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Public release date: 25-Oct-2011
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/uoc--yaw102411.php
British Medical Journal
Research: Honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals - a cross sectional survey
Just over one in five (21%) of articles published in six leading medical journals in 2008 have evidence of honorary and ghost authorship, finds a study published on http://www.bmj.comtoday.
These results demonstrate that inappropriate authorship remains a problem in high impact biomedical publications, say the authors.
Inappropriate (honorary and ghost) authorship and the resulting lack of transparency and accountability have been important concerns for the academic community for decades. Honorary authors are individuals who are named as authors but have not contributed substantially to be able to take responsibility for the work. Ghost authors are individuals who have made substantial contributions to the work but are not named as authors.
In the 1980s, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) developed guidelines for responsible and accountable authorship. These criteria are updated regularly and have been adopted by more than 600 biomedical journals. However, studies have found the prevalence of honorary authors to be as high as 39%, and ghost authors as high as 11% across a range of journals.
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