6533b7d3fe1ef96bd126125d

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Multi-Authored Manuscripts and Speedup in Academic Publishing

subject

description

It is unfair to count a n-authored paper as one paper for each coauthor, i.e., as n papers: this is “feeding the multitude”. Sharing the credit among coauthors by percentages or by simply dividing by n is fairer but somewhat harsh. So, we propose to take into account the productivity gains of parallelization by introducing a team bonus function that multiplies the allocation thereby increasing the credit allocated to each coauthor.The degree of parallelization cannot be determined exogenously discipline by discipline. So, one may propose that each team of coauthors indicates how the labor was organized to produce the paper. Unfortunately, the coauthors may systematically bias their answers in order to increase the team bonus by three mechanisms: (i) the coauthors exaggerate the number of parallel tasks, (ii) the team exaggerates the number of coauthors, (iii) the team exaggerates the parallelization rate.Fortunately, (i) the number of parallel tasks is bounded by the number of coauthors; (ii) cheating about the number of coauthors reduces the reward that each receives; (iii) we show that the reward is bounded by a limiting Pareto-optimal case. Thus, the bonus is given by (N 2)/3 for N parallel tasks; when we have the minimum number n of coauthors, the same number of coauthors as parallel tasks, the reward is given by (n 2)/3n, that varies between 2/3 of a paper for two coauthors and 1/3 of a paper, asymptotically.This new approach is feasible, and fair and it rewards genuine cooperation in academic publishing.