Earlier this month I looked at the story of Dutch company Mobbr.  They’ve built a platform that they hope will make collaborative work much fairer and more equitable.

For instance, if an organization wishes to have some software developed, they can launch a project on Github, and Mobbr will split the funding for the project according to the contributions of each developer to the project.

The process is as easy as one or two clicks, with the aim being to further support the development of a more equitable online economy than is perhaps the case at the moment.

All of which is great, especially as an increasing amount of work is done collaboratively.  Similar attempts are being made to provide similar attribution to academics when it comes to writing a research paper.

Currently it’s very difficult to tell who actually did what on a particular paper, which often leads to some receiving an unfair amount of credit for the work they offered up.

A gaggle of organizations, including BioMed Central and Mozilla Science Lab, are proposing a badge system to try and show who contributed what to a particular paper.

The system is set to launch as a prototype early next year, with the badges working thus:

• The article gets published
• This then alerts the platform (maintained by Mozilla), which sets up an online form
• The authors complete the form detailing the role each played in the paper
• Hey presto, the badges then appear next to the article, with each badge directing people to the authors landing page where the viewer can see their collection of badges

The team behind the project hope that the badges will help to shift behaviour amongst academics away from cut throat competition towards something more collaborative.

Will they do the trick and stop ‘star’ academics swanning in and taking all the credit for little work?  Maybe.  Whilst the system is designed to explicitly state who did what, I’m sure it can be gamed, just as any system can be, if the desire is there.

If nothing else however, it has prompted a re-analysis of just how work is attributed.  The Wellcome Trust have recently contrived a 14 role taxonomy for author contributions.  This taxonomy was well received by the research community, so it’s quite probable that the badge system will piggy back on this taxonomy.

The development of these buttons is part of an interesting shift towards making research more open and transparent.  I wrote last month about the Open Access Button, which is a browser extension that aims to help users find open access versions of gated research.

Another interesting development was the launch of Eulergy earlier this year.  The site aims to match students currently undertaking Phd level research with organizations hoping to tap into their insights.  It’s another nice example of giving exposure to people who might otherwise get hidden due to their lack of status.

It’s certainly an interesting time in the research world, and it will be good to see how big an impact the Mozilla led buttons can make.

Of course, the research community aren’t the only ones looking to use badges to bestow trust and credibility upon people.  I wrote recently about sites such as Traity and eRated, who are looking to communicate trust and reputation for users of the sharing economy.

Hopefully both groups are monitoring what’s going on to see if any lessons can be learned.