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For the second time recently, someone mentioned to me the Hardy-Littlewood rules for collaboration (and on that very site). From what I read about it, they include the following rule:

And, finally, the fourth, and perhaps most important axiom, stated that it was quite indifferent if one of them had not contributed the least bit to the contents of a paper under their common name

How is it ethical to be a co-author of a paper you have “not contributed the least bit to”?

I was flummoxed when I read that, it would be considered a serious breach of ethics in the communities I know. Is that a practice (those “rules”) specific to mathematics? Or are they just not used any more?

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Since the Hardy-Littlewood rules themselves were public, everyone knew what Hardy-Littlewood co-authorship meant. The situation would be very different if I added your name to one of my papers without any intellectual contribution from you. – JeffE Nov 7 '12 at 16:55
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The cynical side of me wants to ask: what about the head honchos who contributed the funding and hardly to the content? – Willie Wong Nov 9 '12 at 16:12

3 Answers

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Generally speaking, this practice would not be acceptable under today's ethical standards.

I don't think these rules represented standard practice even in Hardy and Littlewood's day. They wrote them only to govern their own collaboration; I'm not aware that they ever even suggested that anybody else follow them. The rules are notable because they are unusual (and, as mentioned by Anonymous Mathematician, humorously exaggerated).

If your reputation matches that of Hardy and Littlewood, you may find the academic community (and your institution) willing to tolerate idiosyncracies like this. Otherwise, I wouldn't suggest trying it.

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ACtually in mathematics is a common feature that authors are listed in the alphabetic order, regardless of their relative contribution (but I guess in most sane scenarios, rules in-out are similar to other sciences). – Piotr Migdal Nov 9 '12 at 12:06
@Piotr: I think Nate is probably well aware of the author order for mathematical publications. :-) Perhaps you intended your comment to be on the OP? – Willie Wong Nov 9 '12 at 16:08
@WillieWong It was a supplementary. The answer above may suggest that the Hardy-Littlewood is not followed. – Piotr Migdal Nov 10 '12 at 16:52
up vote 17 down vote

I've always interpreted such remarks as meaning that the individual papers were just progress reports on their larger enterprise, to which both made irreplaceable contributions, and that they had no interest in keeping track of moment-by-moment relative contributions.

In particular, "on average", there was no misattribution or false credit.

(Further, the "not contributed the least" may easily be hyperbole, just to make the point.)

For that matter, if one is in regular correspondence with another, how to attribute ideas that develop gradually? I think their solution was entirely reasonable.

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Exactly, I always interpreted the "contributed not the least bit" bit partly as humorous exaggeration: if one of them genuinely didn't contribute at all, they would presumably not be willing to be listed as an author, but the rule meant they didn't need to think or worry about relative contributions or try to establish a clear line for an inherently fuzzy decision. It's basically a way of acknowledging that everyone involved thinks the collaboration is valuable enough that they don't want to haggle over the details of the credit. – Anonymous Mathematician Nov 7 '12 at 19:47
up vote 4 down vote

I think the context of the rule is important here. The rules taken together set up a system of trust: that the authors trust each other to contribute fully to the project, and so (as others have pointed out) they didn't have to waste time with the nitty-gritty of specific contributions.

It is not useful therefore to view this rule in isolation as a license to willy-nilly add authors without contributions.

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