title: Culture and Unmerited Authorship Credit: Who Wants It and Why?
abstract: Unmerited authorship is a practice common to many countries around the world, but are there systematic cultural differences in the practice? We tested whether scientists from collectivistic countries are more likely to add unmerited coauthors than scientists from individualistic countries. We analyzed archival data from top scientific journals (Study 1) and found that national collectivism predicted the number of authors, which might suggest more unmerited authors. Next, we found that collectivistic scientists were more likely to add unmerited coauthors than individualistic scientists, both between cultures (Studies 2-3) and within cultures (Study 4). Finally, we found that priming people with collectivistic self-construal primes made them more likely to endorse questionable authorship attitudes (Study 5). These findings show that culture collectivism is related to unmerited authorship.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xiaopeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Kewen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of PsychologyBeijing, China; University of Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijing, China.
authors.forename: Xiawei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: National Science Library Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Zhengzheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ouyang
authors.affiliation: Booth School of Business, University of Chicago Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Talhelm
keywords: collectivism; culture; individualism; science; unmerited authorship