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Larry,
You would know the legalities better than I, and those would seem to depend on the
copyright holder.
On the ethical question, I wouldn't think it ever proper to remove a co-author's name from
a work unless the entirety of his or her contribution were removed and the work no longer
informed in any way by that co-author's previous contribution. A change in title would
seem to be called for in that case, unless it is a generic one.
In the case of Oser, I believe that his was the beginning organization of the work and I
can't imagine a co-author so low as to drop Oser's name unless the work was completely the
co-author's now--including substance, interpretations, style, etc.
As a reviewer, you couldn't fail to reveal that the work originally had a co-author; if
you didn't, someone who was aware of that fact would wonder at the thinness of your
apparent knowledge of the field. And, this is aside
from the moral question. If I thought a deleted co-author was being done to, I'd say so.
I don't see any difference between textbook and scholarly work, so far as ethics is
concerned. In fact, if the scholarly work is truly scholarly--i.e., contains original
scholarship--it would have to be an entirely different work to drop a co-author. In which
case, it would be a new work and the "co-author's" name was never relevant. Catch 22,
anyone?
Sam Bostaph
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