Morally legitimate definition of authorship for European scientific institutions
Mohammad Hosseini · Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) · 2016
The goal of this thesis was to define a morally legitimate concept for authorship and advice PRINTEGER project on tackling contemporary problems that arise from scientific authorship in European institutions. In order to transform the current definition of Good authorship in codes of conduct from a mere prescription to a meaningful and actionable concept, embedding moral values to the definition was advised. Using the theory of communication and human interests in knowledge, both developed by Jürgen Habermas, I highlighted normative aspects involved in dissemination of knowledge in natural sciences. Authoring scientific results was compared to delivering the message of nature to the scientific community, and self-reflection was singled out as the ideal motivation for that. Later, using the ideal values of a messenger, I initiated an examination of the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and its definition of authorship, and suggested a few improvements for the next version of the code.