On Being Open In Practice: Giving Credit Where it is Due | Opening Research at Reading Blog (ORRB)

"Yet I do sometimes wonder if we have double standards. Last week, Bruce Holsinger caused somewhat of a stir on Twitter when he began posting instances of male authors thanking their wives for typing. The outrage was caused by the way in which this gendered, hidden labour was at once being acknowledged but only in an understated mode that does not confer real credit.

A good example of the continuation, though, of this gendered hidden labour can be seen in copyediting. In each of my books (n=4), I have had a female copyeditor. Academics clearly value this labour in some ways; I was roundly shouted at when I suggested the submission of monographs to the REF in the state prior to any copyediting process. Academics told me that they value editorial and copy-editorial input for their works. Yet how is this any different to 'thanks for typing'? If the input is so key, why are the names of the editors and copyeditors not on the front of the book? If we value this labour, is it enough to confine it to a 'thanks for typing' acknowledgement? Also, when we’re assessing work in processes like REF, is the assessment of the author or of the author plus the copyeditor?

The broader point for a move to open access and data is that thinking about systems of credit (usually circling around hiring, promotion, and tenure committees) cannot be divorced from the economics of the system. The way that we credit people has implications for how we imagine their function and remuneration in any future system of scholarly communications. Authorship is clearly a poor proxy for this credit; when we have hundreds of authors on a single paper we know that they did not actually all co-author the work. We know that 'authorship' is standing as a proxy to credit many different labour systems that were necessary for the work. But in the humanities, we don’t have this tradition."