Dear Colleaguies,
Please find below my draft summary of the first discussion of the WG,
I am receptive for comments, suggestions, corrections, and of course
I hope for some volunteers coming forward,
Best regards,
Vera
Report on the 1st Meeting of C11 WG on Authorship
-----------------------------------------------
November 23, 2004, 6:00 PST
1) Welcome and Roll call
The meeting was attended by
L. Foa(CMS), P. Wells(ATLAS), D. Whitson(CDF), D. Denisov(D0),
J. Chauveau(BABAR), J. Sandweiss(APS), V. Luth(C11)
The following members were excused :
H. Aihara(Belle), M. Klein(H1/ZEUS), H.A. Gustafson(ALICE),
S. Stapnes(C11), T. Yamanaka(C11), G. Herten(C11)
2) Membership of WG selected to include
1. representation of the major HEP collaborations,
2. representatives of some of the major HEP Laboratories,
3. representatives of research universities,
4. selected members of C11, and
5. a few wise individuals.
The Current Membership (incl. 4 members of C11)
Europe 7
Asia 2
Americas 4
------------------------
Total 13
We have been trying to add another US member to the WG, representing the US or Canadian
view of the large LHC experiments, so far we have not nailed down a suitable candidate.
Please contact V. Luth with suggestions.
Vera Luth will act as chair of the WG, she is looking for someone
to take notes during the meetings and post them.
3) Charge to WG by C11 and Discussion
The Working Group on Authorship is charged by C11 of IUPAP to
1. examine the various types of publications, specifically physics analyses in reviewed journals vis-a-vis technical publications with more restricted authorship on analyses techniques, numerical methods, computing, data acquisition, and software development, detector development and operation.and data acquisition;
2. survey the current practices for the selection of authors;
3. examine the impact of the current practices and their potential future variants, in particular on the career development of young scientists;
4. examine the potential impact of any reduced authorship on the support of research groups by funding agencies, universities, and laboratories for detector operations and research;
5. examine procedures needed to establish authorship of different types of publications, and develop alternatives to the current practices, in close consultation with the large collaborations;
6. consult with publishers and editors of scientific journals and electronic depositories on various types of publications;
7. prepare a draft interim report by May 15th 2005, in time for extensive consultation prior to next year's meeting of C11 during LP05 in Uppsala. This draft report should summarize the findings and outline alternatives to the current practices
The complete text of the charge can be found at:
http://hypernews.slac.stanford.edu/slacsite/aux/luth/WG_authors_charge.doc
There was a discussion on previous discussion of Authorship by
various HEP collaborations and by the HEP divisions of the EPS and
APS:
J. Sandweiss reported on an analysis by the Executive Committee
of the DPF of the APS under P. Grannis (P. Grannis has offered to
provide material from those studies and discussions). While the
pros and cons of the practice common a few years ago were
discussed, the US collaborations concluded that they would prefer
not to change the adopted practice. CDF, D0, BABAR, CLEO and
others establish criteria for membership in the collaboration and derive
a current author list which is then used for all journal and conference papers
on physics results. Technical papers on instrumentation, operations,
computing, and some special analysis methods are signed by a
reduced list of authors directly involved in these particular
tasks.
D0 Authorship Rules: (presentation by D. Denisov in Beijing, Aug. 2004)
http://hypernews.slac.stanford.edu/slacsite/aux/luth/D0_authors.ppt
Discussions in Europe, at the EPS (under the leadership of G. Mikenberg) and by the ATLAS
and CMS Collaborations have resulted in similar conclusions. Again, all qualified author
sign all General Physics Papers, with clear definitions of qualifications for authorship spelled
out.
CMS WG on Authorship:
http://hypernews.slac.stanford.edu/slacsite/aux/luth/CMS_Authorship.pdf
ATLAS Authorship Policy:
http://hypernews.slac.stanford.edu/slacsite/aux/luth/Atlas_Authorship.doc
The EPS study as well as ATLAS and CMS authorship discussions differentiate between
between General Physics Publications signed by all qualified authors and Scientific Notes.
L. Foa and P. Wells explained that Scientific Notes are papers written by a small number of
on work done within collaboration, presenting specific methods or ideas for future
physics analyses. It is foreseen that physics analyses using collision data will first appear as
General Physics Publications signed by the whole collaboration. The role of Scientific Notes
is still under discussion, they may be published as self-contained reports on aspects of th
subsystems or techniques, and potentially as back-up papers providing details of specific
aspects of General Publications.
Jacques Chauveau reported on the guidelines and procedures BABAR has implemented
for the process of internal review of physics analyses and the participation of BABAR
members in this process, starting form detailed analysis documents, the three person
Review Committee for each publications, a Collaborations wide posting leading to
scrutiny of the paper by members of ten different institutions, posting of all questions
and the responses by the primary authors on the web, and finally review by members
of the Publications Board. This process is designed to allow full disclosure to the
collaboration of the basis of a scientific result prior to submission to a conference or journal.
There was no representative from Belle at this session. V. Luth referred to the presentation
in Beijing,
http://hypernews.slac.stanford.edu/slacsite/aux/luth/Belle-authors.pdf
Belle has a specific sign-up for each publication. Members have to
specify whether or not they
- read the paper,
- understand the analysis and support with the results
- want to be an author
Also, Belle lists the primary authors first, as long as the working group has agreed on who
is to be included among the primary authors, and in which order they should be listed. Thes
rules are easy to implement and have lead to a reduction in the author list by more than a
factor of two to about 150.
While everybody recognizes the innovation in Belle's approach is practical and had some
impact, especially the non-alphabetical listing of younger physicists leading the analysis.
It was suggested that it would be interesting to find out how many papers various
Belle members signed? Are there some who sign all papers? Are there some have given
up signing papers at all?
V. Luth explained that now and in the future we will have many fewer experiments, with detectors that take years to build, and which then operate for a decade or longer. These experiments are supported by huge teams. Most physicists have specialized and contribute
particular activities, some technical or operational tasks, like upgrade or calibrations, and/or software and produce a diverse physics program, not a single results. Would is then be practical divide the large team into smaller teams that are focusing on specific physics goals. Authorship would then be derived from members of the subteams, just like astronomers share a telescope, but perform independent research. The worry we all have is that this will lead to a very complicated grouping of authors and require a committee to deal with this for each paper.
Several of the participants stressed that while the prospect of 2000 authors is daunting, the large LHC collaborations have worked for almost a decade to build the detector and prepare for the physics program, they see no practical way of deviating from the current practice of all members of the collaborations signing all General Physics Papers. Any other procedure would lead to chaos unless this change is gradual over some time? On the other hand the whole community has to buy in!?
Existing collaborations likewise have reaffirmed their past practice, for the same reasons.
Still, there is a general notion that that the current practice has its drawbacks and makes the author lists useless, because
1. they do not appropriately credit those who have contributed most to the contents of the paper (though not only analysts should sign collaborations papers)
2. they do not allow others to identify those most knowledgeable about the results, and this hampers scientific discourse (this could be solved by a list of contacts) and
3. they lead to absurd publication and citation records.
So why do we consider changes at all? Or what kind of changes should or could be made? What would be the impact of not every members signing many papers per year? On the one hand, people want to retain the author lists, on the other hand, there is the idea of creating new publications to credit the work of a few? But with 2000 members per collaboration how many Scientific Notes will there be? What is the number of publications expected from the LHC experiment per year?
Should the short publications be signed by all members whereas the longer detailed papers only by a few? How many papers can a single physicist read?
Concerns were raised about potential impact on support by funding agencies? the contributions of individuals, especially younger scientists, to physics research? How do we balance and value technical contributions compared to physics analysis?
Clearly, there are many questions raised, many of them surfaced in previous discussions.
The next challenge is how do we proceed?
4) Preparation of various tasks
Following the charge to the WG, the chair would like to suggest the following home work tasks
This is a draft proposal and also a call on volunteers to share in these tasks:
Surveys and Documentation
a) Types of HEP publications and their authorship
The big question is really who shares in the General Physics Publication,
and how do we recognize the work of the thousands who contribute
to the experiments. It was noted that in the past the same team first
built the accelerator, then the detector, then took the data and
analyzed them.
There were publications of all these tasks in different journals.
Are we still publishing all this, who does the work and who authors
the papers? We have Nobel prizes for instrumentation and accelerators!
b) Overview of past publications for existing collaborations
It would be interesting for a few experiments( 2 - 4) to somehow
summarize the publication record, probably differentiating at
least two phases
i) design, construction and commissioning
ii) steady operation
Among the publications, journal and conferences, as well as
invited talks,
we list the average number of authors and distinguish between
i) general physics
ii) physics notes
iii) software and computing
iv) electronics and DAQ
v) instrumentation
This should give us some overview how the various tasks physicist do
get recognition?
c) HEP rules for authorship/ current and future practices
d) Authorship rules in related fields (D. Denisov, NN)
Examination of practices and their impact
e) Overview of large HEP collaborations
Prepare a table with number of authors for general papers,
Number of papers/year in 2003 and 2004
f) current and future (LHC) practices
Examine the pros- and cons, practicality and impact
of these practices
g) alternative proposals
Explore other options
Examine the pros- and cons, practicality and impact
of these practices
Schedule and future meetings
The charge ask for a preliminary report by May 2005.
Given the upcoming holidays, it was suggested that individuals volunteer to do some
of the tasks listed as homework and report at the next meeting, proposed for
January 11th.
V. Luth is planning to be at CERN, January 10 (after 16:00 CET) and all day
January 11.
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