Authorship. Authorship is influenced by power and departmental politics.
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Authorship↗
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Authorship. Assessment of authorship depends on culture.
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Authorship↗
The vexed question of authorship: views of researchers in a British medical faculty.
OBJECTIVE: To assess knowledge, views, and behaviour of researchers on criteria for authorship and causes and control of gift authorship. DESIGN: Interview survey of stratified sample of researchers. SETTING: University medical faculty. SUBJECTS: 66 staff (94% response rate) comprising several levels of university academic and research appointments. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Awareness and use of criteria for authorship, views on which contributions to research merit authorship, perceptions about gift authorship and strategies for reducing it, and experiences of authorship problems. RESULTS: 50 (76%) respondents supported criteria for authorship, but few knew about or used available criteria. Of the five people who could specify all three criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, only one knew that all criteria had to be met. Forty one respondents (62%) disagreed with this stipulation. A range of practical and academic contributions were seen as sufficient for authorship. Gift authorship was perceived as common, promoted by pressure to publish, to motivate research teams, and to maintain working relationships. A signed statement justifying authorship and a published statement of the contribution of each author were perceived as practical ways of tackling gift authorship. Most researchers had experienced problems with authorship, most commonly the perception that authorship had been deserved but not awarded (49%). CONCLUSION: There seems to be a gap between editors' criteria for authorship and researchers' practice. Lack of awareness of criteria is only a partial explanation. Researchers give more weight than editors to practical research contributions. Future criteria should be agreed by researchers and not be imposed by editors.
Attitude↗
Authorship ignorance: views of researchers in French clinical settings.
OBJECTIVES: To assess the knowledge and behaviour of researchers regarding criteria for authorship, and the practices of ghost and gift authorship. DESIGN: Semidirective interviews of senior clinical researchers. SETTING: University hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Thirty-nine main investigators of clinical research programmes. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Awareness and use of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship, and perceptions about ghost and gift authorship. RESULTS: A total of 48 protocols submitted by 42 principal investigators between 1994 and 1996 were identified. Thirty-nine investigators were contacted; 37 (one of whom delegated a co-author) were interviewed between May 2002 and March 2003. Two co-authors of two principal investigators were also interviewed. In all, 42 studies were represented. The interviews lasted for 40-90 minutes and were conducted with openness and respect for confidentiality. The choice of names of co-authors did not follow the ICMJE recommendations. Half of the respondents stated they were aware of criteria for authorship and knew of ICMJE, but most of them did not cite any of the ICMJE criteria among those they applied in deciding authorship. Most of them disagreed with the obligation to meet the three criteria justifying co-authorship because they found these too rigid and inapplicable. Gift authorship was a common practice; 59% of the respondents had been a recipient of gift authorship. Twenty-five (64%) were aware of ghost authorship and the majority considered it questionable and blameworthy. CONCLUSIONS: The ICMJE criteria were ignored by clinicians at a university hospital. Ghost and gift authorship were frequent among them. There is a need for French guidelines for authorship to be prepared and implemented.
Adult↗
[An analysis of authorship in articles published in Revista Médica de Chile].
BACKGROUND: Multiauthorship and unjustified authorship have been documented in journals with wide international circulation but this has not been thoroughly studied in journals from developing countries. Revista Médica de Chile is published in Spanish and it contains about 40% of the clinical and biomedical manuscripts generated by Chilean authors. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate temporal trends in the number of authors per article in Rev Med Chile and authors' compliance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria of authorship (updated 2001). DESIGN: A retrospective analysis of the number of authors per article between 1969 and 2000; and a prospective survey applying a contribution checklist to authors of manuscripts published in the year 2000. "Justified authorship" was assigned to whom self-declared contributions to: 1) conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article, or critically reviewed it; and 3) approved the final version. "Partial authorship" to whom lacked one of those 3 criteria. "Unjustified authorship" was assigned to whom participated only in data collection, or in diagnostic/therapeutic procedures, or in the statistical analysis, or in combinations lacking the main descriptors required for justified authorship. RESULTS: The number of authors in research articles increased in the last decade: From 3.9 +/- 1.6 (mean +/- SD) in 1969 and 4.9 +/- 2.0 in 1989 to 5.7 +/- 2.5* in 1994, 5.2 +/- 2.6* in 1999 and 5.4 +/- 2.2* in 2000 (*p < 0.05 compared to previous years). In contrast, it remained stable in case reports (4.1 +/- 1.9) and in reviews, public health or medical education articles (3.3 +/- 1.8). Among 921 authors surveyed (90% of authors in the year 2000), 51.2% qualified for "justified authorship", 42.3% for "partial authorship" and only 6.4% for "unjustified authorship". CONCLUSIONS: In a medical journal from a developing country, multiauthorship has increased mildly in research articles. Most participants complied fully or partially with the ICMJE criteria of authorship. Creditable authorship can be improved by continuous education and a critical attitude by the authors, readers, reviewers and editors.
Authorship↗
Authorship in a small medical journal: a study of contributorship statements by corresponding authors.
The authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are widely accepted in biomedical journals, but many studies in large and prestigious journals show that a considerable proportion of authors do not fulfill these criteria. We investigated authorship contributions in a small medical journal outside the scientific mainstream, to see if poor adherence to authorship criteria is common in biomedical journals. We analyzed statements on research contribution, as checked by the corresponding author, for individual authors of 114 research articles, representing 475 authors, submitted to the Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) from 1999 to 2000. Only 40% of authors fulfilled the ICMJE authorship criteria. The authors listed first on the by-line were more likely to fulfill the authorship criteria than all other authors on the by-line. The percentage of authors fulfilling the ICMJE criteria of authorship decreased with the increase in the number of authors listed on the by-line. These results indicate that poor adherence to ICMJE authorship criteria is poor across biomedical journals, regardless of the size of the scientific community. Authorship and contributorship in biomedical journals, as well as editorial ethical responsibilities towards authorship criteria need critical redefinition and education of both editors and authors.
Authorship↗
Problems with indexing and citation of articles with group authorship.
CONTEXT: It is not known whether articles with group authorship (ie, with a research group name listed as the author) are difficult to identify or whether use of group authorship may lead to problems with citation. METHODS: To examine ways in which reports of controlled trials with group authorship are indexed and citations counted in bibliographic databases, we conducted a cross-sectional study in January 2000. We identified 47 controlled trials funded by the National Eye Institute and 285 associated articles. Between January and August 2000, we searched PubMed and Science Citation Index (SCI) and recorded the citation practices for these articles. Our main outcome measures were ways in which trial reports were listed in PubMed and SCI and number of citations to each report by type of authorship. RESULTS: Of the 285 published reports identified, 126 (44%) had group authorship, 109 (38%) had modified group authorship (listing individual names plus the name of the research group), and 50 (18%) had named authors only. In PubMed, no group authors were listed in the author field (per MEDLINE rules); in SCI, group-authored reports generally were incorrectly attributed (first name on investigator list [35.3%], first name on writing committee [25.5%], contact name [16.7%], anonymous [16.7%], and other [5.9%]). Using the SCI general search, we identified citations to 16.7% of group-authored reports, compared with citations to 96.9% of reports with modified group authorship and 93.9% of citations to reports with named authors only. Other systematic search methods found that more than 98% of group-authored reports actually had been cited and that group-authored reports were cited more than other reports. CONCLUSIONS: Indexing systems are not optimally adapted to group authorship. We recommend that indexing services change their practices to include group authors in the author field to help correct the problem.
Abstracting and Indexing↗
Changes in authorship patterns in prestigious US medical journals.
To improve identification of contributors to manuscripts, editors of medical journals have developed authorship responsibility criteria. Some have specified an acceptable number of authors per manuscript. We wanted to examine changes in patterns of authorship in the context of the development of these specifications. Therefore, we used a retrospective cohort design to calculate the average number of authors per manuscript and the prevalence of group and corporate authorship between 1980 and 2000 for original, scientific, non-serial articles published in four prestigious medical journals: the Annals of Internal Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Group authorship identifies individual authors in the byline who are writing for a group; in corporate authorship, contributors are not individually listed in the byline. We found that the number of authors per article increased dramatically over time in each journal, from an average of 4.5 in 1980 to 6.9 in 2000 across journals. As a proportion of published manuscripts, group authorship (authors listed in the byline) increased from virtually zero to over 15%, while corporate authorship (authors not listed in the byline) remained rare and stagnant. Manuscripts published by single authors all but vanished. Group authorship was most prevalent in journals that limited the acceptable number of authors per manuscript. These findings suggest that the number of authors per manuscript continues to grow. The growth in the number of authors on bylines and the proportion of group-authored manuscripts is likely to reflect the increasing complexity of medical research.
Authorship↗
Can authorship policies help prevent scientific misconduct? What role for scientific societies?
The purpose of this article is to encourage and help inform active discussion of authorship policies among members of scientific societies. The article explains the history and rationale of the influential criteria for authorship developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, examines questions about those criteria that emerge from authorship policies adopted by several U.S. medical schools, and summarizes the arguments for replacing authorship with the contributor-guarantor model. Finally, it concludes with a plea for scientific societies to play a prominent role in the ongoing debates about authorship and the alternatives as part of their efforts to encourage ethical conduct among their members. Whether or not scientific societies develop authorship policies of their own, they should undertake vigorous educational efforts to keep their new members adequately informed about the importance of authorship practices in ethical scientific research and publication.
Authorship↗
Increased female authorship in otolaryngology over the past three decades.
OBJECTIVE: To identify changing trends in female authorship and publication in the otolaryngology literature. METHODS: All articles published in the four major otolaryngology journals in each of the years 1978, 1988, and 1998 were reviewed. The authorship panel of each article was examined for number of authors, gender, educational degree category, and subspecialty area of publication. Data were analyzed for trends in female authorship and the association of gender with the other design variables. RESULTS: A total of 2,463 articles were analyzed. The average percentage of female authorship increased from 4.1% in 1978 to 8.7% in 1988 and 12.4% in 1998, and the percentage of articles with a female "first author" increased from 3.2% to 7.4% and 11.4% for the same years, respectively. Each of these increases was statistically significant (P < .001). The weighted rank of female authorship also increased from 0.063 to 0.164 and 0.243 for the same years, respectively (P < .001). With respect to subspecialty publication, women were first authors of 14.7% of articles concerning pediatric otolaryngology but accounted for 9.9% or less of the first authors in the other subspecialty areas (P < .001). Female authors were also much more likely to be nonphysicians (P < .001) than men. CONCLUSIONS: There has been a significant trend toward increased female authorship in the otolaryngology literature. A significant portion of this is accounted for by nonphysician female authors, and female authorship tends to be concentrated in pediatric otolaryngology.
Analysis of Variance↗
Ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials.
BACKGROUND: Ghost authorship, the failure to name, as an author, an individual who has made substantial contributions to an article, may result in lack of accountability. The prevalence and nature of ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials is not known. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a cohort study comparing protocols and corresponding publications for industry-initiated trials approved by the Scientific-Ethical Committees for Copenhagen and Frederiksberg in 1994-1995. We defined ghost authorship as present if individuals who wrote the trial protocol, performed the statistical analyses, or wrote the manuscript, were not listed as authors of the publication, or as members of a study group or writing committee, or in an acknowledgment. We identified 44 industry-initiated trials. We did not find any trial protocol or publication that stated explicitly that the clinical study report or the manuscript was to be written or was written by the clinical investigators, and none of the protocols stated that clinical investigators were to be involved with data analysis. We found evidence of ghost authorship for 33 trials (75%; 95% confidence interval 60%-87%). The prevalence of ghost authorship was increased to 91% (40 of 44 articles; 95% confidence interval 78%-98%) when we included cases where a person qualifying for authorship was acknowledged rather than appearing as an author. In 31 trials, the ghost authors we identified were statisticians. It is likely that we have overlooked some ghost authors, as we had very limited information to identify the possible omission of other individuals who would have qualified as authors. CONCLUSIONS: Ghost authorship in industry-initiated trials is very common. Its prevalence could be considerably reduced, and transparency improved, if existing guidelines were followed, and if protocols were publicly available.
Authorship↗
A method for assigning authorship in multiauthored publications.
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Determining authorship for publications is often a difficult process, even more so when individuals from several disciplines collaborate with community organizations to conduct projects. Although multidisciplinary and community-academic partnerships provide fertile ground for publication efforts, disputes about authorship and ownership of data may hinder efforts to disseminate information. This article describes a process for dealing with authorship in multi-professional collaborations. It provides an authorship scale, similar to a neonatal Apgar scale, to determine order of authorship in multi-professional projects. Key components or activities in the process of authorship are identified, and points are assigned to each component in proportion to an investigator's level of activity in each component/activity. Scores are summed and can range from 1 to 35 for each author. The order of authorship is then determined by the relative score of each participant.
Authorship↗
Prevalence of honorary and ghost authorship in Cochrane reviews.
CONTEXT: To determine the prevalence of honorary and ghost authorship in Cochrane reviews, how authorship is assigned, and the ways in which authors and Cochrane editorial teams contribute. METHODS: Using a Web-based, self-administered survey, corresponding authors for 577 reviews published in issues 1 and 2 from 1999 of The Cochrane Library were invited to report on the prevalence of honorary and ghost authors, contributions by authors listed in the byline and members of Cochrane editorial teams, and identification of methods of assigning authorship. Responses were received for 362 reviews (63% response rate), which contained 913 authors. RESULTS: One hundred forty-one reviews (39%) had evidence of honorary authors, 32 (9%) had evidence of ghost authors (most commonly a member of the Cochrane editorial team), and 9 (2%) had evidence of both honorary and ghost authors. The editorial teams contributed in a wide variety of ways to 301 reviews (83%). Authorship was decided by the group of authors (31%) or lead author (25%) in most reviews. Authorship order was assigned according to contribution in most reviews (76%). The 3 functions contributed to most by those listed in the byline were assessing the quality of included studies (83%), interpreting data (82%), and abstracting data from included studies (77%). CONCLUSIONS: A substantial proportion of reviews had evidence of honorary and ghost authorship. The Cochrane editorial teams contributed to most Cochrane reviews.
Authorship↗
Multiple authorship: issues and recommendations.
The increase in multidisciplinary research has led to a subsequent expansion of multiple authored articles in nursing as well as other disciplines. Although there are benefits to multiple authorship, there also are areas of possible conflict. The lack of adequate guidelines to address issues that may arise from multiple authorship heightens the possibility of disputes. Developing a blueprint for the preparation and presentation of papers emanating from a research team's work early in the project can avoid conflicts and ensure that the efforts of the appropriate individuals are reflected in the publications. This article discusses several issues related to authorship, including the assignment of authorship credit, the increased pressures to publish, and the complexity of authorship issues associated with multisite studies. The authors offer recommendations to reduce problems that may arise among members of a research team because of authorship issues. In addition, they include the guidelines that their multidisciplinary research team developed early in their project.
Authorship↗
Haunted manuscripts: ghost authorship in the medical literature.
Ghost authorship occurs when an individual who contributed substantially to a manuscript is not named in the byline or acknowledgments. Ghost authors may be employed by industry to prepare clinical trial results for publication. An expert is then "hired" as author so as to lend an air of credibility and neutrality to the manuscript. Ghost authorship is difficult to detect, and most articles that have been identified as ghostwritten were revealed as such only after investigative work by lawyers, journalists, or scientists. Ghost authorship is ethically questionable in that it may be used to mask conflicts of interest with industry. As it has been demonstrated that industry sponsorship of clinical trials may be associated with outcomes favorable to industry, this is problematic. Evidence-based medicine requires that clinical decisions be based on empirical evidence published in peer-reviewed medical journals. If physicians base their decisions on dubious research data, this can have negative consequences for patients. Ghost authorship also compromises academic integrity. A "film credit" concept of authority is one solution to the problems posed by ghost authorship. Other approaches have been taken by the United Kingdom and Denmark. A solution is necessary, as the relationship between authorship and accountability must be maintained.
Authorship↗
Patterns of authorship among chairmen of departments of medicine.
BACKGROUND: This study examines changes in the authorship patterns of chairmen of medicine departments from 1979 through 1990, a time when criteria for authorship were widely debated among medical journal editors. Chairmen were selected to be studied because, due to their leadership position and stature, they are likely to "set the example" for many scholars in the academic medicine community. METHOD: Computerized literature searches were conducted for all 233 persons who were chairmen during at least one year of the 12-year study period (1979-1990) to determine the average number of publications per chairman per year, the average number of coauthors per article published, the location of the chairman on the published list of authors, and other pertinent data required for a thorough analysis of authorship practices. Statistical methods included repeated-measure analysis, sensitivity analyses, and the use of linear models to analyze trends over time. RESULTS: Among all the chairmen, there was no statistically significant decrease in the average number of articles per year for which the chairmen were last authors, and there was a significant increase in the average number of coauthors per year on published articles. However, factors such as length of chairmanship, frequency of publication, and academic position (i.e., chair, pre-chair, or post-chair) were found to influence patterns of authorship; for example, the 61 individuals who were chairmen for ten years or more had a significant decrease in the number of last-author articles, whereas the 172 individuals who were chairmen for fewer than ten years had a significant increase. CONCLUSION: Changes in the definition of authorship by medical journal editors did not seem to be important influences on the authorship patterns of the chairmen, since the chairmen did not significantly decrease the number of articles for which they were the last authors, and they significantly increased the number of coauthors of their articles.
Authorship↗
Authorship ethics in the radiological sciences.
The written communication of new ideas and current developments is a crucial part of the progress of radiological sciences. Research results cannot be incorporated into the body of scientific knowledge, unless they are published. In radiology, questions on authorship ethics have received limited attention. Among the topics discussed in this article are the incentives that stimulate radiologists to write and the obstacles to successful authorship. Practices causing concern to editors, authors and readers are examined, such as the excessive growth through recent years in the numbers of authors per paper, unjustified co-authorships, wasteful publication practices and fraudulent research. The relationship between the abuses of authorship and the pressure exerted on researchers to publish is exemplified. Further issues addressed include the responsibilities of authors, the proposed principles for authorship, the determination of the sequence of authors in multi-authored papers and the concept of publication credit. The editor's role in preventing unethical authorship is examined and emphasis is placed on the proposals that have been made to achieve the required reforms by eradicating the publish or perish mentality.
Authorship↗
How the structure of contribution disclosure statements affects validity of authorship: a randomized study in a general medical journal.
OBJECTIVE: Many biomedical journals have introduced disclosure of research contribution in journal articles as a way to limit irresponsible authorship. Over the years, journals have developed different contribution disclosure policies and procedures, but it is not known how these policies and procedures affect authorship. The aim of our study was to analyse possible causative relationships between the structure of the contribution disclosure form and the number of authors who do not meet authorship criteria in biomedicine set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: In a single-blind randomized trial, 1462 authors of 332 manuscripts submitted to a general medical journal answered one of three different contribution disclosure forms: (1) open-ended -- asking the respondents to describe in their own words their contributions in the submitted work; (2) categorical -- with 11 possible contribution choices and (3) instructional -- guiding through the ICMJE definition and instructing how many contributions are needed to satisfy individual criteria. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The number of authors not satisfying ICMJE authorship criteria. RESULTS: The group answering the instructional form had significantly fewer authors whose reported contributions did not satisfy ICMJE criteria (18.7%) than the groups answering the categorical (62.8%) or open-ended (54.7%) form (chi2(2 ) = 210.833, p < 0.001). The group receiving instructional forms also had the fewest articles with honorary authors (32.5%) compared with those who responded in a categorical (68.7%) or open-ended (83.0%) form (chi2(2 ) = 63.378, p < 0.001). All authors who answered the open-ended form, regardless of their compliance with authorship criteria, reported significantly fewer contributions (median 3 [95% confidence interval = 3-3]) than authors responding to either the categorical (4 [4-4]; z score = -7.1899, p < 0.001) or instructional form (4 [4-5]; z score = -13.9760, p < 0.001). Honorary authors answering the instructional form reported more contributions than those answering either the categorical or open-ended form (z score = 2.7637, p = 0.0057 and z score = -3.3773, p < 0.001, respectively). Most honorary authors (39.9%) lacked only the third ICMJE criterion (final approval of the submitted manuscript). CONCLUSIONS: The structure of the contribution disclosure form significantly influenced the number of contributions reported by authors of submitted manuscripts and their compliance with the ICMJE authorship criteria. Journal editors should be aware of the cognitive aspects of survey methodology when they construct for their authors self-reports about behaviour, such as contribution disclosure forms.
Authorship↗