Join us for a STEPS Seminar with Louise Fortmann (University of California at Berkeley), on 3 April 2017 at the Institute of Development Studies.

The increase in publications based on participatory research has raised questions about crediting the contributions of non-academic collaborators.

Using qualitative and quantitative methods, trends and patterns in authorship and acknowledgment practices were analyzed for a sample of 262 journal articles in English reporting on participatory research on rural livelihoods published from 1975-2013. Six percent of the researchers recognized the intellectual contributions of their non-academic collaborators with co-authorship and 51 percent with acknowledgment.  Researchers who did co-author with their collaborators were motivated to do so in order to recognize intellectual contributions, practice research ethics and work towards epistemic decolonization.  Co-authorship can be an important component of epistemic justice in participatory research. Participatory researchers should always discuss authorship with their non-academic collaborators. Non-academics’ contributions to scientific knowledge need to be taken into account in understandings of the practice of science.

Louise Fortmann is Professor Emerita of Natural Resource Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. Her work has focused on property, gender, community-based natural resource management, and the democratization of science in east and southern Africa and the US. She is the editor of Participatory Research in Conservation and Rural Livelihoods: Doing Science Together. Her inability to milk a cow has been a persisting source of amusement to villagers.