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A comment on Why we need to create careers for research software engineers. Parent comment

Re:Why we need to create careers for research software engin... by alextgordon on Thursday November 12, 2015 @08:58PM (#10557581)
> I think we need to be careful about how we define creative contribution; there's a line to be drawn somewhere in there between a creative contribution for the sake of the software (i.e., speeding up execution time by 4x for a simulation running on a cluster) versus a creative contribution that enables the research (i.e., a novel real-time optimization algorithm for electrostimulation). The latter certainly warrants authorship, but I don't think the former does.

So a contribution is only a contribution if it contains an appropriate amount of NIH?

No programmer is going to going to want to work with academics, if they are forced to inject bogus novelty in order to get fair attribution for the real work.

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Re:Why we need to create careers for research software engin... by OopsCriticality on Thursday November 12, 2015 @11:54PM (#10558083)
No, a contribution only warrants scholarly authorship when it is a significant intellectual contribution to the topic of the manuscript. Short of that threshold, it appears in the acknowledgements; the acknowledgments is attribution for the work.

As geebee pointed out, current practice may not be enough to acknowledge the role of technicians, core facilities, etc. in research and the issue is ripe for discussion. Nevertheless, I don't think that changes the meaning of scholarly authorship.

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