---
title: "Academic Authorship"
source: The Turing Way
source_url: https://github.com/the-turing-way/the-turing-way
licence: CC-BY-4.0
domain: data-and-analysis
subdomain: turing-way
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

(cm-aa)=
# Academic Authorship

(cm-aa-prerequisites)=
## Prerequisites

| Prerequisite | Importance | Skill Level | Notes |
| -------------|----------|------|----|
| {ref}`Open Research<rr-open>` | Helpful | Beginner | None |

```{figure} ../../figures/acknowledge-authors.*
---
name: acknowledging contributors
alt: The image shows the current system of authorship with many people holding up one person who is receiving the most credit. Then it shows lots of contributors working together to bring together different contributions of a project to publish a project with all these contributions being equally acknowledged.
---
Illustration about acknowledging contributions in academic articles.
_The Turing Way_ project illustration by Scriberia. Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807.

```

(cm-aa-summary)=
## Summary
This chapter sets out information about academic authorship traditions in different disciplines, which people are traditionally considered to be "authors", how practices concerning authorship are changing, and how you might go about trying to achieve the authorship model you want to use.

(cm-aa-motivation)=
## Motivation and Background
The academic landscape is rapidly changing in favour of research projects involving large collaborations and interdisciplinary teams. 
This makes decisions concerning academic authorship hard to navigate and especially the need to consider different types of contributions fairly. 
Consequently, there is a shift in how researchers are thinking about assigning authorship for research outputs and what types of contributions are recognised and therefore valued.
