THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING

Discussion questions based on the ACS Guidelines and 'On Being a Scientist.'

ACS Guidelines

On Being a Scientist

1. The ACS lists as the central obligation of authors "to present an accurate account of the research performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance." Why is this "central"? Can you think of any circumstances in which it might be less than obvious how to do this?
2. What are three ways of allocating credit/acknowledging contributions in a technical publication? Which of these assign responsibility along with credit?
3. Why do you think the ACS guidelines bother to warn authors not to fragment their research? Why would anyone fragment their research, anyway? Which OBAS scenario bears on this question?
4. What sort of criticism of a colleague's criticism is appropriate in a scientific paper?
5. Who, according to the guidelines for this journal, has the responsibility for seeing that the list of authors is appropriate? What related responsibilities does that person have? Do you agree that this is where the responsibilities should lie, and what are your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing?
6. Why do you think that the reviewer is charged with telling the editor about any substantial similarity between the manuscript under review and other work that is published or submitted for publication? Is it appropriate to give the reviewer this responsibility?
7. What knowledge, if any, from an unpublished article is a reviewer allowed to use in the reviewer's own work? Why that and no more?
8. OBAS and all other authorities, state that fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism count as scientific misconduct. The first two corrupt results, but why is plagiarism considered as serious a threat to the integrity of science as fabrication or falsification of data or experiments?
9. What is the significance of the order of authors? How does this vary from one field to another?
10. What does On Being a Scientist give as the default expectation regarding the responsibility of all authors for the accuracy of all aspects of a paper? What do you think of this policy? Can you think of any practices that might make it difficult to enforce this expectation?
11. Does the discussion of apportioning credit between junior and senior researchers in OBAS give you enough specific information to assess what behavior is fair? What information do you have to have?

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