Beyond the IF boycott: Let's think about counter‐incentives against illegitimate co‐authorship

Abstract

The troublesome issue that illegitimate (guest, honorary, ghost) authorship poses a significant challenge for the integrity of science and that the contemporary usage of journals' Impact Factors (IFs) has a corrupting effect on publication practices are adequately emphasized by David Shaw's paper in this journal [1]. However, his suggested remedy is not a cure, in my view, but just a partial treatment of symptoms. Throughout his discussion, Shaw fails to differentiate the problem of authorship from the problem of IF usage. He obscures how IF is calculated and fails to fully understand why authorship guidelines are not followed. The inappropriate usage of IF is not the only factor that inhibits researchers from following authorship guidelines. As a conclusion, Shaw suggests that if universities, funding agencies and researchers could reach a global consensus to avoid using IFs to evaluate individual or institutional performance, scientists could escape this situation and hence could do the right thing when following authorship guidelines. Although the suggested boycott of the IF would be an advantageous development for many other reasons, I believe it would have very little effect on decreasing the prevalence of illegitimate authorship …