A couple colleagues at work and I have been working on a chapter for a textbook about nuclear material safeguards for some time now. We just learned from the editor that, not only is the publisher insisting that each chapter have only one author, but that they won't accept "LANL Safeguards Team" or something similar as an option. So the chapter is credited to Mike and I get no mention in the book at all.
I just reviewed the proofs that will be used to actually print the book, and the really annoying bit is that there's this huge white space right below Mike's name where Bob and I would fit in nicely.
I feel bad for Mike, who doesn't seem to have any choice here and looks like a douche... and I'm getting a feel for the totalitarian world of big-company book publishing. Don't much care for it. Guess this publication doesn't get to go onto my resume...
I've run into this problem before -- at least second hand -- and two different friends/colleagues succeeded with two different strategies.
The first just said, "No. Fred and I both wrote parts of this, and if I take credit for his work, I'm plagiarizing and committing a civil crime. If you try to force me to do it, then you're also committing a crime. You can put both our names on it, or you can't publish it." Obviously a bit of a high-risk strategy -- but, then *you* don't have much to lose.
The other friend got left off the author list for a book accidentally -- for a book with about 8 authors. All the authors have just agreed to cite the book with all 9 authors in all contexts... essentially saying "it's the publisher's mistake."
Cheers,
RBK