Ghostwriter

EUGENE GARFIELD INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION* 3501 MARKET ST,, Philadelphia, PA 19104 Ghostwrftfng-The Spectrum from Ghostwriter to Revfewer to Editor to Coauthor Number 48 A few years ago, I decided to tackle the task of publishing an essay about ghostwriting. My preliminary draft and notes, both written and oral, were turned over to Marianne Zajdel, then manager of editorial materials at ISF. She in turn asked Joan L. Cochran, one of ISI’s staff writers, to prepare a more detailed draft, incorporating the many points stipulated in the outline we had prepared. Joan had been an 1S1 staff writer for about five years and had helped me prepare dozens of articles. She subsequently submitted yet another draft to me, which I read and edited ex￾tensively. This revised draft was then submitted to a group of reviewers I had chosen. Not surprisingly, reactions were quite mixed. Suggested changes ranged from correcting a few words or lines to a ma￾jor rethinking and rewriting. I chose the latter because the recommendation was supported by massive contextual correc￾tions I simply could not ignore. One cdl￾tor extraordinairel made me realize that the subject of ghostwriting was far more complex than I had imagined. Indeed, the potential range of the subject is vast. It touches upon the domains of writing, editing, and reviewing, as welf as the ethics of authorship. What follows is an interim essay on this large subject. These ongoing reflec￾tions are bound to be protilonal. Neither time, space, nor temperament allows me the luxury of indulging in a December 2.1985 Mertonian/Shandean exercise in self￾and domain-exegesis.z In order to pay proper homage to those who have par￾ticipated in the creation of th~ essay, however, I have incorporated their re￾marks verbatim wherever possible. This helps illustrate how difficult it is to iden￾tify what is truly one’s own original writ￾ing, rewriting, or editing, as well as one’s own ideas when research aides, re￾viewers, and editors are involved in a truly social and interactive process. By focusing attention on the fulf range of editorial functions, I hope that the ethi￾cal problems involved in scholarly and other writing will be clafi~ed. In this essay, I examine various types of ghostwriting and, I hope, separate them from the many shades of editing and writing (or speaking) that are not, strictly speaking, original. By “original,” I refer to what the author wrote before the piece was submitted to others for whatever type of help was needed. I also d~cuss some issues that arise in deciding how to give credit for those ideas incor￾porated in the text that are not originally the author’s. An essay I wrote several years ago happily acknowledged the help I receive from ISI’s large staff of information sci￾entists, librarians, writers, and other professional colleagues.3 In a sense, these people separately and collectively perform the function of research asso￾ciates and editors. Still, it is tempting to describe these activities as bordering on 460