Gift Authorship Research Articles

Evidence-based medicine has been hijacked: a report to David Sackett

This is a confession building on a conversation with David Sackett in 2004 when I shared with him some personal adventures in evidence-based medicine (EBM), the movement that he had spearheaded. The narrative is expanded with what ensued in the subsequent 12 years. EBM has become far more recognized and adopted in many places, but not everywhere, for example, it never acquired much influence in the USA. As EBM became more influential, it was also hijacked to serve agendas different from what it originally aimed for. Influential randomized trials are largely done by and for the benefit of the industry. Meta-analyses and guidelines have become a factory, mostly also serving vested interests. National and federal research funds are funneled almost exclusively to research with little relevance to health outcomes. We have supported the growth of principal investigators who excel primarily as managers absorbing more money. Diagnosis and prognosis research and efforts to individualize treatment have fueled recurrent spurious promises. Risk factor epidemiology has excelled in salami-sliced data-dredged articles with gift authorship and has become adept to dictating policy from spurious evidence. Under market pressure, clinical medicine has been transformed to finance-based medicine. In many places, medicine and health care are wasting societal resources and becoming a threat to human well-being. Science denialism and quacks are also flourishing and leading more people astray in their life choices, including health. EBM still remains an unmet goal, worthy to be attained.

How do scientists perceive the current publication culture? A qualitative focus group interview study among Dutch biomedical researchers

ObjectiveTo investigate the biomedical scientist's perception of the prevailing publication culture.DesignQualitative focus group interview study.SettingFour university medical centres in the Netherlands.ParticipantsThree randomly selected groups of biomedical scientists (PhD, postdoctoral staff...

Medical Research Misconduct: A Review Study on Duplicate Publications

Fraud and Misconduct broadly encompasses plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplication, salami, gift and ghost authorship. In 2010 in Singapore a second World Conference on Research Integrity attended by more than 50 countries resolved the definition of research conduct as “Researchers should report to the appropriate authorities any suspected research misconduct, including fabrication, falsification or plagiarism, and other irresponsible research practices that undermine the trustworthiness of research, such as carelessness, improperly listing authors, failing to report conflicting data, or the use of misleading analytical methods.”

Ethics in Science.

Ethics are a set of moral principles and values a civilized society follows. Doing science with principles of ethics is the bedrock of scientific activity. The society trusts that the results and the projected outcome of any scientific activity is based on an honest and conscientious attempt by the scientific community. However, during the last few decades, there has been an explosion of knowledge and the advent of digital age. We can access the publications of competitors with just a "click". The evaluation parameters have evolved a lot and are based on impact factors, h-index and citations. There is a general feeling that the scientific community is under a lot of pressure for fulfilling the criteria for upward growth and even retention of the positions held. The noble profession of scientific research and academics has been marred by the temptation to falsify and fabricate data, plagiarism and other unethical practices. Broadly speaking, the breach of ethics involves: plagiarism, falsification of data, redundant (duplicate) publication, drawing far-fetched conclusions without hard data, for early publicity, gift authorship (receiving as well as giving), not giving sufficient attention and consideration to scholars and post-docs as per the norms, self promotion at the cost of team-members, treating colleagues (overall all juniors) in a feudal way and Machiavellianism (cunningness and duplicity in general conduct and push to positions of power and pelf). Misconduct in Indian academics and science is also under a lot of focus. It is important and urgent that science, engineering, and health departments and institutions in our country have in place systems for education and training in pursuit of science with ethics by sound and professional courses in Responsible Conduct of Research. All research and academic institution must have the Office of Ethics for information, guidelines, training and professional oversight of conduct of research with the ethos and ethics of research.

An evaluation based on highly cited publications in Taiwan

Bibliometric analysis of highly cited papers of a country can provide interesting insights concerning authors, institutions, collaboration patterns and even useful recommendations for future research policy. The purpose of this study is to conduct bibliometric analysis of highly cited papers from Taiwan. Data used in the study were extracted from the SCI-Expanded database of the Web of Science Core Collection of Thomson Reuters. Authorship, collaboration pattern and Y-index were reported. Results showed that highly cited papers might not have high citations in early years and may be published in journals with low impact factors. International collaboration was responsible for the increasing number of highly cited papers over the years. Institutions can be categorized into three phenotypes and majority of the institutions were characterized with high dependency and low leadership in the collaboration. The United States was the leading choice for international collaboration, while National Taiwan University was the leading choice of institutions for domestic collaboration. With a few exceptions, leading authors tended to be the corresponding author, rather than the first author as in previous studies. It is speculated that this phenomenon may be due to a pecking order among institutions, traditional Confucius values of seniority, and inequality in resource allocation by funding agencies. Providing more balanced research funding, increasing the number of Ph D students studying abroad, eliminating gift authorships, especially partners in a project but not in papers and increasing the emphasis on independent research may be needed to amend the observed patterns.

Sensitivity and integrity of authorship

Sensitivity and integrity of authorship

Publication misconduct among medical professionals in India.

This study was planned as an exploratory study to determine the extent of occurrence of misconduct in publication (gift-authorship,ghost-authorship, falsification of data, fabrication of data,plagiarism, and duplication) amongst biomedical researchers.It was a questionnaire-based study, conducted at 9 institutions;6 medical colleges (4 government-run and 2 private), 7 non teaching government hospital, and 2 corporate hospitals, located in northern, central and southern India. The study was conducted between August 2072 and March 2073. 755 senior residents (<3 years after post-graduation) and young faculty members (< 70 years after post-graduation) with at least five previous publications were administered a structured questionnaire, in which no identifying information was collected. In addition to personal characteristics, the information collected included their knowledge of publication ethics, their opinions about the prevalence of these practices among their colleagues, and details of any first-hand information on publication misconduct. 7 55 responses were included for analysis. 7 4 7 (9 7 %) respondents agreed that they had some knowledge of publication ethics; but only 29% believed it was adequate. The most commonly observed misconduct was offering gift authorship, reported by 707 (65%); followed by alteration of data reported by 88 (56%). Plagiarism was observed by 83 respondents (53%); while 52 (33.5%) respondents had observed a colleague's name being omitted from a paper to which she/he had significantly contributed. A majority of respondents in the present study reported witnessing publication misconduct,thereby revealing the common occurrence of this problem among Indian biomedical researchers.

Authorship Practices in Multi‐Authored Papers in the Natural Sciences at Japanese Universities

AbstractThis paper examines the practices of natural science researchers and the recognition authors receive in multi‐authored papers at Japanese universities. The “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication” by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which sets global standards for authorship ethics in many natural science fields, notes problems in two areas in particular: with “gift authors” (people who are indicated as authors, but who do not actually contribute to the work) and with “ghost authors” (people, often students or researchers in lower positions, who are not properly represented in the paper even though they make essential contributions to it). We also note the recent complaints by junior researchers about these violations, which are claimed to be harassment or bullying using power differences. Our survey of researchers in natural sciences at 15 top Japanese universities shows that, despite the different specialized fields, few researchers actually meet the gold standard of authorship criteria of proper authorship and about half think that their violation might be condoned. The data are analyzed taking into consideration a particular local context. Through the exploratory research above, we speculate that most natural science researchers in Japan may be either confused about or struggle with the situation where the strict global criteria conflict with specific local cultures that often condone gift and ghost authorships. Those who are already socialized in such local cultures take unethical authorships for granted, while others view it as an intersection of harassment and misconduct.

Scientific evaluation of the scholarly publications.

Worthiness of any scientific journal is measured by the quality of the articles published in it. The Impact factor (IF) is one popular tool which analyses the quality of journal in terms of citations received by its published articles. It is usually assumed that journals with high IF carry meaningful, prominent, and quality research. Since IF does not assess a single contribution but the whole journal, the evaluation of research authors should not be influenced by the IF of the journal. The h index, g index, m quotient, c index are some other alternatives to judge the quality of an author. These address the shortcomings of IF viz. number of citations received by an author, active years of publication, length of academic career and citations received for recent articles. Quality being the most desirable aspect for evaluating an author's work over the active research phase, various indices has attempted to accommodate different possible variables. However, each index has its own merits and demerits. We review the available indices, find the fallacies and to correct these, hereby propose the Original Research Performance Index (ORPI) for evaluation of an author's original work which can also take care of the bias arising because of self-citations, gift authorship, inactive phase of research, and length of non-productive period in research.

Undeserved authorship: too much of a good thing

In this issue, Gotto and colleagues1 invite the members of the Canadian Urological Association (CUA) to take pride in their academic productivity. Peer Reviewed Publications by CUA Members: Then and Now shows that active CUA members have maintained their research productivity over a 10-year period, when other surgical specialties have not. They also show a significant increase in the number of publications and authorships attributable to Canadian based members. A number of explanations for this increase are considered, including the higher standards set for academic appointments and the increased expectations for academic urologists to be involved in research. However, before members congratulate themselves, they should consider this: these same academic pressures also encourage author misconduct, which would present itself in an identical manner, with increased publications and authorships. In the paper, authorship is quantified as an objective data point; however, without the adoption of set criteria, authorship is subjective. The authors interpret the increase in coauthorship of CUA members as an increase in collaboration, one of the CanMEDS competencies. However, the phenomena of increased coauthorship (author inflation) in biomedical journals arose primarily as a means to survive academic medicine.2 Disturbing trends like this led to the formation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) whose goals included standardized criteria for authorship in efforts to decrease the number of “undeserved authorships.” The most common form of misconduct is “gift authorship,” when authorship is granted as a favour, usually linked with some form of reciprocity. “Pressured authorship” is when a person uses their position of authority to obtain authorship. Unfortunately, in spite of ongoing efforts, the ICMJE has had little impact.3 A critical assessment of coauthorship in a radiology journal4 found that the inclusion of undeserved authorships correlated with the number of coauthors listed, not present in papers with only 2 authors, but occurring progressively thereafter. Academic promotion was cited as the most common reason for an otherwise honest person to accept undeserved authorship. Is there any reason to think that Canadian urologists would be immune to these pressures? The ICMJE has suggested the following rules for authorship. Authorship credit should be based on:5 Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content Final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3. To encourage appropriate authorship, the Journal of Urology uses an honour system, asking all authors to sign-off on their contributions.6 Their criteria satisfy those of the ICMJE. Currently, the Canadian Urological Association Journal (CUAJ) makes reference to the ICMJE criteria, but does not enforce them. Grotto and colleagues anticipate the CUAJ becoming an increasingly popular venue for Canadian urologists to publish their research. This will happen if members view the CUAJ as a journal of high standards. Such high standards should include ensuring ethical publication. Should CUA members take pride in Grotto and colleagues’ results?1 Each member should answer that question individually by looking at their own authorships. If misconduct exists, then the next question to ask is whether they want to continue to be part of the problem, or become part of the solution. Unfortunately, as long as the academic evaluation system rewards quantity over quality, unethical conduct will be encouraged. Those who stand against it individually and say “no” to gift authorship will suffer.3 However, if as a group, the CUA advocates for more urology journals to adopt and enforce authorship criteria, starting with their own journal, and members encourage their peers to abide by these rules, then maybe over the next decade we can not only be proud of our increased collaboration, but also our professionalism.

Medical Students’ Experiences With Authorship in Biomedical Research

To explore authorship issues related to medical students' primary research projects, assess medical students' knowledge about authorship issues in biomedical research, and determine their interest in learning about authorship guidelines. In 2011, the authors developed and conducted an electronic survey of 243 U.S. medical students who attended an educational event at the National Institutes of Health as part of their funded, yearlong research fellowship programs. The authors then analyzed the results using descriptive statistics. Of 243 students, 152 (63%) responded. Most (120/151; 79%) had completed or were in the process of writing a manuscript based on their projects. Of these, most (95/119; 80%) wrote the entire manuscript independently or with guidance. Whereas almost two-thirds (99/152; 65%) indicated that expectations and criteria for authorship were clarified for them, 26% (40/152) indicated that they were not. Most students (108/118; 92%) were in the authorship position they expected and had no concerns about who the other authors were (91/119; 77%). Of those with concerns, 52% (11/21) did not raise the issue for fear of challenging their mentor. Two-thirds (95/145; 66%) never received formal training in authorship guidelines, and 41% (42/103) believed such training would be valuable. Although a majority of students had conversations about authorship and were clear about the guidelines for ethical authorship, additional work is needed. The authors recommend that academic institutions develop a menu of options for teaching students about this important area in research ethics.

Perceptions of author order versus contribution among researchers with different professional ranks and the potential of harmonic counts for encouraging ethical co-authorship practices

Current research performance assessment criteria contribute to some extent to author inflation per publication. Among various indicators for evaluating the quality of research with multiple authors, harmonic counting is relatively superior in terms of calculation, scientific ethics, and application. However, two important factors in harmonic counting are not yet clearly understood. These factors are the perceptions of scientists regarding the (1) corresponding author and (2) equally credited authors (ECAs). We carry out a survey investigation on different perceptions of author position versus contribution among medical researchers with different subfields and professional ranks in China, in order to provide several pieces of evidence on the aforementioned factors. We are surprised to find that researchers with different professional ranks tend to largely acknowledge their own contribution in collaborative research. Next, we conduct an empirical study to measure individual's citation impact using inflated counts versus harmonic counts. The results indicate that harmonic h-index cannot reflect the high peak of harmonic citations. Therefore, we use (1) harmonic R-index to differentiate authors based on the harmonic citations of each paper belonging to their respective h-cores; and (2) Normalization harmonic (h, R) index as a meaningful indicator in ranking scientists. Using a sample of 40 Ph.D. mentors in the field of cardiac and cardiovascular diseases, harmonic counts can distinguish between scientists who are often listed as major contributors and those regularly listed as co-authors. This method may also discourage unethical publication practices such as ghost authorship and gift authorship.

Authorship and Contributorship in Scholarly Journals

Authorship and Contributorship in Scholarly Journals

Authorship problems in scholarly journals: considerations for authors, peer reviewers and editors

Authorship problems in scholarly journals shake the foundations of research, diminish scientific quality of papers and devalue records of citation tracking services. The 'Publish or Perish' mantra is thought to drive some instances of unfair, honorary authorship, particularly in countries of emerging scientific power. Though causes of honorary, gift, guest and ghost authorship are still ill-defined, it is possible to avoid some of these instances by improving awareness of what constitutes authorship and by adhering to the editorial policies of learned associations. This paper overviews common cases of inappropriate authorship and suggests options to solve related problems by authors, reviewers and editors of scholarly journals.

Editorial: Further Thoughts on Authorship: Gift Authorship

Authorship is sometimes one of the most vexing ethical issues in publishing scientific articles although not a new concern. Alexander, in 1953, noted the trend in increasing numbers of authors as a result of the evolution from individual researchers to teams [1] and the complexities of establishing who should and who should not be considered an author. (A PubMed search at the time of this writing listed 778 articles with “authorship” in the title, 253 of which had been published in the past 5 years.) Several years ago Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research published an editorial, “Thoughts on Authorship,” describing recent national and international efforts to establish standards for determining authorship [3]. Part of the reason for these standards was the growing numbers of authors on most papers and the corresponding difficulty of determining the contributions of those authors. Clearly any given study and paper involves a finite amount of effort, and the larger the number of authors, the smaller percentage effort on average will be for a given author [4, 5]. However, most studies and reports likely involve substantial efforts from a few individuals with lesser contributions from others; as authors are added, at some point the effort of the additional authors will be vanishingly small or absent. The inclusion of individuals with minimal or no input reflects “loose authorship,” [2], “honorary authorship” [15], or “gift authorship” [6, 8, 11]. Marcia Angell (a former Deputy Editor of New England Journal of Medicine) in her 1983 article, “Editors and Fraud” [2], referred to “loose authorship” as a form of deception. While gift authorship is not new, it appears in the literature as a major concern only in the 1980s, perhaps owing to the continuing rise in numbers of authors and an increased sensitivity to ethical issues in publishing.

College of Business Faculty Views on Gift Authorships in Business Journals

The views of college of business faculty were sought to determine their perception on the extent of undeserved authorship in business journals and their impact on the faculty reward system. Six hundred ninety-eight faculty members responded to an electronic survey conducted through Zoomerang. A total of 80% of the respondents indicated that they had been aware of a faculty member undeservedly being carried on a published business journal article, and 58% indicated that they had collaborated with a coauthor who had performed very little work, and 18% reported working with a coauthor who had actually done no work on a published article.

Türkiye’de Psikiyatristlerin Yayın Yazarlığı ve Hediye Yazarlık Konusundaki Görüşleri

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess knowledge, views, and behaviour of psychiatrists on authorship, to determine the authorship problems experienced, and to evaluate their views on which contributions to research merit authorships and their perceptions about gift authorship and strategies for preventing it. Methods: A total of 87 academic psychiatrists and psychiatry specialists in Turkey participated in this study. A questionnaire form consisting of 36 questions, developed by the researchers and based on previous studies, was sent to all participants via e-mail. The returned forms have been evaluated for this study. Results: Gift authorship was considered unethical by all participants, and 42 (48%) of participants experienced authorship problems. Conceiving the research idea, designing the study, collecting data, providing statistical analysis, interpretation of statistical data, drafting the article or revising it critically were assumed to be enough to merit authorship. 81 (93.1%) of participants perceived gift authorship as a common problem promoted by pressure to publish and enhancing the chances of publication. The respondents suggested that requiring researchers to sign a statement justifying authorship and to specify the actual contribution of each author were effective strategies for reducing/preventing gift authorship. Conclusion: Authorship problems are common and gift authorship was perceived as unethical by academic psychiatrists and psychiatry specialists. There is a need for tight control as well as more comprehensive research studies and extensive education on authorship ethics. (Archives of Neuropsychiatry 2010; 47: 344-7)

Authorship and Medical Ghostwriting: Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Policy

Authorship of biomedical articles serves to acknowledge and credit individuals who contributed substantially to the development, writing, and editing of articles. In addition, authorship indicates who is responsible for ideas and experiments, and can be used to hold people accountable if something is disproven or shown false. Types of authorship can be divided into four primary categories: ghost authorship, guest authorship, gift authorship, and legitimate authorship. Of these four categories, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (along with other journals, the World Association of Medical Editors, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Council of Science Editors, and the Committee on Publication Ethics) affirms that only authors who meet the criteria of "legitimate authorship" as authors should be listed on an article. This article discusses what constitutes legitimate article authorship and sets forth the Journal's policy on authorship.

Interdisciplinary Approach to a Diachronic Medical Symbol of Healing

To the Editor: Scientific research involves putting forth a clear hypothesis, performing a systematic and versatile assessment of actual facts and data, and using novel ideas and integrative models for the investigation of an area of concern. Integral to the holistic view of a scientific problem is the multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary research. This is conceptualized as a collaborative effort to move scientists beyond the boundaries of their own discipline and provide an interactive perspective and innovative approach to problem-solving. Such an interdisciplinary paradigm is clearly visualized in our article investigating the evolution of an ancient and diachronic medical symbol and critically reviewing its interactions with ethical beliefs and applications in modern medicine [1]. Because of the intriguing, multifaceted, complex nature of the subject, we embarked on a collaborative interdisciplinary, intercultural process. Various scientific fields—including ancient history, theology, medicine, social science, history of social science and medicine, and the science of ethics—and researchers from the corresponding areas and from different cultural backgrounds were recruited to provide insight into the opposing meanings of a healing symbol in medical practice and their ethicosociologic perceptions. We were disappointed to encounter a letter published in the same volume as the original report that essentially rejected the interdisciplinarity of the work and blamed the authors for ‘‘gift authorship’’ [2]. We do not think that it would be prudent to comment on the content of this letter. Apart from its legal and ethical implications, it lacks any scientific merit, as it bases its arguments on groundless presumptions, with no basic research having been performed on which to base the conclusions, a process that constitutes a basic principle of scientific research. However, to avoid any misconceptions regarding the current modes of scientific research, we present a few related points after having performed a review of the literature and investigated the currently used approaches and practices. Increasing globalization, which is characterized by the communication of knowledge and exchange of information, and the current pace and complexity of science have instigated the implementation of innovative interdisciplinary methods of research. In a collaborative research process, two or more persons from different disciplines (interdisciplinary collaboration) belonging to the same (national) or different (international) countries study a problem of mutual concern. They investigate the problem systematically and ultimately achieve increased insight. In an article proposing a conceptual framework of the knowledge universe, Choi and Pak concluded that disciplines that are disparate from one another epistemologically are more likely to achieve new insight into a complex problem [3]. Interactions between researchers from different fields open up existing disciplinary barriers, provide insight into phenomena from different angles, and enhance creativity, leading to an integrated multiscience [4]. Furthermore, the interpersonal relationship of the researchers engaging in collaborative research has been found to favor interactive communication and the ability to achieve total G. A. Antoniou Vascular Institute, Northern General Hospital, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, Sheffield, UK

How many authors are needed to write a review?

[The abstract of this article is not available. Here are the first sentences of the article. The full text is freely available upon registration]We received with pleasure the letter of Prof. Manfredi, published in the present Reviews in Health Care issue (see pages 137-140), that underlines the problem of the proliferation of authors in HIV-related articles.This is not a new topic. In the last 40 years there has been a dramatic increase, not only in the volume of publications but also in the number of authors per article. However, after all these years, the discussion about authorship is still relevant and ongoing in biomedical literature. A variety of authorship standards exist; nonetheless, adoption of these criteria has not been universal and misconduct cases related to irresponsible authorship are still quite common, including ghostwriting, gift or honorary authorship, duplicate and redundant publication and, in some cases, the authors’ refusal to accept responsibility for their articles despite their ready acceptance of credit. Publication in biomedical literature is important because it is the major pathway by which new concepts and discoveries are disseminated amongst scientists, but it is also the only way for a researcher to survive in a competitive world as the biomedical field. “Publish or perish!” is the actual common saying in the biomedical research field.