Dear Colleagues,
At our first phone meeting we discussed various tasks that will help us to
assess the question of authorship in large collaborations. We agreed that
we meet again in January and report on various finding.
I would like to propose Tuesday, January 11th, for the next phone conference,
again at 6:00am California time, which translates to
9:00 US Eastern Time
15:00 Central European Time
23:00 Japan Time
Please let me know whether you can attend the conference on that day.
As a fall back I suggest Wednesday, January 12th at the same time.
I am planning to be at CERN, January 10th (afternoon) to 11th, and then in Paris from
January 12th (afternoon) to Saturday, January 15th.
I am prepared to set up the conference, but would like to ask Pippa Wells
to reserve a room at CERN with a speaker phone and a beamer projector
so several us can join the meeting from there.
Based on the preliminary discussions in Beijing and then at the phone meeting
I have suggested some home work in preparation for a report on the assessment of
the past and current situation. Some of you have volunteered to take one
or the other task, I hope others will take up these assignments and
give a preliminary report during the next meeting. The best would be
that you post your notesto yjr hypernews so everybody can follow your
presentation at the next meeting.
Sorry, the time is short, but this might focus the effort.
1) Overview of past publications for existing collaborations
To obtain an overview of various types of publications and how
individuals get recognition as authors, it would be useful
for a few experiments to summarize the publication record,
differentiating at least two phases of the experiments
i) design, construction and commissioning
ii) steady operation
There are three different types of publications, journal articles,
preprints including conference contributions, and invited talks
at conferences and workshops that are published.
We should list the number of papers/year and the average number
of authors in each of the three types and distinguish between
A: physics results
B: physics notes on analysis techniques
C: software and computing
D: electronics and DAQ
E: instrumentation
Who is volunteering to collect this information for past and current experiments:
OPAL: Pippa Wells
BABAR: Jacques Chauveau
CDF : Daniel Whiteson ?
H1/ZEUS Max Klein ?
2) Selection of Authors by Belle:
While the tradition has been to list all members of the collaboration
as authors, Belle has chosen a sign-up for each paper.
The question was posed:
What is the distribution of the number of papers signed by individual
members of the Belle Collaboration? Are there individuals who sign
all papers, or have most members signed about half the papers?
Hiro Aihara, could you provide us with this distribution?
Possibly for the early period when this sign-up procedure was
first introduced and more recently?
Can you also report on how many papers have authors listed in
alphabetical order, and how many papers have selected primary authors first.
Do you allow for more than on primary author? If yes, how many?
3) Authorship in other fields of research requiring large teams
Can we explore practices in other fields with large teams?
Who is volunteering to collect this information?
Astronomy or astrophysics Dimitri Denisov? Anybody else?
Nuclear Physics Jack Sandweiss?? Hans-Ake Gustafson?
Genetics? ??
Other fields?
4) Importance of authorship and potential impact of reduced author lists
Somehow we need to examine the pros- and cons, practicality and impact of
the current practice in comparison to schemes that might lead to
shorter authorlists?
Can I call on Lorenzo Foa, Taku Yamanaka and Steinar Stapnes to
develop some discussion points based on past deliberations?
We need to get some factual statements rather than hear say!
So, please let me know whether you will be able to attend the meeting on Jan. 11th,
and whether you can make a brief presentation related to the tasks listed.
If there is anything else you would like to present, please let me also know!
Best wishes for a productive and hopefully more peaceful New Year,
Vera
Remember, we have set-up a hypernews for these meetings: The url is: http://hypernews.slac.stanford.edu/HyperNews/slacsite/get/C11Authorship.html
You will need to become a member AND subscribe to C11 Authors to see
these HyperNews postings. The instructions to become a member
and subscribe are at the bottom of the main page.
Then you will be able to read and receive all messages or respond to others.
The e-mail address for the hypernews is: C11Authorship-ss@slac.stanford.edu
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WG on Authorship: Next Mtg Jan. 11th 
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