Public health vs. social science research: How does authorship differ?

One of the great things about working in international development is engaging with research across a variety of fields. Development is inherently multi-sectoral. I am an economist and was thus raised in the research culture of the social sciences. But I’ve been fortunate to engage quite a bit in the last decade with public health research, even co-authoring a number of studies published in public health journals. As a funder (in my previous job) and author of publications in both social sciences and public health, I’ve been struck by differences in culture and practice between the two. These differences are understood anecdotally by many, but I wanted to see some data.

In this post and a future post, I present the research I conducted with Katherine Whitton comparing public health and social science publication practices for development impact evaluations.