Biomedical article authorship: A proposal to enhance the meaningful assignment of authorship

Abstract

The authorship of articles in biomedical journals has proliferated despite efforts of publishers and editors to require justification of authorship. A proposal is made, herein, to resolve that matter by applying the “one paper: one citation” concept, so as to adhere to the thermodynamic principle of conservation of mass. This proposal provides (i) a means to allow authors to agree on their relative contribution, (ii) an incentive to assign only significant contributors to authorship, and (iii) the appropriate fractional contribution of each author when there are multiple authors. As a result, the sum of citations for any one paper shall be one paper. I believe this proposal the only method suggested, thus far, to make authorship of a biomedical paper authentic.