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Abstract
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"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there."
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)
Deciding who should be included in the authorship of a paper is a process that is often fraught with problems and determining an individual's exact contribution and/or placement in a group of collaborating authors may engender quite intense debate. This is particularly so for significant research where funding may be an issue. In addition, in recent years there appears to have been a decrease in the number of single author papers with an increase in the number of authors who are being listed as contributors [1]. MacFarlane showed that the percentage of multi author papers had increased from 3/24 (12.5%) to 83/126 (65.9%) between 1976 and 2014 [2]. While this may in part reflect the need for collaboration to address major scientific questions, it is now common for even simple case reports to have 10 or more contributing authors. A concerning fact that has been identified by publishers and passed on to editors is the adding of additional authors in the proof stage, sometimes for financial reasons. It is also recognized that young, early career researchers are sometimes strongly pressured into adding senior people who are not directly involved in their research, such as the head of department or research laboratory, onto their publications. This has been the unfortunate personal experience of both of the authors and has been referred to as "publication parasitism" [3]. It may also be extraordinarily difficult in papers with large numbers of authors from multiple institutions for the lead authors to keep track of the source and relative significance of the contributions. In one case of multiple authorship known to the authors, several of the contributors had not actually heard of one of the authors who it transpired had passed away several years before the paper had been written.
Fortunately to assist researchers and writers with this process there are clearly published guidelines available. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends that authorship should be based on...
Language: en |