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It seems like journal publishers do not require credentials for proof of your affiliation and identity. There are many places where such credentials are important, but even the most popular journal publishers do not ask for them. Why is that so?

Ébe Isaac
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    I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that it would be difficult to check credentials. If I had to prove that I'm affiliated with the University of Michigan, I could send a scan of my university ID card, but can publishers tell a genuine ID card from a fake, considering that different universities have different-looking cards? I could send a link to my department's web page, but they could find that anyway by googling my name. – Andreas Blass Sep 21 '15 at 09:12
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    Why do they need proof of credentials? – Dave Clarke Sep 21 '15 at 09:18
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    I guess it's for the same reason that online shops don't ask for proof of your home address when you order something. – silvado Sep 21 '15 at 09:19
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    @AndreasBlass The last sentence of your comment: they could find that anyway by googling my name makes sense. But, how do they do that before Internet (Google, Yahoo, ... etc) was born? – Nobody Sep 21 '15 at 09:21
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    @scaaahu Before the internet, proving my affiliation would have been even more difficult. I could snail-mail the publisher a xerox copy of my ID card, or of the letter offering me an appointment (many years ago) or of the annual letter telling me what my salary is (presumably with the salary itself blacked out), but all of those seem easy to fake. I guess the best verification method would be for the publisher to phone the department's office and ask a secretary whether I worked there. – Andreas Blass Sep 21 '15 at 10:13
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    @AndreasBlass: "I could send a link to my department's web page" - and others might not even be able to do that, e.g. Bachelor/Master students who participate in writing a paper. At the same time, the secretaries of the department would likely have no idea who the caller is talking about when they ask about the student's name (although the normal course of action would then be to write a department-wide mail to ask whether anyone knows or collaborates with a student of name X). – O. R. Mapper Sep 21 '15 at 11:39
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    Why would anyone fake the aff.? For serious authors, it's a very bad idea since if this is ever discovered (and someone eventually will) your career is toast. For frauds, I guess you could be trying to make the paper sound more credible since it's coming from a famous school... But affiliation doesn't really help a paper all that much. Ask people at famous schools who have trouble getting published. – Superbest Sep 21 '15 at 18:01
  • @scaaahu Before the internet and general use of computers, there were almost no bibliometrical data available, so the incentive to list a false affiliation was lower. Also, it would mean people wouldn't have been able to reach you since the simply mailed the article authors by the affiliation in the article (by mail I mean paper mail of course). – yo' Sep 21 '15 at 18:03
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    In that other thread: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3011/4484 says you don't need to be affiliated to an academic institution in order to publish... – GEdgar Sep 21 '15 at 21:28
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    @silvado Buh? That's a completely different situation. Somebody who lies by claiming to live at a prestigious address when they order stuff online is instantly "punished" by not receiving the stuff they ordered. And it's common to order things for other people, e.g., as gifts. Somebody who lies by claiming to work at a prestigious university when they submit a paper... well, I'm not sure what happens to them but it's certainly not that they automatically don't receive something they paid for. – David Richerby Sep 21 '15 at 22:13
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    @GEdgar: It is true that you don't need to be affiliated to publish. But all are aware that in the absence of blind review, the affiliation and nation of origin do make an impression on the average reviewer. This fact is undeniable. – Ébe Isaac Sep 22 '15 at 03:14
  • Information technology will catch up with this. – Michael Hardy Sep 22 '15 at 03:32
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    @DavidRicherby Well, they won't receive any correspondence about the paper that goes to the false affiliation, and people who know their true affiliation may even think that the paper hasn't really been published by them. – silvado Sep 22 '15 at 07:27
  • @silvado: What if you care less about the people who know your true affiliation. What if you decide to migrate altogether and use the (false) reputation gained elsewhere? – Ébe Isaac Sep 22 '15 at 07:29
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    You put your affiliation so your institute is happy. The journal doesn't care what is your affiliation. – Greg Sep 22 '15 at 11:21
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    @Greg: Is that true all the time? I've heard rumours on how certain affiliation can boost acceptance of manuscripts. – Ébe Isaac May 04 '16 at 17:52

6 Answers6

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The crucial point is: Why would the author lie? Let's try some hypothetical answers:

  1. To bluff the editors and reviewers so that they think you're at a top place. But reviewers will likely be from your field of study and realize that you lie. They would probably know it if you moved to a high-ranking institution.

  2. To make the paper look good in your CV. This is a non-sense, you sell your affiliation in different ways than by listing them in your papers.

I can't think of any other reason. Given that the authors have no incentive to list a false affiliation, there is no reason to verify it.

Also, remember that some affiliations are very hard to verify, for instance if you stay somewhere for 6 months and want to list it as an affiliation, you possibly do not appear in any official lists.

yo'
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  • no incentive to list a false affiliation: I suppose [this] (http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/54683/how-can-i-find-out-if-someone-really-holds-a-doctoral-degree) may be an example of why should someone give false affiliation. This can be used to claim that the personnel has worked/studied in such a institution. – Ébe Isaac Sep 21 '15 at 10:02
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    @ÉbeIsaac If a hiring manager relies on affiliations on journal articles to verify that someone has a degree from there, he's a bad hiring manager. What if I published 3 papers but never got the degree? Also, this would require a much bigger fraud (trying to sneak in alumni on linkedin and get many friends from there, etc.). – yo' Sep 21 '15 at 10:27
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    I'd like to know what the downvote is for. I'm fine with getting downvoted, but if I don't know what's wrong, it's hardly a helpful feedback. If the downvoter spared a comment with their reason, it would be appreciated. Thanks! – yo' Sep 21 '15 at 12:59
  • Perhaps an author might bluff their institution to conceal conflicts of interest with suggested reviewers? –  Oct 12 '15 at 08:05
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A journal is interested in whether the submitted article is,

  • Appropriate in subject matter for that journal
  • Of a suitable standard for that journal (as advised by reviewers)

In an ideal world, neither of these things is indicated by affiliation - so why should they care?

Flyto
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    Unfortunately, this is not entirely true. I can't give you a reference, but there are observations that your both your affiliation and your name can significantly influence the odds your paper gets accepted, especially in some top journals. – yo' Sep 21 '15 at 12:58
  • @yo' I'm sure that's true. Thanks for pointing it out - I've added a qualifier to my final line! – Flyto Sep 21 '15 at 14:44
  • @SimonW Yes, it's correlated but it's undesirable, so there is an incentive to push back from this. The journal's editors do not want referees who judge papers written by famous professors to just skim over the papers and not evaluate these as critically as a papers written by other people. – Count Iblis Sep 21 '15 at 16:51
  • @CountIblis That's also not true. An idea by a famous person gets more attention than the same idea by someone unknown. The same probably holds for institutions. So if journal cares for high stats like the IF, they prefer articles from well known institutions because these are in general more cited. – yo' Sep 21 '15 at 17:18
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There are several answers here.

  1. They quite probably already do so (eg if a claimed affiliation to a prestigious institution looks too good to be true, or unlikely given other information, or a reviewer says "hey, wait..."), but on an informal and ad-hoc basis, rather than doing it for the 99% of unremarkable cases.

  2. They usually don't need to. Most submitters will provide an institutional email address, which is itself a fairly good indication that you are affiliated with that institution. (In the old days, you might have used letterhead - same sort of thing)

  3. Beyond this, defining "credentials" would be complex. Would you need them to point to an institutional webpage with their name on? Submit a payslip? Produce a certificate of employment? (And what would you define as "counting" for affiliation?)

  4. Finally (and most importantly) most of the publishing system is based on trust. The publisher trusts you to have actually carried out the experiments, and to have reported them honestly and comprehensively. They trust you not to have plagarised, or committed ethical breaches, or misrepresented other researchers. They may ask you to sign something to certify you've done all these things correctly, but they won't ask for evidence that someone else has verified you did them. If they're willing to take your word on the actual content of your science, why be particularly distrustful of your affiliation?

Andrew is gone
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    +1 for the first three points. But the account on trust should take a second look. Refer [this][http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to-retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/?postshare=5031427452343393] This shows how serious identity information should be accounted for in publications. – Ébe Isaac Sep 21 '15 at 11:38
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    @ÉbeIsaac The people in question were offering peer review using fake names, not publish articles. – Thorsten S. Sep 21 '15 at 12:25
  • Read carefully; author names were also found to be fake to claim another nationality. – Ébe Isaac Sep 21 '15 at 12:51
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    @ÉbeIsaac it's certainly true that some people do like and abuse the system, but that serves to demonstrate how trust-dependent the system currently is. It would need a very dramatic change in attitude (and a much more bureaucratic process) before checking affiliation would become widespread. – Andrew is gone Sep 21 '15 at 14:07
  • Exactly, that is why reputed publishers should be the first to start the bureaucratic process. – Ébe Isaac Sep 21 '15 at 14:15
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    @ÉbeIsaac, where exactly in the linked article are fake author names, instead of fake reviewer names, mentioned? – silvado Sep 21 '15 at 18:03
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There are some examples of papers published under false names or pseudonyms. For example, Student's t-distribution. A possible scenario is a scientist working in a private institution which doesn't allow him to legally disclose his research. Just like books can be published under pen names, scientific articles can be written using pseudonyms (see If I publish under a pseudonym, can I still take credit for my work?). If that's allowed, it makes no sense to check credentials, including affiliation.

Community
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a06e
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  • It is true (+1). It is written that Countess Ada Lovelace herself published her research under a pseudonym. But is that necessary now? If one uses another famous author's name as his own, how would the publisher find out? The motive may even to taint the reputation of such an author. As far-fetched as it may seem, isn't this possible? – Ébe Isaac Sep 22 '15 at 02:55
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    But did "Student" actually claim an affiliation that he didn't have? Besides, it was perfectly obvious that it was a pseudonym, since he didn't have a first name and a last name or anything like that, just "Student". – Michael Hardy Sep 22 '15 at 03:29
  • @MichaelHardy My point is that if false identities are allowed, double checking affiliations doesn't make much sense. Maybe a point can be made that either you use your real name, or you use something that is obviously a pseudonym, to forbid someone impersonating another real author. – a06e Sep 22 '15 at 11:57
  • It's worth noting that most of the linked question talks about 'pseudonyms' which are simply adopted for distinctiveness - using an unusual middle name for publication purposes, say - rather than pseudonyms used to conceal or mislead someone about your real identity. I doubt many journals these days would be happy with explicitly concealed author identities except in very unusual circumstances; 'Student' published in a very different world... – Andrew is gone Sep 22 '15 at 12:55
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    In the case of 'Student', etc, I believe the convention of the time was that the publisher did know who the author was, but permitted it to be published under a pseudonym - so they would certainly be in a position to check its authenticity in these cases/ – Andrew is gone Sep 22 '15 at 13:16
  • @becko : Instead of saying "if false identities are allowed, double checking affiliations doesn't make much sense", why not say instead simply that if no institutional affiliation is claimed, then double checking an affiliations doesn't make much sense? – Michael Hardy Sep 22 '15 at 18:22
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For the most part, your name and affiliation are not relevant to the content of a paper, which is what a journal is interested in. In the vast majority of cases an author would not have any incentive to lie about such things, so a journal would probably be willing to either take you at your word or only perform some basic checks, unless there were circumstances which aroused suspicion. The only incentive I can think of for an author to disguise their name or affiliation is if they wished to hide a conflict of interest or bad reputation, which I have seen happen. I expect it's pretty rare though.

Ulysses
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Because academia used to be about science, scholarship, and the advancement of learning and predominantly practiced by folk who would not dream of fibbing about such matters. Because editors have busy lives and they are not the police and journals are not official organs of the state. Because universities would only care if something controversial or harmful etc was unauthorisedly stated under their aegis - but they do not mind getting the credit for solid work. Because if some third party does object (hey! someone has read my paper, or at least the author list!), the affiliation is easily checked with the uni (a quick call, a visit to a web site) and the matter resolved. Because there are various entirely valid reasons for a person to be affiliated with the uni for the purposes of the paper, even when they are not (no longer, not yet) at that uni right now.

Deipatrous
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