Ghostwriting and Authorship Practices in Biomedical Research: A Study Protocol

Abstract

"Background: Scientific paper authorship represents an important form of academic attainment for research professionals and brings specific benefits (e.g., contribution science, recognizing the author’s intellectual efforts). Authors certify their work’s integrity by accepting the responsability of the published content. The principal two important unethical authorship is honorary authors (the criteria of authorship not met) and ghost authors (contributed substantially but not listed as an author). Aim: The current study has two-fold aim: to determine the prevalence of authorship violations in the biomedical journals according to the Web of Science classification and to evaluate its variation by article type (e.g., research, review, or editorial) and presence/absence authors contributions requirements. Materials and Methods: The following steps will be apply: 1) Identification of journal categories of interest – data source: Journal Citation Reports 2020 (JCR2020); 2) Identification of the eligible journal – JCR2020 by selection of journals weighted according to the number of jorunals in a specific category. The selection will be stratified by the Rank by Journal Citation Indicator (JCI); 3) Collection of characteristics of the included journals regarding the year 2020: total number of articles, number of articles and references, number of reviews and associated references; JCI percentile, open access policy and publication fee if applicable; 4) Random selection (simple random method) of authors who published in 2020. The selection will be done weighted according to the number of manuscripts published in 2020; 5) Development and validation of the questionnaire; 6) Invitation of the corresponding author to participate in the study; 7) Online anonymously data collection. The study protocol will be deposited in an international database. "