International Committee Of Medical Journal Editors Criteria Research Articles

Compliance with best practice guidelines on publication ethics: Where does Pharmactuel stand? A case study

Background: The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are two internationally recognised organisations in the field of publication ethics. Guidelines from these two organisations were updated in 2018. Objectives: To assess the extent to which the journal Pharmactuel is compliant with the guidelines on publication ethics updated by ICMJE and COPE in 2018 and, where the journal is found  wanting, to take the necessary steps to make it compliant. Methods:  A list of updated criteria – 56 by ICMJE and 22 by COPE – was compiled. In January 2020, compliance with each of these criteria was evaluated by the editor-in-chief and validated by all six associate editors. The evaluation was followed by an action plan to improve compliance, and the evaluation was repeated in November 2020. Results: Of the 56 ICMJE criteria, Pharmactuel was fully compliant with 31 and partly compliant with 10 criteria (a compliance rate of 73%, taking the two together). The corresponding figures for the 22 COPE criteria were 17, 3, and 91%. By modifying its editorial policies, training its associate editors, and creating appropriate guidelines for its editorial board and editors, Pharmactuel achieved almost 100% compliance by the end of 2020. Conclusions: Pharmactuel has been fully compliant with ICMJE and COPE recommendations since January 2021. Minor modifications to Pharmactuel’s publication process have enabled the editorial team to ensure that the journal continues to be almost totally compliant with COPE and ICMJE guidelines and to uphold its high ethical standards.

Elucidating authorship issues as an element of research quality at Thailand’s National Science and Technology Development Agency

Authorship in a scientific publication is an indicator of significant intellectual contribution in scientific work. Regardless of the discipline, it is important for research-related personnel to receive credit and take responsibility for their publications. There are currently several systems of listing authorship that arise from many factors such as research complexity, pressure to obtain funding, hierarchical structure, and promotion. Some of these may unfortunately lead to authorship abuse. Raising awareness and understanding of authorship guidelines can help prevent abuses and disputes. National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) is a national research agency of Thailand with about 2 000 research staff members. The research emphasis of the agency is mainly technology development for application in broad areas, ranging from engineering to medicine, including forensic science. We conducted a survey to identify the level of awareness of NSTDA research staff and their authorship practices. A questionnaire was designed based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines and used to survey 15% of randomly selected NSTDA research staff. Nearly 90% of them responded to the interview. Among the respondents, 60% were not sure about authorship criteria. When presented with the ICMJE criteria, more than 90% agreed with the criteria except for the third one, approval of the final manuscript before submission, 33% of respondents thought that authors are only responsible for their particular contribution. However, nearly 80% agreed that every author is responsible for the integrity of the whole manuscript. These results offered an important foundation for forming a strategy to raise awareness about authorship in NSTDA. Following survey analysis, we organized several seminars and developed learning materials and an authorship guideline to increase the level of awareness of authorship for researchers.

Honorific authorship and approval of the ICMJE criteria: A survey with a convenience sample

AbstractA 10‐question survey was distributed by email to 382 academic professionals involved in biomedical research in order to evaluate their experience with honorific authorship, author displacement, and the perceived validity of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) requirements. 104 (27%) responded to the survey collected without identifiers. 92% (95/104) were physicians, and 75% (78/104) reported ≥11 publications as co‐authors. 68% (69/101) thought honorific authorship was commonly (>20% of the publications) practiced in their workplace and/or research environment. Honorific authorship was perceived as commonly awarded to superiors by 63% (65/104) and to peers by 50% (51/103). Only 36% (37/104) reported rarely (≤5 of the publications) or never being a co‐author in a manuscript in which honorific authorship was awarded. 33% (34/103) reported that they commonly experienced co‐authors being displaced from their appropriate rank in the sequence of authors due to honorific authorship. Only 31% (32/104) condemned honorific authorship and only 36% (37/104) agreed all four authorship criteria set by the ICMJE should be complied with. Those who condemned honorific authorship more commonly accepted complying with all four ICMJE criteria (18/32 vs. 19/72; p = 0.004). Increasing experience with author displacement was not associated with the condemnation of honorific authorship (p = 0.35).

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...

Understanding of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Authorship Criteria Among Faculty Members of Pharmacy and Other Health Sciences in Jordan.

Authorship represents a critical element of scientific research. This study evaluated the perceptions, attitudes, and practices of Jordanian researchers toward the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria. An anonymous questionnaire was distributed to health sciences faculty ( n = 986), with 272 participants completing the questionnaire. Only 27.2% reported awareness of ICMJE guidelines, yet, 76.8% agreed that all ICMJE criteria must be met for authorship, and 55.9% believed that it is easy to apply the guidelines. Unethical authorship practices were reported by 16.5% to 31.3% of participants. A majority (73%) agreed that violation of authorship criteria is scientific misconduct. Well-defined criteria for authorship need to be disseminated and emphasized in less developed countries through training to avoid authorship disputes and unethical conduct.

Publication practices and standards: recommendations from GSK Vaccines' author survey.

BackgroundEvolving standards of good publication practice (GPP) and a survey conducted in 2009 of authors, who were investigators and researchers not employed by the company prompted changes to GSK Vaccines’ publication practices. We conducted a follow-up survey in 2012 to assess the company’s revised practices and to evaluate understanding of GPP among investigators and researchers who had previously authored at least one publication in collaboration with GSK Vaccines.MethodsThe 50-question web-based survey addressed authoring practices and transparency of decision-making. Investigators and researchers (n = 1,273) who had authored at least one publication reporting on GSK Vaccines-sponsored human research since 2007, were invited to participate. Responses to 37 closed questions are presented. The remaining 13 questions were open-ended or did not concern publication practices.ResultsA total of 415 external authors (32.6%) responded. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria were clear to most respondents (78.1%); 7.7% found they were unclear. The majority of participants (86.8%) found GSK Vaccines’ authorship questionnaire a suitable tool to assess eligibility for authorship as per the ICMJE criteria. However, only 68.5% felt that the outcome of the questionnaire is communicated appropriately and 58.3% felt well informed on changes in authorship. Nearly two-thirds (62.9%) of respondents felt that having a pharmaceutical company employee as lead author makes manuscript acceptance less likely. Access to relevant data was regarded as sufficient by 78.5% of respondents. Briefing meetings before publication start, publication steering committees and core writing teams were recognized as valuable publication practices. Professional medical writing support was seen as adding value to publication development by 87.7% of participants. Most respondents agreed that manuscript discussions should start early, with 81.7% stating that they were in favor of introducing a formalized ‘author agreement’ at the publication start.ConclusionsGSK Vaccines made changes to its publication practices to ensure improved transparency and better involvement of external authors. The results of this survey suggest that these changes have been effective to a large extent. They confirm the need for effective and timely communication, as well as transparent processes for authorship and decision-making during publication development. The identified gaps in GPP will help to guide further improvements to the company’s policies on publication practices.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1745-6215-15-446) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Why do you think you should be the author on this manuscript? Analysis of open-ended responses of authors in a general medical journal

BackgroundTo assess how authors would describe their contribution to the submitted manuscript without reference to or requirement to satisfy authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), we analyzed responses of authors to an open-ended question “Why do you think you should be the author on this manuscript?”.MethodsResponses of authors (n=1425) who submitted their manuscripts (n=345) to the Croatian Medical Journal, an international general medical journal, from March 2009 until July 2010 were transcribed and matched to ICMJE criteria. Statements that could not be matched were separately categorized. Responses according to the number of authors or their byline position on the manuscript were analyzed using Mann–Whitney U test and Moses test of extreme reactions.ResultsThe number of authors per manuscript ranged from 1 to 26 (median=4, IQR=3-6), with the median of 2 contributions per author (IQR=2-3). Authors’ responses could be matched to the ICMJE criteria in 1116 (87.0%) cases. Among these, only 15.6% clearly declared contributions from all 3 ICMJE criteria; however, if signing of the authorship form was taken as the fulfillment of the third ICMJE criterion, overall fraction of deserving authorship was 54.2%. Non-ICMJE contributions were declared by 98 (7.6%) authors whose other contributions could be matched to ICMJE criteria, and by 116 (13.0%) authors whose contributions could not be matched to ICMJE criteria. The most frequently reported non-ICMJE contribution was literature review. Authors on manuscripts with more than 8 authors declared more contributions than those on manuscript with 8 or fewer authors: median 2, IQR 1–4, vs. median 2, IQR 1–3, respectively (Mann Whitney U test, p=0.001; Moses Test of Extreme Reactions, p<0.001). Almost a third of single authors (n=9; 31.0%) reported contributions that could not be matched to any ICMJE criterion.ConclusionsIn cases of multi-author collaborative efforts but not in manuscripts with fewer authors open-ended authorship declaration without instructions on ICMJE criteria elicited responses from authors that were similar to responses when ICMJE criteria were explicitly required. Current authorship criteria and the practice of contribution declaration should be revised in order to capture deserving authorship in biomedical research.

Analysis of Authorship Criteria in Articles Published in the Revista Argentina de Cardiología

The increasing number of authors per article might be due, to a certain extent, to less strict criteria for authorship. The goal of this study was to know the authorship criteria used to be included as authors of the articles published. A survey was administered to the authors who have published articles in the Rev Argent Cardiol during 2010. The authors were asked to indicate the authorship criteria used. The information was analyzed comparing the criteria used by the authors with those recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). A total of 214 authors were surveyed. According to the ICMJE criteria, 26.6% qualified as “justified authorship”, 40.7% as “partial authorship” and 32.7% as “unjustified authorship”. The average number of authors per article was 7.1±2.60; if only justified authorship was considered, this number might fall to 1.9±1.16, increasing to 4.8±2.55 (p <0.0001) when partial authorship was included. In conclusion, in the Rev Argent Cardiol unjustified authorship rather than contribution of multiple investigators might explain the increasing number of authors per article in the last years. Even when the criteria of partial authorship were applied, only 67% of authors could justify their authorship. Authors, editors and readers should adopt a more critical attitude towards authorship credit based on strict rules; in addition, the role of contributors should be better appreciated.

Views on Authorship: Survey Among Academic Staffs of the Korean Radiologists

Purpose: The purpose of my survey is to assess the knowledge and views of the academic staff on authorship criteria. Materials and Methods: 363 academic staff were invited to fill out the survey via e-mail and the responses were collected for two weeks. A one-page questionnaire was prepared and it included 19 questions with three major groups. The first group of questions was demographic information including the responder's age, sex and academic position. The second group of questions was focused on the individual perception and personal experience for authorship on their publications. The last group of questions included awareness and views of authorship criteria established by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The responders were grouped according to age, sex and grade. To examine the difference of responses among each group, a Chi square test for categorical variables was performed. Results: The overall response rate to the survey was 39.2% (113/288) and 20.7% (75/363) of e-mail address were undeliverable. The grade of respondents is relatively evenly distributed from fellowship (20%) to professor (22%). Most of the respondents (90.6%) had experienced difficulties with authorship. Although 72.2% of respondents had no awareness of ICMJE's criteria, they agreed with criteria fully (56.1%) and partially (42.4%). 42% of respondents expected that more than 50% of the authors per paper didn’t fulfill the authorship criteria. Less than 5 authors per paper were adequate (96%). Most of respondents thought that the introduction of a contribution listing to the Journal of the Korean radiological society is necessary (93.5%) but it is not urgently needed (59.0%). Conclusion: I can see that there are authorship problems among the academic members of Korean radiological society. It is necessary to educate the members and to have them justify the validity of their authorship claims.

What are the factors determining authorship and the order of the authors' names? A study among authors of the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (Dutch Journal of Medicine).

Although criteria justifying authorship of scientific medical articles have been formulated, it is not well known how authorship is established in practice. To assess the criteria for authorship used by authors of original articles in Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (NTVG, the Dutch Journal of Medicine), and to determine whether the criteria for authorship of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are known and applied. Survey questionnaire. Editorial office of the NTVG. All 450 authors of 115 original articles published in 1995. Author's contribution to study design, material, collection of data, statistics, and writing. Of 362 forms returned, 352 could be analyzed (78.2% response rate). The 5 questions most frequently answered affirmatively were ICMJE criteria: critical reading (86.1 % of the authors), approval of the final version (84.7%), study design (74.7%), study conception (64.2%), and revision (63.4%). Authors rated their contribution 2 points higher than did their coauthors. Interestingly, 64% of the respondents met the ICMJE criteria, although 60% of the respondents did not know them. Authorship was mostly in accordance with ICMJE criteria although many authors were not familiar with them.