Naming a species after yourself (zoology)

[Karin Kiontke]

After the latest debacle with the stem cell papers in Science,
Journals like Nature and Science discuss how to deal with many-author
papers. One idea is to ask every author for a statement about their
personal contribution. Then everybody would be accountable for the
content of the paper and can't claim that he hasn't seen the final
version, or even the data  (as the last author of the stem cell paper
did).
PNAS prints a list with  the contribution by each author of a
many-author paper: Author A did the experimental work, Author B
analyzed the data, Author C contributed material, Author D
contributed the software to analyze the data, Author E and A wrote
the text.
This seems to be a good policy, not just for high profile papers.
Most journals don't require it. But I think it is still justified
that reviewers ask for that kind of information if they have doubts
about the contribution of one of the authors.

Best, Karin

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Dr. Karin Kiontke
Dept. of Biology
New York University
100 Washington Sq. E
New York, NY 10003

phone: (212) 998 8253
fax:      (212) 995 4015