Authorship problems in scholarly journals: considerations for authors, peer reviewers and editors

Authorship problems in scholarly journals shake the foundations of research, diminish scientific quality of papers and devalue records of citation tracking services. The ‘Publish or Perish’ mantra is thought to drive some instances of unfair, honorary authorship, particularly in countries of emerging scientific power. Though causes of honorary, gift, guest and ghost authorship are still ill-defined, it is possible to avoid some of these instances by improving awareness of what constitutes authorship and by adhering to the editorial policies of learned associations. This paper overviews common cases of inappropriate authorship and suggests options to solve related problems by authors, reviewers and editors of scholarly journals.     

Writing a narrative biomedical review: considerations for authors, peer reviewers, and editors

Review articles comprehensively covering a specific topic are crucial for successful research and academic projects. Most editors consider review articles for special and regular issues of journals. Writing a review requires deep knowledge and understanding of a field. The aim of this review is to analyze the main steps in writing a narrative biomedical review and to consider points that may increase the chances of success. We performed a comprehensive search through MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, and Web of Science using the following keywords: review of the literature, narrative review, title, abstract, authorship, ethics, peer review, research methods, medical writing, scientific writing, and writing standards. Opinions expressed in the review are also based on personal experience as authors, peer reviewers, and editors.     

Disparidade de Gênero na Autoria Principal e Sênior em Periódicos Brasileiros de Cardiologia

Background:Despite the importance of women in clinical research, no assessment has been made of the fraction of women in a leadership positions in the Cardiology journals of the SBC.Objectives:To assess the fraction of female authors in the International Journal of Cardiovascular Sciences (IJCS) and the Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia (ABC Cardiol) over the last decades.Methods:We searched the original articles of the ABC Cardiol, from 2000 to 2019, and of the IJCS, from 2010 to 2019. We surveyed the number of first and senior female authors and the total number of original articles from 2010 to 2019. We calculated the total proportion of female authorship and compared the first quinquennium with the second. Only data from the ABC Cardiol were analyzed to assess the temporal evolution of the two decades. We used the chi-square test to assess the differences within each journal and between them. The IBM® SPSS® software was used in the analyses. The level of significance adopted was 5%.Results:From 2010 to 2019, 1,157 original articles were published in the ABC Cardiol and 398 in the IJCS. We observed that women are more prevalent as first authors in the IJCS compared to the ABC Cardiol, but men prevail as senior authors in both journals. From 2010 to 2019, there was no significant change in the proportion of female authorship. Throughout the decades analyzed for the ABC Cardiol, there was a projection of linear growth of female authorship, with the slope of the line being greater in the first authorship than in senior authorship.Conclusions:There is gender disparity, with lower female representativeness in authorship in the articles from the Brazilian Cardiology journals analyzed: Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia and International Journal of Cardiovascular Sciences. We believe that based on these results, more efforts should be implemented in the search for gender equity in the cardiology scientific production published by these journals.     

Authorship and other credits

Coauthorship of articles and case reports in medical journals is causing serious academic problems. Many persons who are listed as authors do not contribute as authors but rather as clinical investigators, statisticians, or program directors. In effect, a dishonest practice has developed that allows contributors to medical research to receive the honorific title of author when this title is not deserved. To help stop this practice, we urge a shift from the concept of authorship to a more general concept of receiving credit. Persons who contribute to articles as authors should be so credited, but those who contribute as clinical investigators, for example, should receive credit as clinical investigators, not authors. Instead, clinical investigators should receive credit by having their names listed alongside the authors' and by being permitted to list their nonauthorial contributions in their curricula vitae.     

Authorship: From credit to accountability. Reflections from the Editors’ Network

The Editors’ Network of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) provides a dynamic forum for editorial discussions and endorses the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to improve the scientific quality of biomedical journals. Authorship confers credit and important academic rewards. Recently, however, the ICMJE emphasized that authorship also requires responsibility and accountability. These issues are now covered by the new (fourth) criterion for authorship. Authors should agree to be accountable and ensure that questions regarding the accuracy and integrity of the entire work will be appropriately addressed. This review discusses the implications of this paradigm shift on authorship requirements with the aim of increasing awareness on good scientific and editorial practices.     

Twenty-year span of global acute pancreatitis trends: A bibliometric analysis

ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate the global research routine and trends of acute pancreatitis over the last twenty years based on the production, hotspots, and frontiers of published articles as well as to provide the global health system with a bibliometric reference.MethodsThe Web of Science core collection database was retrieved for acute pancreatitis original articles and review articles published from January 1, 1999 to May 17, 2020. Duplicates and discrete papers were excluded. Articles were evaluated for several characteristics including number of citations, publication time, country of origin, institution, journal and authorship.ResultsA total of 7001 articles originated from 94 countries and were published in 1263 journals. The China contributed most articles (1752) followed by USA (1214). The research was major published in specialized journals including the Pancreas (511) and pancreatology (351). Universities were the main institutions of science progress. High-impact articles focused on the fields of clinical medicine. A steady growth was observed in the last 20 years from 1999 to 2020.ConclusionThis comprehensive bibliometric study indicates that severe acute pancreatitis and necrotizing pancreatitis are significant topic in the acute pancreatitis research. The structured information may be helpful in understanding research trends, and locating research hot spots and gaps in this domain.     

Citation analysis for measuring the value of scientific publications: quality assessment tool or comedy of errors?

The basic concepts of citation analysis and Journal impact factors are discussed in the light of quality assessment of scientific publications, individual scientists and research units. The major controversies concerning this topic are addressed: technical limitations, database selectivity, time and discipline-related biases, language and publication type biases, multiple authorship merits and citing motivations. Both positive and negative aspects are put into perspective. The authors conclude that citation analysis, even when based on Journal impact factors, can be a worthwhile criterion for evaluating publication records of individual scientists or research units, as long as some of the problems discussed are sufficiently taken into account. However, this conclusion in no way implies that citation analysis may be considered as the one and only evaluation criterion.     

Data sharing: A new editorial initiative of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Implications for the editors’ network

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) provides recommendations to improve the editorial standards and scientific quality of biomedical journals. These recommendations range from uniform technical requirements to more complex and elusive editorial issues including ethical aspects of the scientific process. Recently, registration of clinical trials, conflicts of interest disclosure, and new criteria for authorship -emphasizing the importance of responsibility and accountability-, have been proposed. Last year, a new editorial initiative to foster sharing of clinical trial data was launched. This review discusses this novel initiative with the aim of increasing awareness among readers, investigators, authors and editors belonging to the Editors’ Network of the European Society of Cardiology.     

Issues in the design and implementation of multicenter studies in pediatric nephrology.

Multicenter studies in pediatric nephrology have been acknowledged in recent years to be an important means of studying renal disease in children. This review examines a number of issues that are important in the design and performance of a successful trial, with special emphasis on their significance for prospective clinical trials of antihypertensive medications in children and adolescents. Some issues to be covered include the most frequent difficulties that are encountered with multicenter studies, an historical perspective, specific design problems, the importance of close networking and communication, and the problems that may be anticipated with regards to authorship and financial reimbursement for time and effort. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of how multicenter studies involving hypertension protocols in children and adolescents might be conducted during the next few years.     

Irresponsible authorship and wasteful publication

Fraud is a dramatic offense in scientific publishing but other offenses are more frequent and probably far more damaging. The most frequent lesser offenses are irresponsible authorship and wasteful publication. The authorship problems include listing of "authors" who made little or no contribution to the work reported and omitting of persons who made major contributions. Wasteful publication includes dividing the results in a single study into two or more papers ("salami science"); republishing the same material in successive papers (which need not have identical format and content); and blending data from one study with additional data to extract yet another paper that could not make its way on the second set of data alone ("meat extenders"). Wasteful publication may be the most frequent of these offenses and is probably the most damaging because of its economic implications for publishers, readers, libraries, and indexes.     

The ethics of randomized clinical trials in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) conducted during the past decade have shown that several therapies produce improvements in surrogate endpoints for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Whether these therapies also influence clinical outcomes remains uncertain. These changes in the PAH landscape have raised several complex ethical issues regarding the conduct of RCTs in PAH, but to date, these issues have not been fully explored. In this article, we consider patients' potential motives for enrolling in PAH RCTs and identify those that are ethically acceptable. Second, we consider the efficiency of PAH RCTs-the ratio of the value of the information gained from RCTs to the risks and costs of obtaining it-and how this efficiency quotient contributes to a trial's ethics by enabling the fulfillment of patients' motives for participating. Third, we discuss the ethics of PAH RCTs using placebo control subjects versus those using active-treatment control subjects. Finally, we consider the ethical issues surrounding the roles of physician-investigators in PAH RCTs. We conclude with several recommendations, including (1) that investigators seek to ensure that patients enrolling in RCTs do so primarily to fulfill altruistic motives, (2) that research be conducted to determine the long-term risks associated with brief periods of withholding PAH therapies before further placebo-controlled trials without background therapies are conducted in PAH, and (3) that incentives for investigators to enroll more patients in PAH RCTs, such as enrollment-based authorship, be eliminated.     

Hepatitis B: global scientific development from a critical point of view

Hepatitis B is the tenth leading cause of death worldwide. Countries with high endemicity, such as China and Taiwan show high scientific productivity in this field and dominate the top ten list of the most productive authors worldwide, providing four of them. This is remarkable, as the USA and Europe usually maintain leading positions, not only regarding country‐specific scientific productivity, but also top ten ranking of most productive and most cited authors in other important medical sectors. So far, a scientometric analysis of the topic ‘hepatitis B’ has not been generated despite an increased need for it in times of modified evaluation criteria for academic personnel and a subsequent tendency to co‐authorship and author self‐citation. In this study, scientometric methods and large‐scale data analysis were used to evaluate quality and quantity of scientific research dealing with the topic ‘hepatitis B’ and to contribute to distinguish relevant research output. Data were gained from Pubmed and ISI‐Web. In the time span of 1971–2011, 49 166 items were published by 250 countries, of which the USA have been the most productive supplier with 28% of all publications, followed in considerable distance by Germany, China, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy and Taiwan, respectively. The USA have established their position as centre of international cooperation. Their cooperation with China proves to be the most productive one. The most prolific journals in the field of hepatitis b were ‘Hepatology’, the ‘Journal of Hepatology’ and the ‘Journal of Medical Virology’. h‐index, citation rate and impact factor, commonly used for assessment of scientific quality, were determined and discussed critically with regard to distortion by bias of self‐citation and co‐authorship.     

Rheumatological publications from Malaysia: a bibliometric study

Clinical Rheumatology - To assess the content, authorship and study design of rheumatological publications written by Malaysian authors or about rheumatological conditions in Malaysia. The...     

Scientific authorships and collaboration network analysis on Chagas disease: papers indexed in PubMed (1940-2009)

Chagas disease is a chronic, tropical, parasitic disease, endemic throughout Latin America. The large-scale migration of populations has increased the geographic distribution of the disease and cases have been observed in many other countries around the world. To strengthen the critical mass of knowledge generated in different countries, it is essential to promote cooperative and translational research initiatives. We analyzed authorship of scientific documents on Chagas disease indexed in the Medline database from 1940 to 2009. Bibliometrics was used to analyze the evolution of collaboration patterns. A Social Network Analysis was carried out to identify the main research groups in the area by applying clustering methods. We then analyzed 13,989 papers produced by 21,350 authors. Collaboration among authors dramatically increased over the study period, reaching an average of 6.2 authors per paper in the last five-year period. Applying a threshold of collaboration of five or more papers signed in co-authorship, we identified 148 consolidated research groups made up of 1,750 authors. The Chagas disease network identified constitutes a "small world," characterized by a high degree of clustering and a notably high number of Brazilian researchers.