Transitive Credit as a Means to Address Social and Technological Concerns Stemming from Citation and Attribution of Digital Products

The pursuit of science and engineering research increasingly relies on activities that facilitate research but are not currently rewarded or recognized, such as development of products and infrastructure. In research publications, citations are used to credit previous works. This paper suggests that a modified citation system that includes the technological idea of transient credit could be used to recognize the developers of products other than research publications and that if this were done in a systematic manner, it would lead to social and cultural changes that would provide incentives for the further development of such products, accelerating overall scientific and engineering advances.