Honorary Authorship Research Articles

Honorary authorship: Unethical; however, does it harm science?

Honorary authorship: Unethical; however, does it harm science?

Honorary authorship is highly prevalent in health sciences: systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey research was conducted to estimate honorary authorship prevalence in health sciences. We searched PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. until January 5 2023. Methodological quality was assessed and quantitative syntheses were conducted. Nineteen surveys were included and rated as having low methodological quality. We found a pooled prevalence of 26% [95% CI 21-31] (6 surveys, 2758 respondents) of researchers that perceived co-author(s) as honorary on the publication at issue (when they were not referred to any authorship criteria). That prevalence was 18% [95% CI 15-21] (11 surveys, 4272 respondents) when researchers were referred to Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, and 51% [95% CI 47-56] (15 surveys, 5111 respondents) when researchers were asked to declare their co-author(s) contributions on the publication at issue (and these were then compared to ICMJE criteria). 10% of researchers [95% CI 9-12] (11 surveys, 3,663 respondents) reported being approached by others to include honorary author(s) on the publication at issue and 16% [95% CI 13-18] (2 surveys, 823 respondents) admitted adding (an) honorary author(s). Survey research consistently indicates that honorary authorship in the health sciences is highly prevalent, however the quality of the surveys' methods and reporting needs improvement.

Integrity of Clinical Neuroradiological Research.

It is unclear if undesired practices such as scientific fraud, publication bias, and honorary authorship are present in neuroradiology. Therefore, the objective was to explore the integrity of clinical neuroradiological research using a survey method. Corresponding authors who published in one of four top clinical neuroradiology journals were invited to complete asurvey about integrity in clinical neuroradiology research. A total of 232 corresponding authors participated in our survey. Confidence in the integrity of published scientific work in clinical neuroradiology (0-10point scale) was rated as amedian score of 8 (range 3-10). In linear regression analysis, respondents from Asia had significantly higher confidence (beta coefficient of 0.569, 95% confidence interval, CI: 0.049-1.088, P = 0.032). Of the respondents 8(3.4%) reported to have committed scientific fraud in the past 5years, whereas 66respondents (28.4%) reported to have witnessed or suspected scientific fraud by anyone from their department in the past 5years. A total of 192 respondents (82.8%) thought that astudy with positive results is more likely to be accepted by ajournal than asimilar study with negative results and 96respondents (41.4%) had an honorary author on any of their publications in the past 5years. Experts in the field have overall high confidence in published clinical neuroradiology research; however, scientific integrity concerns are not negligible, publication bias is aproblem and honorary authorship is common. The findings from this survey may help to increase awareness and vigilance among anyone involved in clinical neuroradiological research.

Bibliometric Analysis: Six Decades of Scientific Production from a Nationwide Institution: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) from Mexico.

This study employed bibliometric analysis to ascertain the research focus areas among a group of Mexican physicians affiliated with the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE). ISSSTE, a healthcare institution catering to a diverse range of diseases, offers a distinctive perspective on the investigated specialties within the realm of health. The primary objective was to identify knowledge gaps in medical care disciplines through a comprehensive examination of scholarly publications. We retrieved Scopus papers affiliated with "ISSSTE" and saved them as .CSV files. Subsequently, we employed VOSviewer, biblioshiny, and bibliometrix for bibliometric analysis. This enabled us to identify prominent institutions, prolific authors, highly cited researchers, and their respective affiliations. Our analysis identified 2063 publications; the specialty internal medicine accounted for the greatest proportion with 831 publications. Original papers accounted for 82% of the total, with 52% of them being written in Spanish. The majority of scientific output, 92%, originated from Mexico City. The annual production has steadily increased since 2010, peaking in 2021 with over 200 publications. However, papers on prevalent conditions, such as metabolic syndrome, received limited citations, and the L0 index (percentage of uncited items) for all papers is close to 60%. Scopus mislabeled one affiliation, and some cases show a low paper-to-author ratio of 0.5 Discussion: Additional concerns, such as honorary authorship due to excessive authors per paper, and the underlying causes of low citation rates in Mexican publications, warrant further examination. Moreover, our research emphasizes the urgency of bolstering research and development funding, which was consistently below 0.5% of GDP for the past four decades, falling short of legal mandates and international benchmarks. We endorse the establishment of robust research collectives in Latin America to address these challenges, foster regional scientific output, and transition from knowledge consumers to knowledge producers, thereby reducing dependence on foreign technology.

Demonstrating causality, bestowing honours, and contributing to the arms race: Threats to the sustainability of HPE research.

As the field of health professions education (HPE) continues to evolve, it is necessary to occasionally pause and reflect on the potential effects and outcomes of our research practices. While future-casting does not guarantee that impending negative consequences will be evaded, the exercise can help us avoid pitfalls. In this paper, we reflect on two terms that have taken hold as powerful idols in HPE research that stand above questioning and apart from critique: patient outcomes and productivity. We argue that these terms, and the ways of thinking they uphold, threaten the sustainability of HPE research-one at the level of the community and one at the level of the scholar. First, we suggest that HPE research's history of endorsing a linear and causal association ethos has driven its quest to connect education to patient outcomes. To ensure the sustainability of HPE scholarship, we must deconstruct and disempower patient outcomes as one of HPE's god-terms, as the pinnacle goal of educational activities. To be sustained, HPE research needs to value all of its contributions equally. A second god-term is productivity; it impairs the sustainability of the careers of individual researchers. Problems of honorary authorship, research output expectations, and comparisons with other fields have constructed a space where only scholars with sufficient privilege can prevail. If productivity persists as a god-term, the field of HPE research could decay into a space where new scholars are silenced-not because they fail to make important contributions, but because access is restricted by existing research metrics. These are two of many god-terms threatening the sustainability of HPE research. By highlighting patient outcomes and productivity and by acknowledging our own participation in propagating them, we hope to encourage others to recognize how our collective choices threaten the sustainability of our field.

Frequency of questionable research practices in the domain of medical writing among the various health professionals of Pakistan

Background and Aim: The vibrant cases of scientific misconducts have gained a significant attention in the recent times; however less obviously questionable research practices (QRPs) might be more ubiquitous and can thus ultimately severely affect the academic originality. The present study aimed to explore the frequency of questionable research practices among the doctors and dentists of Pakistan. Materials & Methods: The current study was a descriptive-analytical cross-sectional one which included 108 doctors and dentists of different Medical and Dental Colleges of Lahore, Pakistan. All the participants were selected from academia; were briefly explained about the purpose of the study and finally informed consent was obtained prior to their incorporation in the study. The subjects included in the study were questioned about QRPs. The questionnaire included the following questions: 1) Refusal of research data sharing with legitimate authors? 2) Any author addition to research without their contribution? 3) Any honorary authorship claimed without contribution to research? 4) Have you eliminated someone who justified their contribution? 5) Have you submitted any publication data without the consent of other authors? 6) Any research paper submitted to more than one journal at a time?

Should authorship on scientific publications be treated as a right?

Sometimes researchers explicitly or implicitly conceive of authorship in terms of moral or ethical rights to authorship when they are dealing with authorship issues. Because treating authorship as a right...

Integrity in cardiovascular imaging research

ObjectiveTo gain more insight in scientific integrity in the field of cardiovascular imaging research by conducting a survey among all corresponding authors who published in cardiovascular imaging journals. MethodsCorresponding authors who published in one of eight major cardiovascular imaging journals in 2021 were requested to complete a questionnaire about scientific integrity in the field of cardiovascular imaging. ResultsResponses from 160 corresponding authors were received. The majority of respondents had a medical doctor degree (81.1%), held an academic position (93.8%, of which 44.0% as full professor), and had >10 years of research experience (72.5%). Overall confidence in the integrity of published scientific work in cardiovascular imaging was high, with a median score of 8 out of 10 (IQR 2). 5 respondents (3.1%) declared having committed scientific fraud in the past 5 years and 38 respondents (23.8%) declared having witnessed or suspected scientific fraud by anyone from their department in the past 5 years. 85.6% of respondents think that publication bias is present. 50% of respondents declared that any of their publications in the past 5 years had a co-author who actually did not deserve this co-authorship. ConclusionExperts in the field report that several forms of scientific fraud, publication bias, and honorary authorship are present in cardiovascular imaging research. Despite these reports of academic dishonesty, overall confidence in the integrity of cardiovascular imaging research is deemed high.

Quid Pro Quo Authorship: Characteristics and Implications

Quid pro quo authorship (QPQ) is a type of gift authorship in which authorship credit is exchanged in a mutually beneficial agreement. Such practices are considered to be unethical, but incentives to publish can nonetheless make QPQ appealing. Terminology to describe the QPQ phenomenon can differ across scholarly communities, making a thorough analysis of the attention to QPQ difficult. This article uses content analysis to conduct an in-depth examination of a corpus of scholarly literature on QPQ. This research seeks to ascertain information about the nature of QPQ and how it is perceived relative to other types of unethical authorship practices. Results support three defining characteristics of QPQ: mutual awareness, mutual agreement, and mutual benefit. Content analysis reveals two forms of QPQ: authorship-for-goods and authorship-for-authorship. Findings reinforce the notion that QPQ is a distinct form of gift authorship that is related to coercion authorship and honorary authorship. Implications for the scientific enterprise, academia, and society are presented, since as with other forms of gift authorship, QPQ falsifies the scholarly record. Finally, suggestions for future directions such as education for researchers are presented.

Description of Author Contributions while Submitting a Manuscript: The CREDIT System

Introduction: The scientific community is increasingly discussing issues of publication ethics, the key of which is the objective description of the author's contribution to the creation of an article manuscript. The existence of a universal system for describing author contributions will avoid cases of honorary and ghost authorship, transparently illuminating the depth of each author's involvement in the work on the manuscript based on the results of the conducted research.Description of the CREDIT system: Academic tradition dictates the need for each author of an article to participate directly in the creation of its manuscript. The manuscript is a consequence of the conducted research, which requires the active involvement of its actors and a high level of development of their research competence. Hence, the contribution to the authorship of the article is determined not only by participation in the creation of its manuscript, but also by the overall involvement of the research participant in its implementation. The CREDIT authorship model allows for the objective recording of the research energy of each specific actor of the research project, for the balanced formation of research teams. The CRediT taxonomy describes all possible author roles: some of them are independent, and some can only act in pair with a more "strong" role.Conclusion: A detailed description of the taxonomy and protocol for registering author contributions will allow authors to declare the degree of their own involvement quickly and transparently in the research and record its results.

Commentary] Honorary Authorship in Biomedical Journals: The Endless Story

Honorary authorship is when a scientist has been listed as a co-author without significant contribution to the manuscript. Although unethical, honorary authorship is on the rise. The motive behind it is different for scientists at different stages of their career. It helps juniors to get more publications and thereby have faster promotions and probably better employment opportunities. For scientists more advanced in their careers, it helps getting more scientific recognition and possible financial gains. Honorary authorship is not without disadvantages. It is probably held responsible for the over inflation in the number of authors per article in different publications. On the individual level, it dilutes the contribution of each author and may ruin the reputation of an honorary author if the data integrity were found questionable after publication.

Review of: "Honorary Authorship in Biomedical Journals: The Endless Story"

Review of: "Honorary Authorship in Biomedical Journals: The Endless Story"

Scientific integrity and fraud in radiology research

PurposeTo investigate the view of radiologists on the integrity of their own and their colleagues’ scientific work. Materials and methodsCorresponding authors of articles that were published in 12 general radiology journals in 2021 were invited to participate in a survey on scientific integrity. ResultsA total of 219 (6.2 %) of 3,511 invited corresponding authors participated. Thirteen (5.9 %) respondents reported having committed scientific fraud, and 60 (27.4 %) witnessed or suspect scientific fraud among their departmental members in the past 5 years. Misleading reporting (32.2 %), duplicate/redundant publication (26.3 %), plagiarism (15.3 %), and data manipulation/falsification (13.6 %) were the most commonly reported types of scientific fraud. Publication bias exists according to 184 (84.5 %) respondents, and 89 (40.6 %) respondents had honorary authors on their publications in the past 5 years. General confidence in the integrity of scientific publications ranged between 2 and 10 (median: 8) on a 0–10 point scale. Common topics of interest and concern among respondents were authorship criteria and assignments, perverse incentives (including the influence of money, funding, and academic promotions on the practice of research), and poorly performed research without intentional fraud. ConclusionRadiology researchers reported that scientific fraud and other undesirable practices such as publication bias and honorary authorship are relatively common. Their general confidence in the scientific integrity of published work was relatively high, but far from perfect. These data may trigger stakeholders in the radiology community to place scientific integrity higher on the agenda, and to initiate cultural and policy reforms to remove perverse research incentives.

Questionable Research Practices Among Dentists

Objective: The objective of the study is to explore the frequency of mal-practicing in terms of giving and accepting honorary authorships among dentists in private dental colleges of Lahore Method: This descriptive crossectional study was conducted to collect data from dentists working in private dental colleges of Lahore regarding plagiarism practices. Three private dental colleges were targeted from where data of 95 dentists was obtained. Data was collected using questionnaire to assess the questionable research practices. Results: Refusal on data sharing with legitimate colleagues was never practiced by majority of participants (46.1%). Addition of author(s) to a research paper who have not contributed in study was sometimes practiced by majority of participants (27.9%). Majority of participants reported that they occasionally accept honorary authorship for which you did not qualify (26.26%). Majority of participants reported that they never demanded any honorary authorship (48.41%). Refusal to give authorship to the person who had worked in the study was never practiced by majority of participants (62.11%). Majority of participants reported that they never submission without taking consent from other authors of a manuscript or grant application (65.26%). Majority of the participants reported that they never do a submission of single manuscript to more than one journals at one time (56.84%). Conclusion: Among dentist, mal-practicing in terms of collaboration and authorship is quite low as compared to in other health professional education as per literature. Keywords: Dental education, Ethical policies, Honorary authorships

Scientific Fraud, Publication Bias, and Honorary Authorship in Nuclear Medicine.

Our objective was to investigate nuclear medicine scientists' experience with scientific fraud, publication bias, and honorary authorship. Methods: Corresponding authors who published an article in one of the 15 general nuclear medicine journals (according to Journal Citation Reports) in 2021 received an invitation to participate in a survey on scientific integrity. Results: In total, 254 (12.4%) of 1,897 corresponding authors completed the survey, of whom 11 (4.3%) admitted to having committed scientific fraud and 54 (21.3%) reported having witnessed or suspected scientific fraud by someone in their department in the past 5 y. Publication bias was considered present by 222 (87.4%) respondents, and honorary authorship practices were experienced by 100 (39.4%) respondents. Respondents assigned a median score of 8 (range, 2-10) on a 1- to 10-point scale for their overall confidence in the integrity of published work. On multivariate analysis, researchers in Asia had significantly more confidence in the integrity of published work, with a β-coefficient of 0.983 (95% CI, 0.512-1.454; P < 0.001). A subset of 22 respondents raised additional concerns, mainly about authorship criteria and assignments, the generally poor quality of published studies, and perverse incentives of journals and publishers. Conclusion: Scientific fraud, publication bias, and honorary authorship appear to be nonnegligible practices in nuclear medicine. Overall confidence in the integrity of published work is high, particularly among researchers in Asia.

How Early-Career and Experienced Researchers Construe Academic Wrongdoings: A Repertory Grid Study

The present paper investigates how early-career and experienced researchers construe or mentally represent academic wrongdoings. Particularly, early-career researchers are believed to be at risk of committing academic wrongdoings and have a crucial role in forming future research environments. Instead of employing self-reported survey data, a cognitive mapping methodology called the repertory grid technique (RGT) (Kelly, 1955) is applied to dig further into the underlying phenomena. Academic research integrity is a topic where clear definitions of safe behavior and misbehavior, the latter especially covering Questionable Researched Practices (QRPs) are lacking. This lack of clarity leads to misunderstandings amongst researchers about what is (not) allowed. Hence the need for studies exploring researchers’ real construal or mental models of academic wrongdoings. 63 researchers (early-career and experienced researchers) from major Belgian universities were interviewed using the repertory grid technique. Results indicate that there is a shift going on in researchers’ perception of QRPs. Both early-career and experienced researchers consider honorary authorship, duplicate publication, failing to present data that contradicts one’s research, and overlooking others’ misbehaviors not as really “damaging“ academic wrongdoings. Especially early-career researchers construed honorary authorship and overlooking others’ misbehaviors as innocent. These misbehaviors tend to be considered ‘normal misbehavior’ which might undermine academic integrity and the trust in academic research. Knowing what is considered as ‘normal misbehavior’ is pertinent with a view to fostering research integrity. Hence this study is helpful for defining academic integrity enablers. Practical suggestions are given to remove the laxity about ‘normal misbehavior’.

An Ethical Exploration of IncreasedAverage Number of Authors Per Publication.

This article explores the impact of an Increase in the average Number of Authors per Publication (INAP) on known ethical issues of authorship. For this purpose, the ten most common ethical issues associated with scholarly authorship are used to set up a taxonomy of existing issues and raise awareness among the community to take precautionary measures and adopt best practices to minimize the negative impact of INAP. We confirm that intense international, interdisciplinary and complex collaborations are necessary, and INAP is an expression of this trend. However, perverse incentives aimed to increase institutional and personal publication counts and egregious instances of guest or honorary authorship are problematic. We argue that whether INAP is due to increased complexity and scale of science, perverse incentives or undeserved authorship, it could negatively affect known ethical issues of authorship at some level. In the long run, INAP depreciates the value of authorship status and may disproportionately impact junior researchers and those who contribute to technical and routine tasks. We provide two suggestions that could reduce the long-term impact of INAP on the reward system of science. First, we suggest further refinement of the CRediT taxonomy including better integration into current systems of attribution and acknowledgement, and better harmony with major authorship guidelines such as those suggested by the ICMJE. Second, we propose adjustments to the academic recognition and promotion systems at an institutional level as well as the introduction of best practices.

And the credit goes to … - Ghost and honorary authorship among social scientists.

The proliferation of team-authored academic work has led to the proliferation of two kinds of authorship misconduct: ghost authorship, in which contributors are not listed as authors and honorary authorship, in which non-contributors are listed as authors. Drawing on data from a survey of 2,222 social scientists from around the globe, we study the prevalence of authorship misconduct in the social sciences. Our results show that ghost and honorary authorship occur frequently here and may be driven by social scientists' misconceptions about authorship criteria. Our results show that they frequently deviate from a common point of authorship reference (the ICMJE authorship criteria). On the one hand, they tend to award authorship more broadly to more junior scholars, while on the other hand, they may withhold authorship from senior scholars if those are engaged in collaborations with junior scholars. Authorship misattribution, even if it is based on a misunderstanding of authorship criteria rather than egregious misconduct, alters academic rankings and may constitute a threat to the integrity of science. Based on our findings, we call for journals to implement contribution disclosures and to define authorship criteria more explicitly to guide and inform researchers as to what constitutes authorship in the social sciences. Our results also hold implications for research institutions, universities, and publishers to move beyond authorship-based citation and publication rankings in hiring and tenure processes and instead to focus explicitly on contributions in team-authored publications.

Honorary authorship in health sciences: a protocol for a systematic review of survey research

BackgroundHonorary authorship refers to the practice of naming an individual who has made little or no contribution to a publication as an author. Honorary authorship inflates the output estimates of honorary authors and deflates the value of the work by authors who truly merit authorship. This manuscript presents the protocol for a systematic review that will assess the prevalence of five honorary authorship issues in health sciences.MethodsSurveys of authors of scientific publications in health sciences that assess prevalence estimates will be eligible. No selection criteria will be set for the time point for measuring outcomes, the setting, the language of the publication, and the publication status. Eligible manuscripts are searched from inception onwards in PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. Two calibrated authors will independently search, determine eligibility of manuscripts, and conduct data extraction. The quality of each review outcome for each eligible manuscript will be assessed with a 14-item checklist developed and piloted for this review. Data will be qualitatively synthesized and quantitative syntheses will be performed where feasible. Criteria for precluding quantitative syntheses were defined a priori. The pooled random effects double arcsine transformed summary event rates of five outcomes on honorary authorship issues with the pertinent 95% confidence intervals will be calculated if these criteria are met. Summary estimates will be displayed after back-transformation. Stata software (Stata Corporation, College Station, TX, USA) version 16 will be used for all statistical analyses. Statistical heterogeneity will be assessed using Tau2 and Chi2 tests and I2 to quantify inconsistency.DiscussionThe outcomes of the planned systematic review will give insights in the magnitude of honorary authorship in health sciences and could direct new research studies to develop and implement strategies to address this problem. However, the validity of the outcomes could be influenced by low response rates, inadequate research design, weighting issues, and recall bias in the eligible surveys.Systematic review registrationThis protocol was registered a priori in the Open Science Framework (OSF) link: https://osf.io/5nvar/.

Ghost and Honorary Authorship in Ophthalmology: A Cross-Sectional Survey

To evaluate the rates of ghost and honorary authorship in ophthalmology and to determine risk factors associated with ghost and honorary authorship. Cross-sectional survey. Corresponding authors of articles published in Ophthalmology, JAMA Ophthalmology, and the American Journal of Ophthalmology from June 2019 to December 2020 were emailed an electronic survey. The rates of ghost and honorary authorship, demographic characteristics of the corresponding authors with and without ghost and honorary authorship, and risk factors for ghost and honorary authorship were evaluated. Corresponding authors (n=830) were emailed a survey and 278 total responses (34.1%) were received; 227 responses (27.9%) were complete and included for analysis. Most respondents (n=206, 90.7%) believed that the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines for authorship adequately address criteria for authorship. Twenty-seven corresponding authors (11.9%) reported characteristics of their articles that indicated the presence of both ghost and honorary authorship (95% CI, 7.7%-16.1%). One hundred fifteen (50.7%) reported honorary authorship (44.2%-57.2%), and 37 (16.3%) indicated ghost authorship (11.5%-21.1%). Being a resident or fellow corresponding author increased the risk of honorary authorship (OR 11.75; 1.91-231.57; P=.03). There were no factors that predicted articles having ghost authors. While many authors believe the ICMJE guidelines for authorship comprehensively delineate fair authorship practices, listing authors on scientific publications honorarily and excluding authors who qualify for authorship are relatively common practices in ophthalmological research. Further investigation into the drivers of honorary and ghost authorship practices in ophthalmology, and the effectiveness of preventive measures are needed to ensure fair authorship attributions.