Acknowledgment (creative arts and sciences)


In the creative arts and scientific literature, an acknowledgement is an expression of a gratitude for assistance in creating an original work.
Receiving credit by way of acknowledgement rather than authorship indicates that the person or organization did not have a direct hand in producing the work in question, but may have contributed funding, criticism, or encouragement to the author. Various schemes exist for classifying acknowledgements; Cronin et al. give the following six categories:
  1. moral support
  2. financial support
  3. editorial support
  4. presentational support
  5. instrumental/technical support
  6. conceptual support, or peer interactive communication
Apart from citation, which is not usually considered to be an acknowledgement, acknowledgement of conceptual support is widely considered to be the most important for identifying intellectual debt. Some acknowledgements of financial support, on the other hand, may simply be legal formalities imposed by the granting institution. Occasionally, bits of science humor can also be found in acknowledgements.
There have been some attempts to extract bibliometric indices from the acknowledgments section of research papers in order to evaluate the impact of the acknowledged individuals, sponsors and funding agencies.

Spelling

The spelling acknowledgement is used in British English, Australian English, and other English-speaking areas outside North America, whereas the spelling acknowledgment is often used in American English and Canadian English.