Exploring acknowledgement practices in English-medium astrophysics research papers: Implications on authorship

Authors

  • David I. Méndez Universidad de Alicante
  • M. Ángeles Alcaraz Universidad de Alicante

Keywords:

astrophysics, research papers, acknowledgements, authorship

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a diachronic study of acknowledgement practices in 300 randomly collected research papers published during three different periods (1998, 2004 and 2012) in the most prestigious American and European astrophysics journals written in English. In order to investigate the influence of these practices on authorship patterns, we analyzed the distribution over time of a series of quantitative variables (number, length and types of acknowledgements, mean number of words/number of acknowledgements per research paper and mean number of acknowledgements/number of authors per research paper, number of named and unnamed acknowledgees, number of identified and anonymous referees, and number of emotionally charged-words). Comparisons between periods were carried out and Student’s t-tests were applied to the quantitative results. Our main findings show that acknowledgements are very common in astrophysics since they are present in 96% of the whole corpus. Financial, mainly public, and instrumental supports are the most frequently acknowledged categories. The number and length of acknowledgements and the mean number of words/number of acknowledgements per research paper grow over time. Financial, instrumental and conceptual assistance, unnamed individuals and anonymous referees increase over time, whereas moral, editorial and unclassified supports, named individuals and identified referees, and emotionally-charged words decline. If we focus on each journal publication context, we can observe that the research papers published in the American journals include more and longer acknowledgements, with a higher mean number of acknowledgements per author, more financial and instrumental supports, and a lower percentage of emotionally-charged words, whereas the European journals contain more conceptual and editorial supports. All these data can be understood in the frame of growing scientific professionalism, while a detailed cross-journal analysis may occasionally suggest honorary/guest/gift authorship.

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Author Biographies

David I. Méndez, Universidad de Alicante

David I. Méndez holds a Ph. D. in Astrophysics from La Laguna University (Canary Islands, Spain). He is currently working as a tenured lecturer in the Department of Physics, Engineering Systems and Signal Theory at the Polytechnic University College of the University of Alicante (Spain), where he has been giving lectures, both in English and Spanish, of Fundamentals of Engineering Physics, Optics and Acoustics courses for almost fifteen years at graduate and postgraduate levels. He is a member of the Holography and Optical Processing research group of the University of Alicante. He has published numerous research articles on star formation and ionized gas in Wolf-Rayet Galaxies in the most prestigious Astrophysics journals such as The Astrophysical Journal, The Astronomical Journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics, or Science. He has also published research articles on Photopolymer Optics in leading international journals such as Applied Optics, Optics Letters and Applied Physics Letters. Furthermore, he has published numerous research papers on Non-linear Oscillations in relevant journals such as International Journal of Nonlinear Sciences and Numerical Simulation, Journal of Sound and Vibration or Computers and Mathematics with Applications among others. Recently he has expanded his research to include Information Science and Linguistics matters in English with publications in international journals such as Scientometrics, Advances in Language and Literature, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, or International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature.

M. Ángeles Alcaraz, Universidad de Alicante

M. Ángeles Alcaraz holds a B.A. and a M.A. in English Studies and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Alicante (Spain). Since 2003 she is currently working at the University of Alicante as a tenured lecturer in the Department of English Studies, where she is giving lectures of English for Tourism at both graduate and postgraduate levels. Till two years ago she also taught Medical English at a postgraduate level. She is the author of numerous research articles, conference papers and other publications on the linguistic and pragmatico-rhetorical analysis of English-, French- and Spanish-written medical discourse. She has published in well-known international journals such as English for Specific Purposes, Fachsprache, Ibérica, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Lebende Sprachen, Scientometrics, Spanish in Context, The ESPecialist, and in edited books (eg. Lengua Española y Traducción, Intercultural Aspects of Specialized Communication, Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Advances in Medical Discourse Analysis: Oral and written contexts, Language and Discipline Perspectives on Academic Discourse, etc.). In 2004 she was awarded the Horowitz Prize for her diachronic and cross-linguistic and cultural research on academic conflict in the field of medicine. Recently she is also doing research in the field of Astrophysics written in English from both linguistic and scientometric standpoints and has published in Scientometrics, Advances in Language and Literature, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, or International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature. She is a member of IPA (Inglés para Fines Profesionales y Académicos) from the University of Alicante and of the Multilingual and Multidisciplinary Research Group on Scientific Discourse Analysis from the University of Los Andes, Mérida (Venezuela).

DOI: 10.20420/rlfe.2015.0001

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Published

2015-07-27

How to Cite

Méndez, D. I., & Alcaraz, M. Ángeles. (2015). Exploring acknowledgement practices in English-medium astrophysics research papers: Implications on authorship. Revista De Lenguas Para Fines Específicos, 21(1), 132–159. Retrieved from https://ojsspdc.ulpgc.es/ojs/index.php/LFE/article/view/243

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 1 (2015): Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos

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Artículos/Articles

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