Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/2330667.2330680
Viewpoint
author Order: What Science
Can learn from the arts
IMagiNe yOU are sitting in a movie theater. You have been viewing the film The King’s Speech and you are now watch- ing the closing scene. The film
is over, and on the screen, darkened
for the credits, you read the following,
with no explanation of any kind: Tom
Hooper, David Seidler, Colin Firth,
Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter.
It is probably not very difficult for you
to infer which role each of them has
played in the making of the film. But,
just in case, the real credits, unlike our
fictitious ones, make it quite clear that
Tom Hooper is the director; David Seidler wrote the original story on which
the film is based; and Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter
are the leading actors. If we remain in
our seats in the theater, we also learn
the identity of the supporting actors,
producers, sound mixers, set decorators, and many others associated with
the film we have just viewed.
Is it obvious? Of course, it is. We are
familiar with this happening at the end
of any film shown in any theater anywhere in the world, that something similar may be said for novels, where the
names of the author, the editor, the cover artist, and the publisher are all given,
which is true of many other kinds of art.
How different this is from the head-
ings of most scientific papers! In this
case it is up to the reader to deduce
who does what in the collective task
of research. In our opinion, science
would do well to take stock of what
happens in the art world, for to discern
the role of each of the researchers en-
gaged in a study is not so easy, as we
will describe here.
the importance of Research
in universities today
Of course, any university seeking pres-
tige must offer a high standard of
teaching. Today, however, although
teaching is the reason for a univer-
sity’s existence, what is really valued
is research, which is the yardstick by
which universities are measured, not
just in the authors’ home country
Spain, but also in the rest of Europe
and in the U.S. 1, 3
