Hartley J. "Single authors are not alone: Colleagues often help" JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING 34 (2): 108-113 JAN 2003
Eugene Garfield
garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU
Thu Mar 27 16:13:24 EST 2003
James Hartley : E-mail: j.hartley at psy.keele.ac.uk]
FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE FOLLOWS IN WORD FORMAT
Title Single authors are not alone: Colleagues often help
Author Hartley J
Journal JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING 34 (2): 108-113 JAN 2003
Document type: Article Language: English
Cited References: 14 Times Cited: 0
Abstract:
This article reports on the numbers of times single, pairs, and groups of
three or more authors acknowledge the help of colleagues and/or referees in
their published papers. The results indicate that significantly more single
authors acknowledge the help of others than do pairs who, in turn, do so
more than larger groups. However, there were no significant differences
between the numbers of acknowledgements made to referees by the three
groups.
Addresses:
Hartley J, Univ Keele, Dept Psychol, Keele ST5 5BG, Staffs, England
Univ Keele, Dept Psychol, Keele ST5 5BG, Staffs, England
Publisher:
UNIV TORONTO PRESS INC, TORONTO
IDS Number:
647AZ
ISSN:
1198-9742
Cited Author Cited Work Volume Page Year
COWEN EL AM PSYCHOL 42 403 1997
CRONIN B J DOC 57 427 2001
CRONIN B SCHOLARS COURTESY RO 1995
CUMMINGS LL PUBLISHING ORG SCI 1995
HARTLEY J UNPUB USING NEW TECH
HASWELL RH ASSESSING WRITING 3 31 1996
JEFFERSON T JAMA-J AM MED ASSOC 287 2784 2002
KOSTOFF RN RES PROGRAM PEER REV
LUNDSFORD A SINGULAR TEXTS PLURA 1990
PETERS DP BEHAV BRAIN SCI 5 187 1982
REHLING L J TECHNICAL WRITING 26 163 1996
ROWLAND F LEARN PUBL 15 247 2002
SPECK BW COLLABORATIVE WRITIN 1999
WEBER EJ JAMA-J AM MED ASSOC 287 2790 2002
______________________________________________________
Single authors are not alone: Colleagues often help
JAMES HARTLEY
This article reports on the numbers of times single, pairs, and groups of
three or more authors acknowledge the help of colleagues and/or referees in
their published papers. The results indicate that significantly more single
authors acknowledge the help of others than do pairs who, in turn, do so
more than do larger groups. However, there were no significant differences
between the numbers of acknowledgements made to referees by the three
groups.
In a recent article 1 my colleagues and I reported on our failure to find
any substantial differences between the stylistic features of educational
psychology journal articles written by 40 individuals and 40 pairs of
authors. We had predicted, on the basis of earlier research 1-5 that
authors writing in pairs would write more clearly than authors writing
alone, and that men would write differently from women.
However, as we argued in our paper, there are many different routes for
arriving at the same destination (in this case the published paper). Thus,
although the products might not differ outwardly, the processes of achieving
them might well do so. The purpose of this paper is to discuss one route in
individual and collaborative writing that has not figured greatly in
previous research. This is the value of obtaining critical comments on a
draft before it is submitted, and the helpfulness - or otherwise - of
referees' comments that have to be attended to in order to gain publication.
We noted in our paper that there was a small (but non significant)
suggestion that individual authors were more likely to acknowledge the help
of colleagues in the writing of their papers than were the authors who wrote
in pairs. It is this issue that is taken up here. We believe that, although
there may be different reasons for acknowledging help, individual writers
will benefit more from discussions with their colleagues and from referees
than will pairs or groups of writers who are in a better position to discuss
salient issues amongst themselves before submitting their papers for
publication. If this is true then we might expect individuals to
acknowledge the help of colleagues and/or referees more than do pairs, and
perhaps pairs to do so more than trios or larger groups.
Method
To test this hypothesis I examined 50 research articles written by
individuals, 50 written by pairs, and 50 written by three or more authors in
each of three journals.6 First I counted how many of the authors involved
acknowledged help from colleagues with the writing of their papers and or
suggestions from referees. Second I focussed specifically on the help of
referees and editors alone by counting how many of the authors acknowledged
their particular help.7
The three journals that I examined were recent issues of The Journal of
Educational Psychology, Teaching of Psychology, and Psychological Science
(although I had to go a long way back with this particular journal to
include 50 papers written by individuals). A typical acknowledgement
counted was of the order, 'I am indebted to colleagues and two anonymous
referees for helpful suggestions on the writing of this paper'. I did not
count acknowledgements to people who acted as assistants (e.g. with the data
collection) or who facilitated the study (e.g. by making the arrangements
for it to be carried out).
Results
Study 1. Table 1 shows the results that I obtained when I included
colleagues, referees and editors in the acknowledgements. Although there
are differences between the journals, it can be seen that the overall scores
support the predictions [c2 (2, N =150) = 8.42, p <.02]. 57% of the
individual authors, 49% of the pairs, and 40% of the larger groups
acknowledged the help of colleagues, referees and editors.
------------------------
Table 1 about here
-------------------------
Study 2. Table 2 shows the results that I obtained when I restricted my
analysis to counting only specific references to referees and editors in the
acknowledgements. Again it can be seen that there are differences between
the numbers of acknowledgements provided in the three journals. Only two
out of 150 authors acknowledge 'editorial assistance' with their papers in
the Journal of Educational Psychology. The numbers are higher for
Psychology of Teaching, which has a reputation for helpful editing, and for
Psychological Science, where there is extensive in-house editing. However,
unlike Table 1, the pooled data in Table 2 do not show any significant
differences between the numbers of acknowledgements made to the referees and
editors by the three differently sized groups of authors.
---------------------------
Table 2 about here
----------------------------
Discussion
Broadly speaking, the results showed that individual authors acknowledged
the help of colleagues more than did pairs or larger groups of authors, but
that there were no differences in the numbers of acknowledgements to
referees. Although these overall results were clear, it was also apparent
that there were different results for the different journals. Thus it thus
cannot be assumed that the results are typical of all journals within a
discipline, and certainly not between disciplines. 8 In some journals, few
authors make any acknowledgements at all (e.g., see American Psychologist,
British Educational Research Journal, and The Psychologist). In other
journals there are too few papers written by single authors (e.g., in the
sciences) and in others too few written by pairs and groups (e.g., in the
arts) to make meaningful comparisons of the kind attempted here.
Nonetheless, the pooled data shown in Table 1 do suggest that single authors
in psychology are significantly more likely to acknowledge the help of
colleagues in the publication of their papers. The data in Table 2,
however, do not support the original idea that individual authors will
profit more from suggestions from referees than pairs or larger groups of
authors. Indeed, the limited acknowledgements to referees (17% overall)
contradicts some individual earlier research 9-10 and is more in line with
the findings of more general qualitative reviews on this topic.11
Quantitative data on this issue are hard to come by but - despite the
damning criticisms of Peters and Ceci 12 who found that eight out of nine
previously published papers were rejected when they were re-submitted -
there is some evidence that that refereeing (a) weeds out poorer quality
papers and (b) improves the quality of printed ones. 13-15
The findings of this present paper do not appear to be in line with these
conclusions - as far as referees are concerned. They do, however, support
the value of colleagues when writing and the notion that science is a social
activity - even when working alone. 8, 16
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Eric Sotto for helpful comments on this article.
JAMES HARTLEY is Research Professor in the Department of Psychology, Keele
University, Staffordshire, UK. His main fields of interest are teaching and
learning in higher education, and he specializes in written communication in
this context.
1. James Hartley, James W. Pennebaker and Claire Fox, 'Using new technology
to assess the stylistic features of journal articles written by pairs and
individuals,' Paper submitted for publication. (Copies available from James
Hartley)
2. Bruce W. Speck, Teresa R. Johnson, Catherine P. Dice and Leon B. Heaton,
Collaborative Writing: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut
Greenwood Press, 1999)
3. Andrea Lundsford and Lisa S. Ede, Singular Texts / Plural Authors
Perspectives on Collaborative Writing (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1990)
4. Louise Rehling, 'Writing together: gender's effect on collaboration,
'Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 26, 2 (1996): 163-176
5. Richard H. Haswell and Janis Tedesco Haswell, 'Gender bias and critique
of student writing,' Assessing Writing 3, 1 (1996): 31-84
6. These categories are, to a certain extent, over simplifications. Some
listed
authors, for example, may have had little to do with the production of the
text
they may have assisted with the data analysis, or held the grant, for
example.
7. It was not always clear, of course, whether or not a named person was a
colleague or a referee. However, authors who acknowledged the help of
Samuel Glucksberg in their articles were credited with acknowledging the
help of the editor of Psychological Science.
8. Blaise Cronin, The Scholar's Courtesy: The Role of Acknowledgement in
the Primary Communication Process (Los Angeles: Taylor Graham, 1995)
9. Emory L. Cowen, Arline Spinell, A. Dirk Hightower and Bohdan S.
Lotyczewski, 'Author reactions to the manuscript process,' American
Psychologist 42 (1997): 403-4005
10. L. L. Cummings and Peter J. Frost. (Eds.) Publishing in the
Organizational Sciences (2nd edit.) (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995)
11. Ellen J. Weber, Patricia P. Katz, Joseph F. Waeckerle and Michael L.
Callahan, 'Author perception of peer review: impact of review quality and
acceptance on satisfaction.' Journal of the American Medical Association
287, 21 (2002): 2790 - 2793
12. Douglas P. Peters and Stephen J. Ceci, 'Peer review practices of
psychology journals: the fate of published articles, submitted again' (and
commentaries) The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, (1992):187-255
13. Ronald N. Kostoff, 'Research program peer review: principles, practices,
protocols,' Research bibliography available from the author, Office of Naval
Research, 800 N. Quincy Street, Arlington, V.A. 22217 (E-mail:
kostoffr at onr.navy.mil
14. Tom Jefferson, Philip Alderson, Elizabeth Wager and Frank Davidoff,
'Effects of editorial peer review: a systematic review.' Journal of the
American Medical Association 287, 21 (2002): 2784-2786
15. Fytton Rowland, 'The peer-review process.' Learned Publishing 15, 4
(2002): 247-258
16. Blaise Cronin, 'Acknowledgement trends in the research literature on
information science.' Journal of Documentation 57, 3 (2001):427-433
Table 1
The numbers of papers acknowledging the assistance of colleagues with the
writing of the paper (and/or helpful suggestions from referees) compared to
the number of papers with no such acknowledgements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Number with Number without
Authors/ acknowledge- acknowledge-
per article ments to ments to
colleagues colleagues
Journal and referees and referees
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Journal of Educ. 1 25 25
Psychology
2 19 31
3 15 35
Teaching of 1 25 25
Psychology
2 23 27
3 20 30
Psychological 1 35 15
Science
2 35 15
3 25 25
Overall 1 85 65
2 73 77
3 60 90
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 2
The numbers of papers acknowledging helpful suggestions from referees
(and/or editors) compared to the numbers of papers with no such
acknowledgements
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Number with Number without
Authors/ acknowledge- acknowledge-
per article ments to ments to
Journals referees referees
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Journal of Educ. 1 2 48
Psychology 2 0 50
3 0 50
Teaching of 1 12 38
Psychology
2 15 35
3 15 35
Psychological 1 11 39
Science
2 12 38
3 10 40
Overall 1 25 125
2 27 123
3 25 125
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