From 02138:
Because, in any number of academic offices at Harvard, the relationship between “author” and researcher(s) is a distinctly gray area. A young economics professor hires seven researchers, none yet in graduate school, several of them pulling 70-hour work-weeks; historians farm out their research to teams of graduate students, who prepare meticulously written memos that are closely assimilated into the finished work; law school professors “write” books that acknowledge dozens of research assistants without specifying their contributions. These days, it is practically the norm for tenured professors to have research and writing squads working on their publications, quietly employed at stages of co-authorship ranging from the non-controversial (photocopying) to more authorial labor, such as significant research on topics central to the final work, to what can only be called ghostwriting.
Read the whole article, it is very important. Then consider my story,
I once had to write a full professor at a good institution to say that the piece he had contributed to my collection was in very poor shape, in terms of content development as well as grammar and other more mechanical issues, and that I was rescinding my invitation to participate in the volume unless he could get me something more nearly publishable. He responded, apologizing on behalf of his assistant who had inadvertently sent one of her early drafts of his article. He said this without batting an eye.
At the time I thought it was gender discrimination, combined with an utter lack of integrity. It was one of the events which contributed to my extreme loss of respect for professors. I did not realize at first that this person was only following the custom. When I did discover that, it only made things worse.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Don’t know if it happens to much in AU.
But isn’t this merely a feature which harkens back to the way things used to be done in previous centuries. I understood that the early renaissance painters used to get their apprentices to complete large portions of a painting for them, and then take credit for the whole.
I read the article.
I think I wouldn’t like to be a part of that kind of system — although there is always a tension between earning a living and producing something of quality.
You ought to work up an article for Inside Higher Education. I’ll bet they’d take it.
one of the articles that made a colleague famous in our particular subfield was a pared down version of my final for her course. Everywhere I go in the states people ask me if I know her and what I think and I have to keep my mouth shut b/c the consequences for outing her plagarism would be all mine. (I recently met one of her fans, who proceeded to pump me for all kinds of information on my research after being talked up by all his colleagues and after the conversation ended he admited he was changing his research to my site and in the process of writing a grant; I remember thinking “well she taught you well didn’t she?”) stealing from graduate students and people darker than you has always been part of the process for some people the sad thing is holding those people accountable never has been.
Analogous in a way to a Renaissance workshop but not a true parallel for various reasons. And also different from out and out stealing. Still a scandalous system. Article in IHE: yes although I do not really have more to say than I say here.
Except that it would explain some odd characteristics – nonsequituurs and such – in books I have read, which I had put down to bad copyediting.
I guess also I’d claim it isn’t really the norm for this to go on, though, it is only the norm in the very best schools – so far as I can tell. I am quite sure my colleagues write their own books. I know they cite their students sometimes, and make them co-authors when they have done significant parts of the research for a piece, but that is fine in my opinion. Perhaps the question is, what is a good school? Or: what is a professor?
interesting final questions there. I think you are right to draw distinctions between those who cite the labor and those that don’t. I have had to put name on a few graduate students’ articles to get them published and I always ask them “Do you want to publish this now with my name on it when all I did was get you the gig and read the drafts or do you want to hold it until you have made a bigger name for yourself and shop it then?” So there are a lot of gradiations: 1. the work researched and credited as such to students, 2. the work edited and credit as such to students, 3. the work semi-written and credited to students, 4. the work co-written and credited as such to students, 5. the obligatory established scholar’s name on work as “co-author” with students to get them published, & 6. the slapping of one’s name on someone else’s work. There are probably more than we have identified in that list too. Now that you mention the “good school” thing, I do have to say that I have never seen that behavior at PU. But, then, I never saw it at M of N U either; in fact, students there were so brilliant that the goal was always to open pathways to their publishing and they were so privileged as to know that they had ownership over their intellectual property and not to give it up. So I don’t know . . .
I am going to mull your questions over some more b/c I really think they are important ones.
I had lunch with some scientists today – not academics, scientists for the government – and they say that all of this is far more rampant than I know.
yeah. the closer you get to the sciences the more often it happens. there was an interesting piece in the Chronicle about a year ago about a science post-doc whose articles were all taken and whose manuscript was almost stolen as well.