The fashion for co-authorship is spreading (generalizing?). I do not mean at all the legitimate, useful, justified co-authorship that can be found, especially in sciences and actions or specializations that require multi-disciplinarity and multi-specialization, approaching the topic from the precise points of view of some sciences, or related/accessible, or even radically different , but cooperative. I mean disciplines with maximum overlap, even unique ones, in which a group (“grant winners” en masse, or just friends, even relatives) shamelessly subscribe to the type of articles worthy (quality, content, style) of one. They even sign books with multiple/collective authorship, although there is no special effort to check the validity of multiple authorship (the books are published by the authors themselves and are printed not at the expense of the publishing house, but at the expense of various grants or sponsors, no one cares what and how it is written) . But when it comes to an article of 5-10 pages, which in terms of content and quality is worthy of a report of a very good high school student or a debutante, the article is original and has just been sent/received for publication, the justification of multi-authorship is false, even absent. So, I mean the vogue to expand the number of signatories, to sign articles by a group without evidence, and the need for a diverse, multidisciplinary, multiperspective, multiple in every sense contribution.

At first I was shocked to notice this detail among Romanians. Especially from fellow geographers who receive articles signed by up to 6-7-9 people. Well, even today’s geography is not what it was half a century ago, it is no longer designed to help farmers or tourists know about everything on earth and the profits that can be made from each geographical location. But “human geography”, rebranding itself as modern, deals with sociology (entering/trampling the “living space” of economic and political sciences), deals with culture (although it calls geoculture with empiricism a “cultural landscape”), deals with philosophy (even when it analyzes the spectrogram sycamore mold, a species of fishing drone and cormorant terrorism, respectively transmigration of flocks of sheep). So it does/makes and crosses/integrates into the field cultural studiesand social human (yes even HUMANITIES), but preserving from the old science and technology, arts and crafts, the traditional habit of working in a group. It’s just surprising when you notice IDs among many of the signatories of articles, asking/searching and finding among them/them close relatives. Even the accountant-manager of research funds. I once tried in vain to talk about it with someone (a teacher, maybe a university employee, because his name is not only Gheorghe). “Yes Yes Yes, yes, that’s what everyone does!” (he said quickly, smiling widely, his eyes shining with joy). – Yes, is it right, is it ethical?…” “No-no-no, of course not” (very tight), “so everyone does!” (and pressing, excitedly and heartily laughing). – And how can you determine the contribution of each person from the text? “No, no, you can’t. Yes, they all are!” (ha ha ha in the square). Stunned by the expression on his face, I realized that this procedure is supposed to be traditional and practiced at the guild level, the national sympathy for criminals becomes in the academic environment a collectivist-disguising veil, as such , which is frankly obscene, euphoric, pleasant, precisely because, not having the opportunity to remain alive, modern, eternal.

Once I fell into the net of sensitive and sympathetic help, an emigrant offered a face-to-face meeting, boasting about the happiness of autochthonization, Romanianization and personal Orthodoxy, giving me two volumes (original in English + Romanian translation by graduate students). So, the book in which he talked about his beautiful “pilgrimage” while crossing Romania with the idea and with the message of preserving our beautiful folklore traditions of our ancestors. In the gap, although the article was very weak (it made an individual promotion, but minimizing his Philo-Romanian cultural activity, reducing it to “tourist animation”, on the other hand, the text is signed by a large group of fellow teachers), I nominated it for publication. Only when the entire volume of articles and studies was already in the printer, I also read a Romanianized foreign pilgrimage book to shake myself up. In fact, the man’s motive was only his own vanity, a vindictive instinct to demonstrate that, as a final and free-born child, he could achieve fame far beyond his humble family of origin on the Mioritko-Danube coast. simply becomes a Levantine, taking advantage of the hospitality of the locals due to audacious populist flattery, as well as the national weakness of boasting that “(all) foreigners seek us and admire us.” Baska integrates into a group of interests (he will translate or edit into decent English the journalistic fodder of some banal and unprincipled colleagues from university studies), a group that will also give him access to a doctorate both with a government scholarship and cheap (supposed) content.

Another time… There was a time when, in order to avoid misunderstandings, already experienced the hard way, intervened in the exchange of overly broad letters (in which it was necessary to explain clumsiness or clumsiness of speech and text and make changes). negotiations), I worked with several authors from Bucharest by the method of physical meeting. An effective gesture, considering that many times authors give others their own research to translate, they no longer check carefully what they receive, and when others read, we sometimes see ambiguities, gross mistakes, while not being sure that the original, in Romanian, even he had the intention is to say exactly what the result was. This is the context in which I once met with all 4 signatories of the article to discuss/discuss/correct minor errors in the text (perhaps just slights or ambiguities of translation). Dealing with: a young lady who had a perfect/exciting command of the subject and details, a young lady who didn’t know much and sometimes stared at the walls for a long time, a professor who understood and translated English perfectly, plus his wife, silent, a little bloody and obviously not knowing what she’s looking for on the page and in the discussion. So we read together, approximating what an outsider, neutral/distant lecturer might understand. In this case (as in many others) there was nothing serious. In any case, the paper went through and was published, with 4 colleagues benefiting from equal/multiplied points. (Proof that the woman, including the co-signer, continued to support her husband free of charge – in accordance with the law that every man has a wife, as in the world – was also the fact that a young professor, respected both in the subject and in translation , it is suspended today by permission of Barosan.) Read the full article and comment on Contributors.ro