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From this MathOverflow question:

William Sealy Gosset published a result under the pseudonym Student. (Because his employer, the Guinness brewing company, did not allow their employees to publish for fear of divulging trade secrets.)

Why isn't publishing under a pseudonym a breach of academic ethics? It seems that the common idea is that publishing under a pseudonym is ethical, unless they are deliberately used with intention to defraud or deceive. But, given that we don't know who a pseudonymous author is, how can his peers have any trust in that (or even check it)?

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F'x
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    Some people think that papers should be reviewed without knowing the name of the authors, so it seems to be the case that you can trust and/or check a paper without knowing who the author is. –  Nov 23 '12 at 13:09
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    Other people give advice and answer question on Q&A websites under an obvious pseudonym, and yet their point is taken into account (wink) –  Nov 23 '12 at 13:33
  • Authorship attribution after publication is different than review blindness. Example: if I use a pseudonym and no affiliation, I may be defrauding my employer because they will not be formally affiliated with the research. Also: I can create a pseudonym and publish research under both my real name and a pseudonym (or two pseudonyms), which is intentional deception at the very least. (And why would you assume that I'm not also publishing on this very Q&A site under my real name? winks back) – F'x Nov 23 '12 at 14:09
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    I'm not particularly defending double blind reviewing (on the contrary, I'm for as open as possible), but the point is that if a reviewer can trust/check a paper without knowing its author, then so can a reader. In the end, the question remains to know whether the paper is good, and that should be possible to know it only from the paper, regardless of the author name. But yes, it could be deception, in particular w.r.t. the employer (and you could probably use also your real name, that wouldn't change what I think of your posts written as F'x!) –  Nov 23 '12 at 14:47
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    Ethics aside, there may be policy against pseudonyms regardless of intent. arXiv for example: http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.5874 http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.6365 http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.3934 – Willie Wong Nov 23 '12 at 16:44
  • @WillieWong Really? http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.3926 http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0374 http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.3956 – JeffE Nov 23 '12 at 16:51
  • @JeffE polymath is not exactly pseudonymous. They even gave a link in the papers to exactly who contributed to the projects. Of course, I have in fact not been able to find the so-called arXiv policy written down anywhere (blame arXiv's poor navigation design), hence I linked to instances of withdrawal instead of the actual policy. – Willie Wong Nov 23 '12 at 16:56
  • I think the arXiv's pseudonym policy is basically for defense against crackpots (and DHJ Polymath is a little different since it's publicly known who was involved, and it was posted to the arXiv by a known person, namely Ryan O'Donnell). – Anonymous Mathematician Nov 23 '12 at 16:57
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    What? Yes, "D. H. J. Polymath" is exactly pseudonymous! The fact that the authors' real identities are known doesn't prevent them from publishing under a pseudonym. – JeffE Nov 24 '12 at 04:16
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    @JeffE in the spirit at least, I agree with Anonymous that Polymath is more of a consortium than a pseudonym… just like physicists often do – F'x Nov 24 '12 at 08:19

3 Answers3

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The worth of scientific work is in the content, not in who wrote it. Therefore, I think publishing under a pseudonym is not necessarily unethical. In the example the OP presented the author was prevented from publishing if he used his own name. If the research was sound and reproducible, I would be fine with this. In practice I would like to know who wrote the paper.

F'x
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Paul Hiemstra
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    But if he was prevented from publishing by his employer/contract, wasn't published pseudonymously unethical? – F'x Nov 23 '12 at 17:24
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    @F'x In this case this is certainly illegal in some sense, but it may be ethical more than unethical (the paper is an advancement to the human knowledge, so it may be of high value in term of social utility). – Sylvain Peyronnet Nov 23 '12 at 20:15
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    I'd say it is more unethical to give someone a contract that forbids publishing papers, than to actually publish something despite such a contract. There's a difference between unethical and illegal. – silvado Nov 26 '12 at 08:07
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    If the pseudonym is used consistently, it is not relevant what "real person" it relates to, it gives you a picture of what to expect under this name. There is a good reason artists often use pseudonyms. With scientists, I do not see a fundamental difference. In fact, Sophie Germain used pseudonyms to study at a time where it was illegal for women to study or when communicating with Gauss. Was that unethical? When she was found out (e.g. by Gauss), they were, against expectation, positively surprised - but, shouldn't it be irrelevant who is behind the pseudonym? – Captain Emacs Feb 05 '16 at 15:49
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I don't think there's an absolute answer here. Ethical questions generally have lots of "grey areas" associated with them.

I think the biggest question to ask—and the one you indirectly are headed toward—is "why is someone using a pseudonym?" If the answer is "to get around a contractual agreement that both parties have agreed to and accepted," then it's likely that the use of a pseudonym is probably unethical. (Although one could argue that if this were intended to "correct" a more serious problem, then it might still be ethical—even if contractually messy.)

If, on the other hand, the answer is "to avoid potential review bias," or "because publishing under one's own name would make one's life less convenient" (for instance, there's a negative stigma associated with publishing outside one's "home" field), then it's less clear that there's an ethical violation in progress.

aeismail
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    And don't forget "because it's fun" as a motivation. – Sylvain Peyronnet Nov 23 '12 at 20:16
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    While "it's fun" is a valid motivation, it's hard to assess the ethics of that. . . . – aeismail Nov 24 '12 at 19:52
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    An additional case is a change of names, e.g. due to marriage. If you don't want your work misattributed, you may want to stick with the name you started publishing under. – Raphael Jan 28 '15 at 14:44
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    @Raphael: That's not really a pseudonym. – aeismail Jan 28 '15 at 18:48
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    @aeismail It is, in the sense that it's not your real name, i.e. the one on your ID. Of course, it was your real name once so your identity is not a secret. Pen names and other common forms of pseudonyms don't either; some will even be listed on your ID (at least in Germany). The question does not specify which purpose for publishing under a pseudonym we should discuss. – Raphael Jan 28 '15 at 19:00
  • @Raphael is right. In law the idea is: if you can do more (if you can have a completely random/"fake" pseudonym), you can do less as well (you can stick with a previously known name). – ASR Apr 15 '18 at 16:26
  • And even in this case, it probably wasn't to avoid contract - "the scientific brewers, including Gosset, were allowed by the company to publish research so long as they did not mention (1) beer, (2) Guinness, or (3) their own surname" (from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2018.1514325) - it sounds like a mutually-agreeable way to publish general knowledge w/o giving away Guinness's specific application. – Michael Ekstrand Feb 28 '21 at 19:28
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There are various views of the usage of pseudonym. I'd say a prevalent one in Europe is that its part of the special protection of authors in the sense of freedom of speech. I do not know how this is handled in the US or otherwhere, but in many European countries there is a constitutional right of protection of pseudonyms (which implies the right of publishing under a pseudonym if desired for any reason).

Raphael J.F. Berger
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