborations and international co-authorship have grown in the last decades (3, 10, 13); " [i]n 1988, only 8% of the world's S&E articles had international coauthors; by 2009, this share had grown to 23%. For the world's major S&T regions, the 2009 rate ranged from about 27% to 42% " (13). International collaboration also accounts for a considerable fraction of new science and engineering research output in terms of publications (13). Although the increase in international collaborative relationships in world science is not always considered a reliable indicator of increase in co-authorship in publications (13), " co-authorship is one of the most tangible and well documented forms of scientific collaboration " (8). When it comes to multinational co-authored publications, among sensitive questions …