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I recently found an article cited as "McCleary with Degering, Ind. Eng. Chem. 30, 64 (1938)" so of course I had to look up the original source. Sure enough, that article clearly says "McCleary with Degering" while the previous and following articles use what I would consider the normal e.g. "Monroe and Gilliland" for attribution. I didn't know any other attribution format existed.

Is there any difference between "and", "with", or any other preposition; i.e. does either word have any specific meaning in these cases?

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    Too old to ask them anymore, but I'd guess that they just made different contributions in some way. Maybe just something they wanted to do and the journal didn't object. Cite it like it was written, of course.
    – Buffy
    Commented Nov 6, 2021 at 19:32
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    I think at least one of those is a conjunction, not a preposition.
    – user128581
    Commented Nov 7, 2021 at 14:01
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    @Buffy While 'cite it like it was written' is good advice in principle, I fear it may either violate the style guide of the journal to which OP submits, or be rendered technically impossible by the publisher's implementation of that style guide in a BibTeX style file or similar.
    – user128581
    Commented Nov 7, 2021 at 14:25
  • @DanielHatton, while some constraints are foolish, they may still be constraints. But leave it to the journal to make the change and don't assume that you should yourself.
    – Buffy
    Commented Nov 7, 2021 at 14:29
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    It's worth noting that ACS' online posting of the article writes 'and', and generates the bibtex citation with 'and'. These online systems don't seem well-equipped to deal with variations on the standard format(s).
    – Anyon
    Commented Nov 9, 2021 at 15:00

1 Answer 1

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The use of 'and' in author attributions usually implies an equal contribution from all named authors. On the other hand, the less common 'with' could imply a lesser contribution from the second author. However, this can vary between academic fields and journals, and the exact nature of each author's contribution is best ascertained from the acknowledgments or author contribution statement in the paper. Given the 1938 paper you referred to, 'with' might reflect outdated conventions or stylistic preferences.

Hope this helps.

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