Conceived and designed the experiments: AM. Performed the experiments: AM LB AJ. Analyzed the data: AM LB AJ. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AM LB AJ. Wrote the paper: AM. Critical revision of the manuscript: LB AJ.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The purpose of this systematic review was to evaluate evidence about authorship issues and provide synthesis of research on authorship across all research fields.
We searched bibliographical databases to identify articles describing empirical quantitive or qualitative research from all scholarly fields on different aspects of authorship. Search was limited to original articles and reviews.
The final sample consisted of 123 articles reporting results from 118 studies. Most studies came for biomedical and health research fields and social sciences. Study design was usually a survey (53%) or descriptive study (27%); only 2 studies used randomized design. We identified four 4 general themes common to all research disciplines: authorship perceptions, definitions and practices, defining order of authors on the byline, ethical and unethical authorship practices, and authorship issues related to student/non-research personnel-supervisor collaboration. For 14 survey studies, a meta-analysis showed a pooled weighted average of 29% (95% CI 24% to 35%) researchers reporting their own or others' experience with misuse of authorship. Authorship misuse was reported more often by researcher outside of the USA and UK: 55% (95% CI 45% to 64%) for 4 studies in France, South Africa, India and Bangladesh vs. 23% (95% CI 18% to 28%) in USA/UK or international journal settings.
High prevalence of authorship problems may have severe impact on the integrity of the research process, just as more serious forms of research misconduct. There is a need for more methodologically rigorous studies to understand the allocation of publication credit across research disciplines.
Recently, PubMed – the largest bibliographical database in biomedicine made a new record in the number of authors on the byline of an indexed article: 2080 authors needed 165 lines on the PubMed site to spell out their surnames and initials. The paper was from high energy physics
Regardless of the practices in the number of authors, authorship and publication credit is the currency system of research and academic community, with both positive and negative implications
All articles describing empirical quantitive or qualitative research from all scholarly fields on the definition of or criteria for authorship, authors' contribution to the research and manuscript, order of authors on the byline, opinions of researchers and/or editors on different aspects of authorship were selected for the review. We excluded articles describing research that used journal articles and their authors for analyzing collaborative or citation networks; authorship in the context of citation analysis; analysis of research collaboration outputs of institutions, groups, research fields; trends in authorship in journals, groups of journals, fields, institutions, countries, geographical regions; gender of authors in journals, groups of journals, fields, institutions, countries, geographical regions. Articles describing research on authorship attribution in literature, taxonomy, and psychology/cognitive research were also excluded. Articles that did not provide methodological and/or numerical information (such as found in letters and conference proceedings) were also excluded.
Electronic databases were searched on 17 January 2011 using a general text search term ‘authorship’ to increase the sensitivity of the search. Where possible, the search was limited to original research articles and reviews. The search included all databases available from the on-line source of the Croatian Academic Network (CARNet): Databases included Agricola (1970 to 2011 Week 3); Business Source Complete (since 1886); CINAHL (since 1981); Current Contents (1993 Week 27 to 2011 Week 3); EBM reviews (2005 to 2011 Week 3), including Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, ACP Journal Club, DARE, CCTR, CMR, HTA, and NHSEED; ERIC (1965 to 2011 Week3); GeoRef (since 1966); Food Science and Technology Abstracts (1969 to 2011 Week 3); INSPEC (1969 to 2011 Week 3); Library, Information Science & Technology (since mid-1960ties); MEDLINE (1950 to 2011 Week 3); PsycINFO (1967 to 2011 Week 3); SCOPUS (1960 to 17 Jan 2011); and Web of Knowledge (1991 to 17 Jan 2011), including Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). There were no language restrictions. There was no attempt to search grey literature because our study was focused on authorship research in the mainstream science. Hand search of relevant journals was not performed because authorship topics are published in a variety of journals and because we used a sensitive rather than specific search; only the theme issues of JAMA, related to peer review conferences were searched by hand.
The titles and available abstracts of retrieved records were examined for possible inclusion in the review. Selected full text articles were used as a starting point for the berrypicking search, a technique which included footnote, citation and author searching
Titles and abstracts of all retrieved articles were screened by one author to determine if they met inclusion criteria, and the selection was verified by the other author. Disagreements were discussed and full text articles were retrieved in cases of doubt for review and decision on inclusion. Full texts of the articles were reviewed by both authors; disagreements were resolved by discussion. A description of the population and extractable data were the minimum for the inclusion in the systematic review.
We used a data collection form (
For the percentage (proportion) of respondents who recalled their own problems or problems of colleagues with authorship issues (n = 14 studies), we were able to perform quantitative data synthesis. The data were transformed with Freeman-Tukey variant of the arcsine square root
8988 references were retrieved from the bibliographic database search (
Search keyword was ‘authorship’, limited to article as a publication type, search performed 15 January 2010. Asterisk : inclusion criteria – quantitive or qualitative research on the definition of or criteria for authorship, authors' contribution to the research and manuscript, order of authors on the byline, opinions of researchers and/or editors on authorship criteria, opinions of researchers and/or editors on authorship order; exclusion criteria: 1. research topics which use journal articles and their authors as a starting point for studying: collaborative or citation networks; authorship in the context of citation analysis; analysis of research collaboration outputs of institutions, groups, research fields; trends in authorship in journals, groups of journals, fields, institutions, countries, geographical regions; gender of authors in journals, groups of journals, fields, institutions, countries, geographical regions; 2. analysis of authorship attribution in literature, taxonomy, and psychology/cognitive research.
Most of the articles were published in health sciences (n = 66), including 52 studies from general medicine and/or biomedicine (1 study was presented in 2 articles
Most of the studies were performed in international science journals (n = 47) or in the USA (46 studies reported in 49 articles). Five studies were performed in Canada, 4 in Australia, 2 in South Africa, 2 in the Netherlands and 1 (2 articles) in the international physics laboratory in Europe (CERN). A study was performed in each of the following countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Croatia, France, India, Iran, Pakistan, Spain, Sweden and UK. Finally, 1 study had respondents from both the US and Canada, and for 1 study it was not clear whether it was performed in the UK, US or both countries.
The design of most studies was cross-sectional survey (63 studies published in 65 articles), with response rates ranging from 16% to 100%. There were 32 descriptive studies (published in 34 articles), mainly literature analysis. One involved mathematical modeling
Many studies (n = 85) had methodological limitations. Out of 65 studies involving survey designs, 27 did not report details on survey development or testing. All before-and-after studies had no controls. Out of 6 articles on qualitative studies, 5 did not report on the protocol and details of the sample or data analysis procedure or independent confirmation of identified themes and their analysis. Randomized studies involved questionnaires and were single blinded; 1 described piloting of the questionnaire. Quality assessment of the articles (
The first identified study addressed the differences in name ordering of Nobel laureates from different disciplines in comparison to their colleagues in 1967
No studies were identified in humanities.
We identified 4 general themes studied across research disciplines: authorship perceptions, definitions and practices (n = 58 articles), defining order of authors on the byline (n = 45), ethical and unethical authorship practices (n = 46), and authorship issues related to student/non-research personnel-supervisor collaboration (n = 19). Most of the articles explored one of these themes (n = 90), 21 explored 2, 11 explored 3 and 1 article addressed all 4 themes.
Fifty-four studies examined the perceptions of authorship buy different stakeholders, authorship definitions in use and actual practices, and contributions for deserving authorship (
Article | Study population | Study topic |
Spiegel, 1970 |
Psychologists in USA | Single contribution that qualifies for authorship; Preferred solution to multiple authorship |
Bridgewater, |
Academic psychologists in USA | Agreement of respondents on qualifying contributions for authorship |
Werley, |
Nursing professionals in USA | Single contribution that qualifies for authorship; Preferred solution to multiple authorship |
von Glinow, 1982 |
Professionals associated with management journals in USA | Opinion of editors vs. editorial review board on collection of data as deserving authorship contribution |
Waltz, |
Health professionals in nursing in USA | Contributions that do not deserve authorship |
van der Kloot, 1991 |
Social psychologists and psychometricians in The Netherlands | Scores on a continuum scale of deserving authorship for different contributions |
Diguisto, 1994 |
University research staff in Australia | Value of contributions for deserving authorship |
Floyd, 1994 |
Authors of articles published in management journals | Importance of contributions for authorship |
Goodman, 1994 |
First authors or research articles in general medical journal | Prevalence of authors who satisfied ICMJE authorship criteria |
Shapiro, 1994 |
First authors from USA of research articles in general medical journal | Most frequent contributions by all authors as reported by first author |
Wagner, 1994 |
Single, first or second author in a psychology journal | Contribution importance for authorship |
Eastwood, 1996 |
Postdoctoral fellows at a university | Sufficient contribution for authorship |
Bhopal, 1997 |
Staff from university medical school in UK | Reported agreement with ICMJE authorship criteria; Contributions that alone merit authorship |
Hamilton, 1997 |
Business and non-business university faculty in USA | Deserving joint authorship for a single contribution |
Netting, 1997 |
University faculty and student in focus groups in USA | Emerging themes in authorship |
Almeida, 1998 |
Mental health professionals (physicians and non-physicians) in Brazil | Opinions of physicians vs. non-physicians on contributions valid for granting authorship |
Butler, 1998 |
Nurses expected to publish research in Canada | Agreement among nurses of different professional status on different authorship scenarios |
Hoen, 1998 |
Authors of articles published in national general medical journal in The Netherlands | Awareness and fulfilment of ICMJE criteria |
White, 1998 |
First authors of papers on nursing research from USA | Knowledge of authorship guidelines; Reported contributions to different aspects of manuscript; Prevalence of articles with all authors qualifying for authorship |
Rose, 1999 |
Ethics statements from scientific professional organizations in USA | Prevalence of statements on authorship in ethics codes |
Tarnow, 1999 |
Postdoctoral fellows in physics in USA | Knowledge of association authorship guidelines; Discussion of authorship criteria with supervisor; Criteria for designating postdocs or others as authors |
Yank, 1999 |
Articles in general medical journal | Contributions declared for authors and persons in acknowledgment lists |
Bartle, 2000 |
Faculty and students from psychology departments in USA | Most important contributions for authorship; Opinion of students vs. faculty on APA ethical guidelines |
Hart, 2000 |
Co-authors of papers in library science | Importance of research tasks for authorship |
Price, 2000 |
Faculty from institutions granting graduate degrees in nursing in USA | Criteria most important for authorship; Opinion on number of criteria needed for authorship; Role of journals in authorship issues |
Phillips, |
Authors of articles in large and small medical journals | Acknowledgement of medical writing assistance as authorship |
Altman, 2002 |
Authors of articles in general medical journals | Recognition of a methodologist as an author |
Laband, 2002 |
Authors in economic and agricultural economics journals | Fraction of production team given authorship rights in economics vs. agricultural economics |
Mowatt, 2002 |
Corresponding authors of Cochrane systematic reviews | Contributions of authors vs. Cochrane editorial team |
Tarnow, 2002 |
Members of American Physical Society (APS) | Use of APS authorship guidelines; Preference of authorship guidelines |
Foote, 2003 |
Biomedical journals | No. journals without definition of authorship in guidelines |
Cohen, 2004 |
Members of US and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) | Use of authorship guidelines; Expressed preference of authorship guideline |
Etemadi, 2004 |
Editors of medical journals in Iran | Opinions on criteria for authorship |
Pignatelli, 2005 |
Senior clinical researchers in France | Practices in authorship; Agreement with ICMJE criteria |
Birnholtz, 2006 |
Researchers in high energy physics | Themes in authorship in high energy physics |
Burbonniere, 2006 |
Researchers at a clinical centre in Canada | Satisfaction with use of in-house authorship guideline |
Dhaliwal, 2006 |
Faculty in teaching hospital in India | Acceptable criteria for authorship |
Funk, 2007 |
NIH postdoctoral fellows in USA | Awareness and use of authorship guidelines after RCR training |
Geelhoed, 2007 |
Authors of research articles in clinical psychology journals | Most common opinions on authorship decision process |
Ilakovac, 2007 |
Authors of research articles in general medical journal | Reliability of contribution declaration form for corresponding author |
Wager, 2007 |
Guidelines for authors in medical journals | Presence of authorship guidance; Reference to ICMJE authorship criteria |
Birnholtz, |
Researchers in high energy physics | Emerging themes in authorship |
Ivaniš, 2008 |
Authors of research articles in general medical journal | Prevalence of authors satisfying ICMJE criteria when declaring contributions in a binary vs. ordinal rating scale |
Lang, 2008 |
Experienced medical writers from USA | Opinion on deserved authorship for medical writers |
Louis, 2008 |
High profile researchers in biomedicine in USA | Identified guiding factors for authorship decisions |
Baerloccher, 2009 |
Original research articles in general medical journals | Number of authors after introduction of contribution disclosure requirement |
Pulido, 2009 |
Spanish authors in health who publish in international journals | Most important contributions for any author vs. first author; Knowledge of ICMJE criteria |
Rowan-Legg, 2009 |
Guidelines published in biomedical journals | Prevalence of journals with authorship addressed in guidelines |
Samad, 2009 |
Pakistani medical and dental journals | Prevalence of journals with no guidance on authorship |
Castleden, 2010 |
Researchers involved in research with Indigenous communities in Canada | Collective/community authorship as emerging practice |
House, |
Faculty from departments of chemistry in USA | Factors explaining deserved authorship; Factors explain and influences on authorship |
McDonald, 2010 |
Articles from medical journals | Influence of authorship restriction policies on number of authors, 1986 to 2006 |
Morris, 2010 |
All (n = 39) Australian universities | No. universities with authorship policy and policy rating |
Seeman, |
Faculty from departments of chemistry in USA | Situational differences in authorship decisions |
Street, 2010 |
Staff and doctoral candidates in health research at Australian universities | Emerging themes in authorship |
*Abbreviations: ICMJE, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors; APA, American Psychological Association; NIH, National Institutes of Health, USA; RCR, responsible conduct of research.
Partial or full replication or modification of questionnaire by Spiegel and Keith Spiegel, 1970
Sub-analysis of data from Flanagin et al
The same study as Birnholtz, 2006
House and Seeman
Conception of research/research design and writing the manuscript were identified as most qualifying contributions for authorship across different sciences, geographical regions and the time span from 1970ties to present
Five surveys asked for a single contribution that would qualify for authorship: the most frequent choice for psychologists was choice of statistical method and data analysis (55%)
Several studies explored if stakeholders in research provided authorship guidance. A 1999 study of the professional organizations in the USA showed that up to 56%of them had non-specific statements but that only 17% had clear criteria for authorship
Although psychologists used to declare their contributions in published articles already in the 1970ties
Four studies, published in 5 articles, qualitatively explored authorship issues
The order of authors on the byline was specifically addressed by 46 studies (
Article | Study population | Study topic |
Zuckerman, 1967 |
Nobel laureates in USA and matched scientists | 1st authorship of laureates vs. others |
Zuckerman, |
Nobel laureates in USA and matched scientists | Ratio observed/expected frequency of papers with 6 or more authors and name order pattern for laureates vs. others |
Over, 1970 |
Articles published in |
Percent authors with A–E vs. P–Z surnames in a journal with alphabetical author listing |
Spiegel, 1970 |
Psychologists in USA | Preferred method for authorship order when contributions are equal |
Werley, |
Nursing professionals in USA | Preferred method for authorship order when contributions are equal |
von Glinow, 1982 |
Professionals associated with management journals in USA | Preferred method for ordering authors |
Over, 1982 |
Articles in psychology journals | Change in number of articles with alphabetical ordering of authors from 1949 to 1979 |
Waltz, |
Health professionals in nursing in USA | Preferred method for authorship order when contributions are equal |
Gay, |
Educators in nursing USA | Methods for determining authorship |
McCarl, 1993 |
Citations in 5 journals on agricultural economics | Chance of having a citation when first-author has a Z or A surname |
Shulkin, 1993 |
Articles by chairs of department of medicine in USA | Last-authorship papers of short-term vs. long-term chairs |
Shapiro, 1994 |
First authors from USA of research articles in general medical journal | No. and type of contributions of first vs. last author |
Wagner, 1994 |
Single, first or second author in a psychology journal | Mean percent contributions for different authorship positions |
Davies, 1996 |
Chairs of pediatric departments and deans of medical faculties in Canada | Opinions on value of first author contribution in individual or group authorship |
Slone, 1996 |
First authors from USA on papers from a radiology journal | Reported contributions of first authors vs. 5th–10th author |
Butler, 1998 |
Nurses in Canada, expected to publish research | Agreement among nurses that order of authorship should be based on contributions, not status |
Drenth, 1998 |
Authors of articles in general medical journal 1975–1995 | Prevalence of senior level authors as last authors in 1975 vs. 1995 |
White, 1998 |
First authors from USA on papers on nursing research | Knowledge of agency or institution guidelines for authorship sequencing |
Engers, 1999 |
Articles from journals on law, economics, social sciences, natural sciences or medicine | Prevalence of alphabetical ordering of authors |
Yank, 1999 |
Articles in general medical journal | Contributions for different authorship byline position |
Hart, 2000 |
Co-authors of papers in library science | Most prevalent method of ordering authors |
Chambers, 2001 |
Articles in general medical journal | Most common letters for surnames of first authorship |
Laband, 2002 |
Authors of articles in economic and agricultural economics journals | Prevalence of alphabetized co-authorship |
Mowatt, 2002 |
Corresponding authors of Cochrane systematic reviews | Reported practices in deciding on authors' order |
Tarnow, 2002 |
Members of American Physical Society (APS) | Probability of change after initial authorship list is determined |
Bhandari, 2003 |
Editorial board members of medical journal in USA | Agreement on method for authorship order |
Bhandari, 2004 |
Chairs of surgery or medicine departments in Canada | Change in assignment of authorship credit to first or last author when they are corresponding authors |
Cohen, 2004 |
Members of US and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) | Probability of change after initial authorship list is determined |
Meyer, 2004 |
Editorial members of accounting journals and young accounting faculty members in USA | Perceived behaviour appropriateness and occurrence and actual knowledge of occurrence of co-authorship issues |
Apgar, 2005 |
Members of Society for Social Work and Research in USA | Opinions on authorship order |
Hilmer, 2005 |
Faculty members of agricultural economics departments in USA and their publications | Prevalence of alphabetical authorship in co-authored vs. multi-authored articles; Estimated annual salary return to an additional article depending on alphabetical authorship |
Pignatelli, 2005 |
Senior clinical researchers in France | Practice of ordering authorship |
Brown, 2006 |
Multiauthored articles from academic institutions published n marketing journals | Percent alphabetical ordering of authors |
Einaw, 2006 |
Faculty of economic or psychology departments, Econometric Society (ES) fellows, Nobel laureates and Clark Winners, authors of articles in economics journals in USA | Increase in probability for tenure status with each letter closer to the front of the alphabet; Percent multiauthored articles with alphabetical authorship in economics journals |
Laband, 2006 |
Articles in journals from medicine, natural sciences, economics, social sciences and general journals | Mean change in prevalence of alphabetical authorship in co-authored articles from 1974 to 1999 |
Manton, 2006 |
Business faculty in USA | Opinion on method of listing authors |
Moore, 2006 |
Authors of articles in educational research journals | Preferred method of authorship order |
Baerlocher, 2007 |
Articles in general medical journals | Satisfaction of ICMJE criteria 1 and 2, depending on byline position |
Kurichi, 2007 |
Chairs of surgery departments in USA medical schools | Likelihood for authorship position in regard to serving as chair |
Manton, 2007 |
Faculty of colleges of business in USA | Preferred method of listing co-authors |
van Praag, 2008 |
Articles published in mainstream economics journals | Prevalence of articles with alphabetical authorship |
Hu, 2009 |
Articles in biomedical or multidisciplinary journals | Increase in prevalence of equal first authorships |
Maciejeovsky, 2009 |
Faculty members and advanced graduate students from economics, marketing and psychology in USA/UK | Prevalence of alphabetical authorship; Preferences for credit to a position in multiauthored papers; Inferences based on authorship order |
Akhabue, 2010 |
Original research articles from general medical journal | Trends in equal authorships from 2000 to 2009 |
Chan, 2010 |
Multi-authored original research articles from academic real estate journals | Prevalence of alphabetical authorship from 1990 to 2006; Likelihood for alphabetical authorship |
Frandsen, 2010 |
Articles from economics, library information science (LIS) and high-energy physics (HEP) journals | Yearly change in share of articles with alphabetic authorship from 1978 to 2007 |
Walker, 2010 |
Corresponding authors of original research articles in medical journals | Opinion on authorship position with greatest merit for promotion; Practice of ordering authorship position |
*Abbreviations: ICMJE, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
The same study as Zuckerman, 1967
Partial or full replication or modification of questionnaire by Spiegel and Keith Spiegel, 1970
For researchers in most sciences, the amount of work and not prestige or position were the preferred method for determining authorship order
Several studies explored the importance of the author's position on the byline, particularly in the field of biomedical research. Most prestige and greatest contribution was expected from the first author
Most of the researchers psychology, nursing and social work favored pre-study agreement as the best policy for ordering names on the byline
Ethical and unethical practices in authorship and perceptions about them were analyzed in 51 studies (
Article | Study population | Study topic |
Spiegel, 1970 |
Psychologists in USA | Ethical practices in granting authorship |
Werley, |
Nursing professionals in USA | Ethical practices in granting authorship |
von Glinow,1982 |
Professionals associated with management journals in USA | Ethical practices in granting authorship |
Waltz,a 1985 |
Health professionals in nursing in USA | Ethical practices in granting authorship |
Gay, |
Health professionals in nursing in USA | Ethical practices in granting authorship and publishing multiple publications from the same study |
van der Kloot, 1991 |
Social psychologists and psychometricians in The Netherlands | Agreement about authorship between professors and junior researchers |
Eastwood, 1996 |
Postdoctoral fellows at a university in USA | Willingness to engage in giving undeserved authorship |
Slone, 1996 |
First authors from USA on papers from a radiology journal | Reported undeserved authorship for co-authors; Reasons for undeserved authorship; Time of decision on authorship |
Bhopal, 1997 |
Staff from university medical school in UK | Reported problems with authorship; Gift authorship |
Hamilton, 1997 |
Business and non-business university faculty in USA | Views on unethical authorship practices |
Bulter, 1998 |
Nurses expected to publish research in Canada | Agreement among nurses about ethical issues in authorship |
Flanagin, 1998 |
Corresponding authors from USA on articles in large and small medical journals | Reported prevalence of research articles with undeserved or undisclosed or ghost authorship |
White, 1998 |
First authors from USA on papers on nursing research | Reported issues, problems and concerns about author inclusion or ordering |
Wilcox, 1998 |
Cases brought to university ombuds office in USA | Authorship issues in cases 1991/92 vs. 1996/97 |
Tarnow, 1999 |
Postdoctoral fellows in physics in USA | Reported papers where supervisor did not satisfy APS guidelines; Reasons for inappropriate authorship |
Price, 2000 |
Faculty from institutions granting graduate degrees in nursing in USA | Experiences and opinions on unethical authorship practices |
Reidpath, 2001 |
Authors of articles published in general medical journal | Reported authorship was among stipulations for sharing data-set from their article |
Mainous, 2002 |
Corresponding authors of research articles in medical journals | Personal or professional concerns in authorship; Opinion on effective ways for authorship decisions |
Mowatt, 2002 |
Corresponding authors of Cochrane systematic reviews | Prevalence of honorary authors or ghost and honorary authors |
Tarnow, 2002 |
Members of American Physical Society (APS) | Probability that an additional author is inappropriate; Comfort for younger vs. older respondent to deny undeserving authorship |
Hwang, 2003 |
Research articles in medical journal | Prevalence of undeserved ICMJE authorship |
Bates, 2004 |
Research articles in medical journals with different contribution declaration forms | Prevalence of undeserved ICMJE authorship |
Buchkowsky, 2004 |
Clinical trials published in medical journals | Increase in author affiliation with industry from 1981/1984 to 1997/2000 |
Cohen, 2004 |
Members of US and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) | Probability that an additional author is inappropriate; Reported denying undeserved authorship |
Marušić, 2004 |
Research articles in general medical journal | Prevalence of undeserved ICMJE authorship |
Meyer, 2004 |
Editorial members of accounting journals and young accounting faculty members in USA | Perceived behaviour appropriateness/behaviour occurrence/actual knowledge of occurrence of co-authorship issues |
Procyshyn, 2004 |
Research articles on antipsychotic drugs in medical journals | Prevalence of authors affiliated with 3 pharmaceutical firms |
Szirony, 2004 |
Nursing faculty members in USA | Formal teaching to graduate students about authorship credit in publications; Ethical decisions in authorship |
Apgar, 2005 |
Members of Society for Social Work and Research in USA | Unethical granting of authorship |
Freda, 2005 |
Editors of nursing journals | Reported prevalence of ethical issues about authorship encountered in editorial work |
Joubert, 2005 |
Authors of research papers from university in South Africa | Reported prevalence of ethical issues in authorship |
Mixon Jr, 2005 |
Articles published in more and less prestigious economics journals | Ratio between number of authors and contributors in acknowledgment |
Pignatelli, 2005 |
Senior clinical researchers in France | Opinions and reported experience on gift and ghost authorship |
Dhaliwal, 2006 |
Faculty in teaching hospital in India | Reported conflict over authorship |
Manton, 2006 |
Business faculty in USA | Reported experience of unethical granting of authorship |
Marušić, 2006 |
Authors of articles in general medical journal | Prevalence of authors not satisfying ICMJE criteria in different forms of contribution declaration |
Funk, 2007 |
NIH postdoctoral fellows in USA | Ethically appropriate responses to case vignettes at 3 time points after training on RCR |
Geelhoed, 2007 |
Authors of articles in clinical psychology journals | Experiences about fairness and ease of authorship decision process |
Gotsche, 2007 |
Clinical trial protocols and publications from Sweden | Prevalence of ghost authorship |
Hren, 2007 |
Medical students with or without instruction on ICMJE criteria, physicians and medical faculty in Croatia | Opinions on eligible contributions for authorship |
Manton, 2007 |
Faculty of colleges of business in USA | Reported that co-authors did very little/no work |
Peppercorn, 2007 |
Articles on breast cancer clinical trials in medical journals | Prevalence of pharmaceutical company authorship on published studies |
Tungaraza, 2007 |
Published clinical trials on psychiatric drug treatment | Prevalence of industry-authored studies |
O'Brien, 2009 |
Corresponding authors of original research articles in general medical journals | Reported experience or opinion unethical authorship |
Wager, 2009 |
Editors of journals published by Blackwell | Reported experience of ethical issues in authorship |
Ahmed, 2010 |
Participants in bioethics course in Bangladesh | Experiences of authorship conflicts |
Lacasse, 2010 |
Public policies of academic medical centres in USA | Prevalence of policies banning ghostwriting |
Nastasee, 2010 |
Articles in medical journals | Increase in acknowledgment of medical writing from 2000 to 2007 |
Rose, 2010 |
Clinical trials published in oncology journal | Odds for authors reporting financial ties to industry: |
Seeman, |
Faculty from departments of chemistry in USA | Experience of unethical behaviour in authorship |
*bbreviations: NIH, National Institutes of Health, USA; RCR, responsible conduct of research.
Partial or full replication or modification of questionnaire by Spiegel and Keith Spiegel, 1970
The same study as House and Seeman
In 4 studies that used variations of the same survey questionnaire
Journal editors also reported experiences with authorship disputes, from 5% in nursing journals
In medicine, the number of authors who did not satisfy widely accepted ICMJE authorship criteria ranged from less than 1% to 63%
Industry relationship and ghost authorship were other important issues for medical journal. Increasing author affiliations with industry were reported in several studies
Only a few studies looked at the possible interventions to prevent undeserved authorship. The measures proposed by researchers in medicine were publishing the statements on authors' contributions or limiting the number of authors on a byline
Fourteen survey studies asked the participants if they personally experienced problems and/or misuse of authorship or observed it for other colleagues
The area of a square represent sample size, horizontal lines are 95% confidence interval, diamond and vertical dotted line show the pooled weighted estimate.
The area of a square represent sample size, horizontal lines are 95% confidence interval, diamond and vertical dotted line show the pooled weighted estimate.
The area of a square represent sample size, horizontal lines are 95% confidence interval, diamond and vertical dotted line show the pooled weighted estimate.
The practices and perceptions about authorship decisions in supervisor/professor – student/non-research persons was assessed in 19 studies (
Article | Study population | Study topic |
Spiegel, 1970 |
Psychologists in USA | Opinion on deserved authorship for students/non-researchers; Preferred outcome for student-professor collaboration |
Werley, |
Nursing professionals in USA | Opinion on deserved authorship for students/non-researchers; Preferred outcome for student-professor collaboration |
Waltz, |
Health professionals in nursing in USA | Opinion on deserved authorship for students/non-researchers |
Gay,a 1987 |
Educators in nursing in USA | Opinion on deserved authorship for students/non-researchers |
Costa, 1992 |
Psychology students and faculty in USA | Faculty vs. students views of authorship order for published dissertation with different level of faculty input |
Goodyear, 1992 |
Editorial board members and authors of psychology journals in USA | Reported critical incidents related to student research |
Brown-Wright, 1997 |
Graduate assistants and faculty members in USA | Assistance in analysis of research data warrants authorship for graduate assistant – faculty vs. Assistants |
Rose, 1988 |
Graduate students in physics, biological, engineering and social sciences in USA | Opinion on deserved authorship for students; Perceived reporting of authorship problems |
Louw, 1999 |
Academic and non-academic psychologists and masters' degree students in South Africa | Deserving first authorship by academics, non-academics and students |
Bartle, 2000 |
Faculty and students from psychology departments in USA | Agreement of faculty vs. students on authorship from student-faculty collaboration |
Meyer, 2004 |
Editorial members of accounting journals and young accounting faculty members in USA | Perceived behaviour appropriateness/behaviour occurrence/actual knowledge of occurrence of co-authorship issues between faculty and students |
Szirony, 2004 |
Nursing faculty members in USA | Opinions on unethical authorship in student-professor collaboration |
Apgar, 2005 |
Members of Society for Social Work and Research in USA | Opinions on unethical authorship in student-professor collaboration |
Sandler, 2005 |
APA members and students with a publication from student-faculty collaboration in USA | Involvement in and reporting of perceived unethical or unfair authorship assignment |
Weltzin, 2006 |
Participants of ecology meeting in USA | Opinion on first authorship in student-professor collaboration |
Geelhoed, 2007 |
Authors of articles in clinical psychology journals | Opinion of students vs. faculty on influences on authorship decision making |
Tryon, 2007 |
Doctoral students in school psychology in USA | Different opinions on first authorship in publications from dissertations |
Picard, 2010 |
Students and supervisors from agriculture school in Australia | Agreement on authorship issues between students and professors |
Welfare, 2010 |
Students and faculty from US universities with graduate studies in education | Opinion of students vs. faculty for common and recommended practices in authorship |
*Abbreviations: APA, American Psychological Association.
Partial or full replication or modification of questionnaire by Spiegel and Keith Spiegel, 1970
Fairness of the research collaboration between professor-supervisor and a student was an important issue in psychology. Surveys since 1970 showed that psychologists generally regard students as sufficiently expert to warrant the 1st authorship on their master or doctoral theses, even when faculty makes significant contribution to the work and manuscript writing
Using critical incident technique, psychologists identified “taking other's ideas or manuscripts”, “failure to give credit” and “giving unwarranted credit” as most important problems in faculty-student collaboration
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review of research on authorship across all scholarly disciplines. Our search did not identify any systematic review in individual disciplines, although there were a number of overviews and theoretical discussions, including the recent series of the authorship history, current practices, and educational activities in social sciences, engineering and biomedical and life sciences
Ethical issues in authorship were common to all disciplines. For the subset of 14 studies that reported results of surveys asking researchers about their own or others' experience of problems with or misuse of authorship, we were able to perform a meta-analysis, the first such analysis for authorship. On average, 29% of the respondents acknowledged such experience. This prevalence of ethical problems in authorship is more than 10-fold greater than the 2% prevalence of research misconduct of fabrication, falsification or data modification, reported in the recent meta-analysis
The results of our systematic survey and meta-analysis are limited primarily by the poor methodological quality of retrieved studies and their heterogeneity. Of the 118 studies, 95 (81%) were either surveys or descriptive studies. Many studies did not report on the construction and pre-testing of surveys of their sampling frames and often with unclear or incomplete reporting of study findings; examples include the lack of interval range for Likert scales and reporting of only means without measures of variability. There were only 8 studies that evaluated some kind of intervention in authorship
We deliberately performed a systematic review with a wide scope, sensitive but not specific search, inclusive of all study designs and focused on mainstream publications in international bibliographical indexes because we wanted to provide the synthesis of existing evidence in all research fields and to identify gaps in knowledge. Despite the limitations of the review and retrieved evidence, the results provide an outline of common themes for future research across disciplines. To study authorship definitions, perceptions and practice, there appears to be little scope for conducting more small descriptive surveys or descriptive studies with heterogeneous methodology. To understand how authorship credit is awarded, we may benefit from methodologically rigorous qualitative studies, as well as studies to identify sociological factors associated with authorship and its use and misuse. All these studies would be more powerful if they were conducted across multiple sites and disciplines. This would be particularly relevant to address the observed differences in prevalence of authorship misuse among different geographical settings in the meta-analysis. Testing different sample characteristics in larger, multi-site studies with standardized methodology may reveal important correlates of misconduct in authorship.
As the evidence shows that decisions on authorship are often not made according to the official criteria, there is a need for research into the role of moral vs. normative judgments on authorship
The nature of authorship decisions is also relevant for educational interventions to promote integrity in authorship, which is a rather neglected area both in education and in research
Research avenues outlined here are not possible without collaboration among different stakeholders and across geographical regions and research disciplines. Given the social responsibility of science and its collective impact on human lives, regardless of the discipline, professional development for responsible authorship and other aspects of research should be subjected to the same valid and rigorous forms of evaluation and testing expected for health interventions, such as medicines and medical devices.
Data extraction form.
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Overview of included studies.
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Results of studies addressing the definition of authorship, contributions for deserved authorship and authorship practices.
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Results of studies addressing the order of authors on the byline.
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Results of studies addressing ethical authorship practices.
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Results of studies addressing authorship in researcher – student/non-researcher collaborations.
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The authors thank Dario Sambunjak, MD, PhD, for his critical comments during the review of articles. This study was presented in part at the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Seminar in London, 18 March 2011.