Interesting points. I agree that impact certs differ from carbon credits by being by corresponding to a fraction of the impact of a whole project, or at least an amount of work (inputs), rather than a quanta of impact (outputs). But it does strike me that carbon credits still might be the most closely related among well-known existing concepts. This could suggest “project credits”. If you say—on your resume for example—that you sold “project credits” for a company, or a research project, it seems this would give a naive reader more of an idea of what has gone on than many other terms—they are a way of assigning credit to patrons of the project. The main downside, as you allude to is that they sort-sound like someone might be owed something. But if talking to a naive outsider, you can just say that the credit is a certificate that commemorates their patronage of the project, similar to a carbon credit, which would seem to be clear enough...
I think the problem with blame is that it sounds too negative—you won’t want to write that on your resume. And if the term isn’t used by recipients, then it’s unlikely to catch on.
Re “transferable attribution”, to be a bit more concrete, if I say that I have sold the attribution for a paper I wrote, it sounds a bit like I am giving away the authorship to a funder, which would be some kind of academic malpractice. Since that’s not always the case, it seems like we don’t want the general term to sound like it is...
Interesting points. I agree that impact certs differ from carbon credits by being by corresponding to a fraction of the impact of a whole project, or at least an amount of work (inputs), rather than a quanta of impact (outputs). But it does strike me that carbon credits still might be the most closely related among well-known existing concepts. This could suggest “project credits”. If you say—on your resume for example—that you sold “project credits” for a company, or a research project, it seems this would give a naive reader more of an idea of what has gone on than many other terms—they are a way of assigning credit to patrons of the project. The main downside, as you allude to is that they sort-sound like someone might be owed something. But if talking to a naive outsider, you can just say that the credit is a certificate that commemorates their patronage of the project, similar to a carbon credit, which would seem to be clear enough...
I think the problem with blame is that it sounds too negative—you won’t want to write that on your resume. And if the term isn’t used by recipients, then it’s unlikely to catch on.
Re “transferable attribution”, to be a bit more concrete, if I say that I have sold the attribution for a paper I wrote, it sounds a bit like I am giving away the authorship to a funder, which would be some kind of academic malpractice. Since that’s not always the case, it seems like we don’t want the general term to sound like it is...