attribuering

Attribuering, or attribution, is the act of ascribing a work, idea, action, or property to a particular author, source, agent, or cause. The term derives from Latin attributum and the verb attribuere. It is used across disciplines to indicate provenance and credit.

In scholarly contexts, attribution refers to citing sources and acknowledging authorship. Proper attribution supports accountability, enables verification, and combats plagiarism.

In information science and data management, attribution or provenance describes where data originate and how it has been transformed, helping traceability and reproducibility.

In psychology and social sciences, attribution theory studies how people explain events and behavior, distinguishing internal versus external attributions and examining biases such as the fundamental attribution error.

In law and intellectual property, attribution concerns recognizing authorship and respecting licenses; failure to attribute can constitute infringement, with guidelines for fair use and licensing requirements under various regimes.

Challenges include misattribution, ambiguous sources, and cognitive biases. Standards and practices—such as citation styles, metadata, and identifiers like DOIs or ORCID—help manage attribution.

Etymology roots lie in Latin, with the English term attribution evolving to describe the credited assignment of authorship, provenance, or causality.