16: Who should be an
author?
Who should be an author?
an idea first described by Fotion and Conrad6 but developed more fully by Drummond Rennie and colleagues.7,8This shift away from traditional notions of authorship is the most important recent crack to appear in the architecture of academia. It has the potential to threaten the entire structure of modern science. Why? And where does that leave you, someone who simply wants to get your work published?
First, most scientists ignore editors and most so called authors are likely to test Vancouver Group negative. For example, Shapiro et al.9 found that a quarter of the “authors” they surveyed contributed nothing or to only one aspect of the published work.
Box 16.1 How to be a Vancouver Group positive author All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship.
Each author should have par ticipated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content.
Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to: (1) conception and design or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the ar ticle or revising it critically for impor tant intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General super vision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Any par t of an ar ticle critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author.
Editors may ask authors to describe what each contributed; this information may be published.
Increasingly, multicentre trials are attributed to a corporate author.
All members of the group who are named as authors, either in the authorship position below the title or in a footnote, should fully meet the above criteria for authorship. Group members who do not meet these criteria should be listed, with their permission, in the acknowledgements or in an appendix.
The order of authorship should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Because the order is assigned in different ways, its meaning cannot be inferred accurately unless it is stated by the authors. Authors may wish to explain the order of authorship in a footnote. In deciding on the order, authors should be aware that many journals limit the number of authors listed in the table of contents and that the US National Librar y of Medicine (NLM) lists in Medline only the first 24 plus the last author when there are more than 25 authors.
Eastwood et al.10 discovered that a third of the US postdoctoral fellows they questioned were happy to list someone as an author even if he or she did not deserve it, provided that the inclusion of their name would make publication more likely. Given this widespread cynicism about the meaning of authorship, to cling to a definition that no one uses seems crazy.
There is a second, more sensitive reason for questioning our existing beliefs about authorship. Several recent instances of scientific fraud11,12 have revealed that the flipside of authorship credit – namely, authorship responsibility– is often overlooked. When individual researchers have their names listed on the byline of a paper, it can be difficult to dissect out who did what if an aspect of the work is questioned. Instances of fabrication or falsification of data have revealed the importance of assigning the precise and explicit parts played by individual investigators in a research project.
These two forces make it hard to resist two ensuing interpretations. First, that researchers should be allowed to list whoever they wish on the byline of a paper, Vancouver Group positive or negative. And second, that editors should ask for and publish a clear description of the contributions made by the authors. Rigid, unenforceable, and widely ignored definitions should be abandoned. This is the new policy of the BMJ5and The Lancet4The BMJ has gone further than The Lancetand asks each group of contributors to select one or more guarantors who will take overall responsibility for the integrity of the entire work.
The reaction to contributorship has been mixed. At The Lancet, we have found that most authors readily accept the idea that contributors should be cited at the end of each paper (Box 16.2). But some have voiced concerns that unethical authorship practices – inappropriate credit in the form of guest authors or the unacknowledged contributions of ghost authors – are likely to continue.13
Still, other journals are likely to follow the move to contributorship. Even if contributor lists are not always embraced, the principle of complete disclosure and personal responsibility is accepted.14You need to be aware which journals prefer traditional Vancouver Group positive authors and which prefer contributors. For all practical purposes, you can freely ignore the rules set by the former group. Everybody else does.
An additional issue that also defies easy rules is the acknowledgement section of your paper. Whom you choose to
How To Write a Paper
thank can be impossible to separate from whom you choose to cite as an author on the byline. Not surprisingly, the Vancouver Group has something to say about acknowledgements (Box 16.3).
The likelihood is that contributor lists and acknowledgements
Who should be an author?
Box 16.2 An example of contributorship Byline: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H
Contributors: A carried out the trial, helped in data analysis, and wrote the paper. B was involved in design, implementation, and data analysis, and contributed to the writing of the paper. C was involved in execution of the trial, data management and analysis, and quality assurance of the turnip assay. D was involved in trial execution and data entr y, management analysis, and quality assurance. E was involved in trial execution and data management with emphasis on analysis. F and G were involved in the design and contributed to the writing of the paper. H was involved in the design, implementation, analysis, and biochemical interpretation, and contributed to the writing of the paper.
[Guarantors: A and H]
Box 16.3 Acknowledgements according to Vancouver At an appropriate place in the ar ticle (the title page footnote or an appendix to the text; see the journal’s requirements), one or more statements should specify: (1) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general suppor t by a depar tmental chair; (2) acknowledgements of technical help;
(3) acknowledgements of financial and material suppor t, which should specify the nature of the suppor t; and (4) relationships that may pose a conflict of interest.
Persons who have contributed intellectually to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be named and their function or contribution described – for example, “scientific adviser”, “critical review of study proposal”, “data collection”, or
“par ticipation in clinical trial”. Such persons must have given their permission to be named. Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission from persons acknowledged by name, because readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions.
Technical help should be acknowledged in a paragraph separate from that acknowledging other contributions.
will eventually fuse and the whole subject of academic reward based on research contributions will be overhauled.15
Given this confusing state, there is only one rule to bear in mind when deciding who is an author, a contributor, a guarantor, or an acknowledgee. Decide who is to be what before you start your study. Most authorship disputes arise when the work is completed and a paper has to be written.
Then comes the jostling for a place (and position) on the byline. Primary prevention is always better in the end.
References
1 International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Ann Intern Med1997;126:36–47.
2 Parmley WW. Authorship: taking the high road. J Am Coll Cardiol 1997;29:702.
3 Horton R, Smith R. Signing up for authorship. Lancet1996;347:780.
4 Horton R. The signature of responsibility. Lancet1997;350:5–6.
5 Smith R. Authorship is dying: long live contributorship. BMJ 1997;
315:686.
6 Fotion N, Conrad CC. Authorship and other credits. Ann Intern Med1984;
100:592–4.
7 Rennie D, Flanagin A. Authorship! Authorship! Guests, ghosts, grafters, and the two-sided coin. JAMA1994;278:469–71.
8 Rennie D, Yank V, Emanuel L. When authorship fails: a proposal to make contributors accountable. JAMA1997;278:579–85.
9 Shapiro SW, Wenger NS, Shapiro MF. The contributions of authors to multiauthored biomedical research papers. JAMA1994;271:438–42.
10 Eastwood S, Derish P, Leash E, Ordway S. Ethical issues in biomedical research: perceptions and practices of postdoctoral research fellows responding to a survey. Sci Eng Ethics1996;2:89–114.
11 Lock S. Lessons from the Pearce affair: handling scientific fraud. BMJ 1995;310:1547–8.
12 Marshall E. Fraud strikes top genome lab. Science1996;274:908–10.
13 Greenfield B, Kaufman JL, Hueston WJ, Mainous AG, De Bakey L, DeBakey S. Authors vs contributors: accuracy, accountability, and responsibility. JAMA1998;279:356–7.
14 Editorial. Games people play with authors’ names. Nature1997;387:831.
15 Horton R. The unmasked carnival of science. Lancet1998;351:688–9.
How To Write a Paper