[Rd] authorship and citation

Gabriel Becker gmbecker at ucdavis.edu
Wed Oct 7 00:07:27 CEST 2015


On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 2:52 PM, Adrian Dușa <dusa.adrian at unibuc.ro> wrote:

> Dear Gabriel,
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 12:39 AM, Gabriel Becker <gmbecker at ucdavis.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> [...]
>>
>>>
>>> I apologize for pushing this topic to the limit, but I haven't got an
>>> answer to this question yet...
>>>
>>
>> With respect, not receiving the answer you wanted isn't the same as not
>> receiving an answer.
>>
>
> I very much appreciate your patience with me, and I am grateful for it.
> The question is I believe very important, for I would like to avoid
> submitting a new version of the package only to be told that I did
> something wrong.
>
> As so many other packages seem to have a lot of flexibility in compiling
> the citation file, what I am inquiring is: will I be prosecuted for
> submitting a new version which doesn't include all the authors in the
> citation file, especially since the other author is no longer contributing?
> (let's say I will provide a single author, published journal article,
> referring specifically to this package).
>

I am not part of CRAN, as I prefaced my initial response with, so I can't
speak to "prosecution". You will have to wait for them to respond (again)
for a definitive answer to that. I do think, however, that if you did this
specifically to disenfranchise your previous collaborator you would be
morally in the wrong, and substantially so.



>
> The work of the other author is duly acknowledged in his position in the
> authors' list.
> As I previously wrote, citing Dusa and Other (2015) implies equal citation
> rights for unequal work, a thing that I am uncomfortable with. There is a
> huge amount of work being involved in this subsequent version, to which the
> former author didn't contribute anything at all...
>

It really doesn't imply this at all, at least to me (and I don't think I'm
alone here).  In most authorship-listing schemes first author is the one
who did the most direct work (wrote the draft, in the case of an article).
On the other hand, citing Dusa (2015) implies NO work by Other in the
entity being cited. That is clearly and concretely not the case.

I will leave you with this, which may sound like a personal attack but I
assure you it is not: I myself would not consider collaborating with you on
a project given your apparent attitude towards the contributions of people
no longer actively working on projects you own.

Best,
~G


>
> Best wishes,
> Adrian
>
> --
> Adrian Dusa
> University of Bucharest
> Romanian Social Data Archive
> Soseaua Panduri nr.90
> 050663 Bucharest sector 5
> Romania
>



-- 
Gabriel Becker, PhD
Computational Biologist
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Genentech, Inc.

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