ordering of authors' names

[David Bowie]

From:    Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>

: anne mark of mit press explains the abandonment of alphabetical order:

:: The change had to do with academic culture. Some authors felt that
:: other linguists (including potential employers and tenure
:: committees) assume that the first-named author of a paper is the
:: primary author. Sometimes when author X considered himself or herself
:: the primary author of a paper yet was named second, alphabetically,
:: after author A, the authors asked to insert a footnote reading "The
:: authors' names appear in alphabetical order." This seemed awkward, so
:: we finally decided to simply let the authors themselves determine the
:: order of their names.


I recall reading (no cite, no guarantee of accuracy) about some economists
who surveyed their field to find out whether alphabetical ordering of
authors was considered a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. The result? Everybody
was at least sort of okay with it, but the closer an individual's last name
came to the beginning of the alphabet, the more likely they were to think it
was a Good Thing.

The explanation given was *not* that those with names near the beginning saw
an advantage in being more likely to come first, but rather that there was
safety in having a consistent reason for their names coming first. That is,
those with names near the beginning of the alphabet have more to lose in
situations of non-alphabetical name order--while those with names near the
end of the alphabet <wave to Arnold Zwicky> exist in a state of comfortable
ambiguity when their names are last, those with names near the beginning of
the alphabet are *clearly* listed as a secondary author or less when their
names come late in the list.

David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.