Traditional Interpretations of "Authorship" and "Responsibility" in the Description of Scientific and Technical Documents

TLDR: Traditional approaches to the concepts of "authorship" and "responsibility" of scientific and technical documents are examined in printed versions of selected abstracting services.

Abstract: Traditional approaches to the concepts of "authorship" and "responsibility" of scientific and technical documents are examined in printed versions of selected abstracting services. The importance attributed to the work of the individual or the parent organization differs between discipline-oriented services developed for the most part by scientific and technical societies, and services announcing reports of government sponsored research developed by the U.S. Federal Government. These differences are linked to the contexts in which scientific and technical research are performed. Differences in approach which are apparent in printed sources may be obscured when databases are mounted for online searching and search vendors impose their own processing requirements on the bibliographic data.