Should a developer be a coauthor to a paper presented about the application they developed?
- by ved
In our organization, project teams come up with a need and funding and developers are given a basic scope and are allowed to develop the solution. There is a certain degree of implementation freedom given to the developers. They drive the solution to pilot and live deployment from its inception.
If the solution is presented in a conference as a technical paper/white paper what is the protocol for the list of authors: because for the most part I see the project manager's and the dev team manager's names as authors but no mention of the actual developer.
Is this correct? A lot of us developers feel pretty bummed to never see our names as the coauthors.
Appreciate any pointers.
Answers to the FOLLOW UP questions
(1) in what field of study is the paper, and what are the standards of authorship for that field?
The paper is for Flood Plain Management - there is nothing on the abstract guidelines, I have called the contact person listed for comment - waiting to hear.
2) was the paper literally about the software application as your question implies, or were the software issues incidental to the topic of the paper?
The paper specifically deals with a GIS Application that is used in Coastal Engineering, yes the software is not incidental, but the meat of the paper and mentioned in the Title.
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