Honorary Authorship Research Articles

The vexing but persistent problem of authorship misconduct in research

This paper examines authorship misconduct: practices such as gift, guest, honorary and ghost authorship (excluding plagiarism) that involve inappropriate attribution of authorship credits. Drawing on the existing literature, we describe the extent of authorship misconduct and why it presents a problem. We then construct a simple matching model of guest authorship to show how researchers can form teams (of two) where one researcher free-rides off the efforts of the other; at equilibrium, the latter is content for this free-riding to occur, rather than forming a different team involving no free-riding. We discuss how this model can be generalized to incorporate honorary and gift authorship, and why capturing ghost authorship may require significant changes to the modelling. While formal (game-theoretic) modelling of other aspects of research misconduct is prevalent in the literature, to our knowledge, ours is the first attempt to isolate the strategic interaction that leads to authorship misconduct. If authorship misconduct is a rational choice by researchers, we investigate the use of a monitoring-punishment approach to eliminate the free-riding equilibria. The possibility of monitoring is not just theoretical: we outline the recent advances in distributed ledger technology and authorship forensics that make monitoring of research workflows a viable strategy for institutions to curb authorship misconduct. One of the advantages of working with our simple model is that it provides a framework to examine the relationship between efficiency and ethics in this context, an issue that has by and large been ignored in the literature.

Authorship and Inappropriate Authorship from an Ethical Publication Perspective

저자됨은 연구 진실성과 출판 윤리적 측면에서 중요하다. 저자됨은 학문적 성취를 증명하는 신용(credit)의 주된 수단으로 저자의 출판 업적은 연구비 수혜와 학술 경력에 중요한 영향을 미친다. 복잡한 이해관계와 경쟁적인 환경 등 다양한 이유에 의해 부적절한 저자됨이 보고되었다. 대표적인 저자됨 오남용에는 명예저자됨과 유령저자됨이 있다. 친족 공저자 또한 부적절한 저자됨이며, 최근 사회적 문제로 대두된 부모 자녀간 부적절한 저자됨이 이에 포함된다. 의학잡지편집인 국제위원회(International Committee of Medical Journal Editors; ICMJE);는 저자됨의 기준을 제시했다. 저자됨의 오남용을 막고 저자의 신용과 책임 평가를 체계적으로 하기 위해 많은 저널들이 기여자 역할 분류(Contributor Roles Taxonomy; CRediT);와 Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) 체계를 사용하고 있다. 이 종설에서는 올바른 저자됨과 부적절한 저자됨에 대해 알아보고 저자됨 오남용을 피하기 위한 방법을 소개하고자 한다.

An Introduction to Honorary Authorship

An Introduction to Honorary Authorship

I, we and they: A linguistic and narrative exploration of the authorship process.

While authorship plays a powerful role in the academy, research indicates many authors engage in questionable practices like honorary authorship. This suggests that authorship may be a contested space where individuals must exercise agency-a dynamic and emergent process, embedded in context-to negotiate potentially conflicting norms among published criteria, disciplines and informal practices. This study explores how authors narrate their own and others' agency in making authorship decisions. We conducted a mixed-methods analysis of 24 first authors' accounts of authorship decisions on a recent multi-author paper. Authors included 14 females and 10 males in health professions education (HPE) from U.S. and Canadian institutions (10 assistant, 6 associate and 8 full professors). Analysis took place in three phases: (1) linguistic analysis of grammatical structures shown to be associated with agency (coding for main clause subjects and verb types); (2) narrative analysis to create a 'moral' and 'title' for each account; and (3) dialectic integration of (1) and (2). Descriptive statistics suggested that female participants used we subjects and material verbs (of doing) more than men and that full professors used relational verbs (of being and having) more than assistant and associate. Three broad types of agency were narrated: distributed (n = 15 participants), focusing on how resources and work were spread across team members; individual (n = 6), focusing on the first author's action; and collaborative (n = 3), focusing on group actions. These three types of agency contained four subtypes, e.g. supported, contested, task-based and negotiated. This study highlights the complex and emergent nature of agency narrated by authors when making authorship decisions. Published criteria offer us starting point-the stated rules of the authorship game; this paper offers us a next step-the enacted and narrated approach to the game.

Authorship decision-making in the field of orthopedic surgery and sports medicine

PurposeTo facilitate decision-making in authorship positions, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editor (ICMJE) developed a guideline that stipulates criteria authors should meet in order to merit authorship. Authors who did not meet these criteria and still enlisted as authors, are called ‘honorary’ authors. In this study, the prevalence and characteristics of honorary authorship (HA) is assessed in the field of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine. MethodsA survey was distributed among corresponding authors of articles published in 2019 in six Orthopedics-dedicated journals. Results479 of the 1392 approached authors responded, leading to a response rate of 34.4%. 91.6% of the respondents were aware of the ICMJE guidelines, whereas 67.8% were aware of the issue of HA. Overall, the prevalence of guideline-based HA was 41.9%, while the prevalence of self-perceived HA was 14.7%. Having a senior member automatically enlisted as author on the departments, was associated with a higher rate of guideline-based HA (OR 5.03) and self-perceived HA (OR 3.31). ConclusionsThe prevalence of HA in the field of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine is high, but comparable to other medical fields. Transparency in authorship decision-making is crucial to maintain liability in scientific articles.

Research trends analysis using text mining in construction management: 2000–2020

PurposeThis study aims to identify the trends that have changed in the field of construction management over the last 20 years.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, 3,335 journal articles published in the years 2000–2020 were collected from the Web of Science database in construction management. The authors applied bibliometric analysis first and then detected topics with the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic detection method.FindingsIn this context, 20 clusters from cluster analysis were found and the topics were extracted in clusters with the LDA topic detection method. The results show “building information modeling” and “information management” are the most studied subjects, even though they have emerged in the last 15 years “building information modeling,” “information management,” “scheduling and cost optimization,” “lean construction,” “agile approach” and “megaprojects” are the trend topics in the construction management literature.Research limitations/implicationsThis study uses bibliometric analysis. The authors accept that the co-citation and co-authorship relationship in the data is ethical. They accept that honorary authorship, self-citation or honorary citation do not change the pattern of the construction management research domain.Originality/valueThere has been no study conducted in the last 20 years to examine research trends in construction management. Although bibliometric analysis, systematic literature reviews and text mining methods are used separately as a methodology for extracting research trends, no study has used enhanced bibliometric analysis and the LDA topic detection text mining method.

Honorary authorship in high-impact journals in anaesthesia and pain medicine.

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.

Knowledge and Perceptions of Honorary Authorship among Health Care Researchers: Online Cross-sectional Survey Data from the Middle East.

One of the core problems of scientific research authorship is honorary authorship. It violates the ethical principle of clear and appropriate assignment of scientific research contributions. The prevalence of honorary authorship worldwide is alarmingly high across various research disciplines. As a result, many academic institutions and publishers were trying to explore ways to overcome this unethical research practice. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommended criteria for authorship as guidance for researchers submitting manuscripts to biomedical Journals. However, despite the ICMJE guidelines, honorary authorship is still significantly present across various health research disciplines. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and knowledge of health care researchers towards honorary authorship according to the ICMJE guidelines across different health care fields in Jordan, which to our knowledge was never explored before. Data from an electronic survey that was distributed among researchers working in different healthcare fields across several major universities in Jordan, revealed that most of the respondents were assistant professors working mainly in the schools of Medicine and Pharmacy. The majority of the respondents (65.5%) were not aware of the ICMJE authorship guidelines. And, around 37% reported the inclusion of an honorary author, in which the most common non-authorship task reported by 73% of the respondents was reviewing the manuscript. Our findings emphasize the need for national academic and research institutions to address the issue of authorship in their educational programs and internal policies.

Contribution based author categorization to calculate author performance index

ABSTRACT Despite the widely used author contribution criteria, unethical authorship practices such as guest, ghost, and honorary authorship remain largely unsolved. We have identified six major reasons by analyzing 78 published papers addressing unethical authorship practice. Those are lack of: (i) awareness about and (ii) compliance with authorship criteria, (iii) universal definition and scope for determining authorship, (iv) common mechanisms for positioning an author in the list, (v) quantitative measures of intellectual contribution; and (vi) pressure to publish. As a measure to control unethical practice, we have evaluated the possibility to adopt an author categorization scheme – proposed according to the common understanding of how first-, co-, principal-, or corresponding- author is perceived. Based on an online opinion survey, the scheme was supported by ~80% of the respondents (n=370). The impact of the proposed categorization was then evaluated using a novel mathematical tool to measure “Author Performance Index (API)” that can be higher for those who might have authored more papers as primary and/or principal authors than those as coauthors. Hence, if adopted, the proposed author categorization scheme together with the API would provide a better way to evaluate the credit of an individual as a primary and principal author.

Publish or be ethical? Publishing pressure and scientific misconduct in research

The paper reports two studies exploring the relationship between scholars’ self-reported publication pressure and their self-reported scientific misconduct in research. In Study 1 the participants ( N = 423) were scholars representing various disciplines from one big university in Poland. In Study 2 the participants ( N = 31) were exclusively members of the management, such as dean, director, etc. from the same university. In Study 1 the most common reported form of scientific misconduct was honorary authorship. The majority of researchers (71%) reported that they had not violated ethical standards in the past; 3% admitted to scientific misconduct; 51% reported being were aware of colleagues’ scientific misconduct. A small positive correlation between perceived publication pressure and intention to engage in scientific misconduct in the future was found. In Study 2 more than half of the management (52%) reported being aware of researchers’ dishonest practices, the most frequent one of these being honorary authorship. As many as 71% of the participants report observing publication pressure in their subordinates. The primary conclusions are: (1) most scholars are convinced of their morality and predict that they will behave morally in the future; (2) scientific misconduct, particularly minor offenses such as honorary authorship, is frequently observed both by researchers (particularly in their colleagues) and by their managers; (3) researchers experiencing publication pressure report a willingness to engage in scientific misconduct in the future.

Honorary authorship in Geriatric Literature: do authors adhere to the ICMJE-guidelines?

To protect appropriate authorship, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) formulated a guideline on authorship. Researchers not fulfilling these criteria and still enlisted as author are seen as honorary authors (HA). The objective of this study is to assess authorship decision making and the proportion of HA in journals in the field of geriatrics and gerontology. Corresponding authors of six highimpact journals in geriatrics and gerontology were sent a survey. The survey consisted of three parts: i) demographics of the respondent; ii) awareness of authorship guidelines; and iii) authorship decisions made for the paper they are authors of. Respondents were also asked if one of their coauthors does not deserve authorship. This is defined as self-perceived HA. Furthermore, respondents were asked if any of their co-authors only performed tasks from a list of non-authorship tasks. This is defined as ICMJE-defined HA. Of the 1592 contacted authors, 528 filled in a survey (response rate 33.2%). 84.4% was aware of the ICMJE-guidelines, but 44.2% was unaware of the issue of HA. The proportion of self-perceived HA was 12.7%. Independent factors associated with more self-perceived HA were having a senior member automatically enlisted as coauthor [odds ratio (OR) 3.4, 95%confidence interval (CI) 1.8 to 6.4] and have gotten the suggestion to include an HA (OR 11.1, 95% CI 4.4 to 27.9). The proportion of ICMJE defined HA was 39.3%. The journal surveyed (OR 1.2, 1.0 to 1.3) was associated with more, and awareness of the ICMJE-guidelines (OR 0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.9) was associated with less ICMJE-defined HA respectively. Having a senior member automatically enlisted as co-author (OR 2.1 95% CI 1.3 to 3.4) and having anyone suggest to include an HA (OR 4.8 95% CI 1.8 to 12.8) were also associated with more ICMJE-defined HA. More than one out of ten of the corresponding authors thinks that based on the ICMJE-guidelines, one or more of their coauthors did not deserve authorship. A stricter journal policy and more awareness of the ICMJE-guidelines could help reduce the proportion of HA.

Awareness, usage and perceptions of authorship guidelines: an international survey of biomedical authors

ObjectivesTo investigate authors’ awareness and use of authorship guidelines, and to assess their perceptions of the fairness of authorship decisions.DesignA cross-sectional online survey.Setting and participantsCorresponding authors of research papers submitted...

Arbitrage opportunities in publication and ghost authors

In some research evaluation systems, credit awarded to an article depends on the number of co-authors on the article with total credit to the article increasing with the number of co-authors. There are many examples of such evaluation systems (e.g., the United States National Research Council evaluation of graduate programs gave full credit to each co-author). Such credit systems run the risk of encouraging ghost or honorary authorships. In a recent article, Antonio Osorio and Lutz Bornmann (2019) propose a scheme to discourage ghost authorships but increase the total credit to a paper when co-authorships increase. It is shown that if articles are valued more highly as the number of co-authorships increases, then there are opportunities to increase credit by mutually agreeing to add each other as authors. Unrelated authors of unrelated papers may all benefit by expanding their co-author list. I call this phenomena arbitrage--a term borrowed from economics and finance--since the content of the articles do not change, but the value increases by moving to a "market" of more co-authors where articles are valued differently.

Honorary Authorships in the Ophthalmological Literature.

Purpose:To report the prevalence of honorary authorship (HA) among different journals in the ophthalmological literatureMethods:An online survey was conducted among corresponding authors of six journals with the highest impact factors in the ophthalmological field. The survey consists of questions regarding (1) demographics, (2) awareness of authorship guidelines, and (3) application of authorship guidelines on their current surveyed article. Furthermore, respondents were asked if they felt that according to their understanding of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJEs) guidelines, a coauthor on their current article did not deserve authorship (perceived HA). Furthermore, respondents were asked if coauthors performed solely nonauthor tasks (ICMJE-defined HA).Results:Out of the 1688 surveys sent, 333 were returned, leading to a response rate of 19.7%. Eighty-four and a half percent of all respondents were aware of the ICMJE guidelines. When deciding on order of authorship, most authors decided as a group (43.8%), followed by the senior author deciding (30.1%), and 77 articles were decided by the first author (23.4%). When asked if respondents believed that any of their coauthors did not make sufficient contributions to be included as an author, 8.8% affirmed. One hundred and thirty-one respondents stated that any of their coauthors performed only one or more nonauthor tasks, making the rate of ICMJE-defined HA 39.8%.Conclusions:HA is present throughout all journals surveyed despite endorsement of the ICMJE guidelines by these same journals. The discrepancy between self-perceived HA and ICMJE-defined HA suggests the necessity for modifications to our authorship system or a contemporary revision to the ICMJE guidelines.

Perish or Publish Dilemma: Challenges to Responsible Authorship.

Controversies related to the concept and practice of responsible authorship and its misuse have been among the most prominent issues discussed in the recent literature on research integrity. Therefore, this paper aims to address the factors that lead to two major types of unethical authorship, namely, honorary and ghost authorship. It also highlights negative consequences of authorship misuse and provides a critical analysis of different authorship guidelines, including a recent debate on the amendments of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship definition. Empirical studies revealed that honorary authorship was the most prevalent deviation from the responsible authorship standards. Three different modalities of honorary authorship were distinguished: gift authorship, guest authorship, and coercive authorship. Prevalence of authorship misuse worldwide and in Europe was alarmingly high, covering approximately one third of all scientific publications. No significant differences were reported in authorship misuse between different health research disciplines. The studies conducted in North America highlighted the most effective means to cope with unethical authorship. These were training in publishing ethics, clear authorship policies developed by medical schools, and explicit compliance with the authorship criteria required by the medical journals. In conclusion, more empirical research is needed to raise awareness of the high prevalence of authorship misuse among scientists. Research integrity training courses, including publication ethics and authorship issues should be integrated into the curricula for students and young researchers in medical schools. Last but not least, further discussion on responsible authorship criteria and practice should be initiated.

Honorary authorships in leading gynecological literature

Authorship in peer-reviewed literature is a reflection of the added role of a researcher to scientific work. Together with benefits such as increased chances for promotion and obtaining grants, aut...

Accommodating an Uninvited Guest: Perspectives of Researchers in Switzerland on 'Honorary' Authorship.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the attitudes and reactions of researchers towards an authorship claim made by a researcher in a position of authority who has not made any scientific contribution to a manuscript or helped to write it. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 33 researchers at three seniority levels working in biomedicine and the life sciences in Switzerland. This manuscript focuses on the analysis of participants' responses when presented with a vignette describing an authorship assignment dilemma within a research group. The analysis indicates that researchers use a variety of explanations and arguments to justify inclusion of what guidelines would describe as honorary or guest authorship. Fuzzy parameters such as "substantial contribution" lead to varied interpretation and consequently convenient application of authorship guidelines in practice. Factors such as the culture of the research group, the values and practice shaped by the research leaders, the hierarchy and relative (perceived) positions of power within research institutions, and the importance given to publications as the currency for academic success and growth tend to have a strong influence on authorship practice. Unjustified authorship assignment practices can be reduced to some extent by creating empowering research cultures where each researcher irrespective of his/her career stage feels empowered to confidently raise concerns without fearing adverse impact on their professional lives. However, individual researchers and research institutions currently have limited influence on established methods for evaluating academic success, which is primarily based on the number of high impact publications.

What is Authorship, and What Should it Be? A Survey of Prominent Guidelines for Determining Authorship in Scientific Publications.

Before the mid 20th century most scientific writing was solely authored (Claxton, 2005; Greene, 2007) and thus it is only relatively recently, as science has grown more complex, that the ethical and procedural issues around authorship have arisen. Fields as diverse as medicine (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 2008), mathematics (e.g., American Statistical Association, 1999), the physical sciences (e.g., American Chemical Society, 2006), and the social sciences (e.g., American Psychological Association, 2002) have, in recent years, wrestled with what constitutes authorship and how to eliminate problematic practices such as honorary authorship and ghost authorship (e.g., Anonymous, 2004; Claxton, 2005; Manton & English, 2008). As authorship is the coin of the realm in academia (Louis, Holdsworth, Anderson, & Campbell, 2008), it is an ethical issue of singular importance. The goal of this paper is to review prominent and diverse guidelines concerning scientific authorship and to attempt to synthesize existing guidelines into recommendations that represent ethical practices for ensuring credit where (and only where) credit is due.

Honorary authorship in cardiothoracic surgery

BackgroundHonorary authorship (HA) refers to enlisted authors who did not make sufficient contributions to a paper according to the guidelines, as defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). This study assessed the proportion of, and factors associated with, HA in cardiothoracic surgical literature in 2017. MethodsFive cardiothoracic surgery journals were selected based on their impact factors in 2017 for evaluation of HA. Articles were included in the analysis if there was more than 1 listed author and if there was an available E-mail address of the corresponding author. All corresponding authors received an invitation to fill out our survey regarding their paper in 2017. ResultsIn total, 1511 authors opened the invitation, resulting in a total of 590 respondents (28.9%); 77.1% of all authors were aware of the ICMJE guidelines and 47.0% were aware of the general issue of HA. A total of 367 (62.7%) authors stated that at least one of the coauthors had performed solely nonauthorship tasks, whereas 148 (25.3%) authors stated that they believed that their article contained at least one honorary author. Having a senior member who was automatically included on all submitted manuscripts and not being aware of the general issue of HA were associated with significantly greater odds of having HA. ConclusionsOur results show that, despite the high awareness of the ICMJE guidelines, there is a large discrepancy in perceived HA and guideline-based HA. The authors plead for a better understanding and implementation of the guidelines in a more transparent authorship system.

Have ignorance and abuse of authorship criteria decreased over the past 15 years?

ObjectiveA high prevalence of authorship problems can have a severe impact on the integrity of the research process. We evaluated the authorship practices of clinicians from the same university hospital...