Abstract
Enlisting an author on a published paper, whose input was insufficient, is called honorary authorship. The aim of this study is to assess the proportion of honorary authorship in the field of pain medicine. Data were collected from seven high-impact journals. Corresponding authors were sent a survey regarding their awareness on authorship guidelines, the decision-making in authorship and specific contributions made to the surveyed article. We identified two types of honorary authorship: (1) self-perceived honorary authorship, which is measured by asking the corresponding author if honorary authorship was present according to their opinion and (2) International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)-defined honorary authorship, which is honorary authorship based on the guidelines. In total, 1051 mails were sent and 231 responded, leading to a response rate of 22.0%. 81.3% of the respondents were familiar with the ICMJE authorship guidelines, while 59.6% were aware of the issue of honorary authorship. 13.3% of the respondents were employed at a department in which the senior member is automatically included on all manuscripts. The ICMJE-defined honorary authorship was 40%, while self-perceived honorary authorship was 13.5%. There seems to be a high awareness of the ICMJE guidelines among corresponding authors in the field of Pain Medicine. Despite this high awareness, a high proportion of journal articles had honorary authorship, suggesting that authorship guidelines fail to be applied in a significant proportion of the literature.
Highlights
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) developed a guideline which recommends that authorship should be allocated upon fulfilling four criteria: ‘(1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; (2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; (4) AND agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved’
Enlisting an author on a published paper, whose input was insufficient, is called honorary authorship (HA).The aim of this pilot study is to get an overview of HA in high-impact journals in pain medicine
Overview of the responses on the survey. 81.3% of the respondents were familiar with the ICMJE authorship guidelines. 59.6% was aware of the issue of HA versus 40.4% being unaware of HA
Summary
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) developed a guideline which recommends that authorship should be allocated upon fulfilling four criteria: ‘(1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; (2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; (4) AND agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved’.1 Enlisting an author on a published paper, whose input was insufficient, is called honorary authorship (HA).The aim of this pilot study is to get an overview of HA in high-impact journals in pain medicine.
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