E DI TO R IA L
BJD
British Journal of Dermatology
Authorship issues: grizzles, guests and ghosts
Authorship disputes (grizzles) are one of the commonest manifestations of publication ethics abuses. Furthermore, they may be hard to resolve; it is not possible on reading a multiauthor paper to determine who did what. However, a paper published recently in Nature suggests that this may soon change.2 Developments in digital technology present the prospect of researchers and journals using manuscript submission software to assign contributor roles in structured formats during the process of developing and publishing a paper.2 It was speculated that this would create a better description of contributions, a more useful currency for individual researchers than simply being one of many authors.2 Additionally, greater transparency might prevent or resolve authorship disputes.2 However, for such software to work, a common taxonomy is required to define authors’ contributions. Allen et al.2 tested a 14-role taxonomy on a sample of 230 authors; most found the taxonomy easy to use and comprehensive in covering all the roles of contributors to their papers. Although only a pilot, the themes explored in this study are universal to medical academic publishing; a growing consensus suggests that change in attribution for authors’ contributions is now overdue. Meanwhile, when is a researcher’s contribution of sufficient substance to merit their inclusion as a coauthor on a paper? It is apparent that the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) term ‘substantial contribution’ has not been adequately defined.3 This may have been deliberate to allow for wider application of the ICMJE criteria for authorship. After all, if the definition and criteria for authorship were flouted by the academic community it would not help to address the issue of abuse of authorship. Thus, the ICMJE first criterion, ‘conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of the data’ is open to broad interpretation.3 The American Medical Association Manual of Style, an authority on such matters, defines substantial contribution as follows: ‘a substantial contribution is an important intellectual contribution, without which the work, or an important part of the work, could not have been completed or the manuscript could not have been written or submitted for publication’.4 Sixty years ago, Richard Hewitt of the Mayo Clinic published an article in which he laid the first foundation stones for the discipline of publication ethics.5 He captured the essence of authorship by defining ethical responsibilities and obligations as follows: ‘Authorship cannot be conferred; it
may be undertaken by one who will shoulder the responsibility that goes with it. The reader of a report issued by two or more authors has a right to assume that each author has some authoritative knowledge of the subject, each has contributed to the investigation, and that each has labored on the report to the extent of weighing every word and quantity in it. If we would define publication of unoriginal, repetitious medical material as a violation of medical ethics, and would officially reprove it as such, the tawdry author would be silenced and the genuine one helped. The by-line, then, is not merely a credit-line. He who took some part in the investigation, be it ever so minor, is entitled to credit for what he did. . ..Further, the generous chap who would bestow authorship on another, perhaps without even submitting the manuscript to him, may do his colleague no favor. . .Fundamentally, your integrity is at stake.’5 Ten years later, Derek de Solla Price urged the academic community to be steadfast in maintaining standards of ethics, scholarship and science in the face of the ‘information explosion’.6 Despite the importance of Hewitt’s and de Solla Price’s contributions, it was not until 1978 that uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (URMs) were agreed. A small group of journal editors met in Vancouver in 1978 to consider the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals; their aim was to standardize manuscript format and preparation across journals. Criteria for authorship were subsequently published in the BMJ7 and the Annals of Internal Medicine8 in the mid-1980s, the former being the first guidelines of the ICMJE.9 Multiple revisions, updates and amendments have been published, culminating in the latest version ‘Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals’ (ICMJE Recommendations), published in 2013.3 What is ‘guest’ authorship and how can it be eradicated? In the past, research supervisors and departmental chairs in some disciplines may occasionally have been given guest authorship without necessarily meeting all of the ICMJE criteria for authorship. With academic progress in medicine still largely determined by publications, it may still be hard for contemporary academics to reconcile their aspiration for academic success with the need for strict adherence to publication ethics guidelines. Although senior academics in dermatology have moved with the times, the practice of guest authorship may not yet have been fully eradicated. However, such guest authorship is contrary to the ICMJE guidelines, which clearly state that ‘general supervision of a research group is not sufficient for authorship’. The guidelines go on to explain that ‘acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision does not justify authorship’.
© 2014 British Association of Dermatologists
British Journal of Dermatology (2014) 170, pp1209–1210
DOI: 10.1111/bjd.13095 Some judge of author’s names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Alexander Pope1
1209
1210 Editorial
More pernicious than these examples of guest authorship is the practice of guest authorship for pharmaceutical-sponsored publications that have been ghost written. Ghost authors are defined as having participated sufficiently in the research or analysis and writing of a manuscript to satisfy the ICMJE guidelines, but are not named as coauthors and may not even be acknowledged. The American Medical Association Manual of Style advises that ‘Those participants who have made substantial contributions to a paper, but do not meet all of the authorship criteria should be named, with their permission, in the Acknowledgement along with their contributions and institutional affiliations’.4 A more detailed summary of guest and ghost authorship is beyond the scope of this Editorial, but can be found in scholarly accounts of these practices by Angell9 and Goldacre.10 Both guest and ghost authorship can be reduced and even eradicated by stricter adherence by journals to ICMJE guidelines on authorship, which state ‘Journals that do not use contribution declarations for all authors may require that the submission letter includes a statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors, that the requirements for authorship as stated earlier in this document have been met, and that each author believes that the manuscript represents honest work if that information is not provided in another form’. Ultimately, appropriate and fair authorship attribution rests upon the need for greater awareness of current guidance and for authors to act with integrity in the application of these rules. What does the BJD do to address these authorship issues? Our procedures are underpinned by the experience and guidance of our publisher, Wiley. The BJD editorial team all have access to Wiley’s best practice guidelines (second edition © 2014 Wiley) on publication ethics.11 Additionally, the editor of the BJD is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; http://publicationethics.org/). At the time of writing, COPE serves more than 8500 members around the world and provides practical tools, e-learning, seminars and conferences for journal editors. This creates a forum for journal editors to contribute to the debate on publication ethics and to develop robust practice for their own journals aimed at identifying and dealing effectively with publication ethics issues. Resources offered by COPE include flowcharts to guide editors through the most common publication ethics issues, including authorship disputes. How can contributing authors prevent authorship disputes from contaminating their work? Kevin Eva has the following practical advice: ‘The best way to deal with authorship issues is to discuss them with your team as soon as it becomes clear that a goal is to disseminate your findings and be sure that every member of the team understands the ICMJE criteria,
British Journal of Dermatology (2014) 170, pp1209–1210
because they must be followed’.12 Authors who wish to learn more about publication ethics issues may use free resources from COPE (http://publicationethics.org/). BJD authors also have the option of contacting the editorial office, or our publisher Wiley, for advice. Why should authors take this issue seriously? As Hewitt said, ‘fundamentally, your integrity is at stake’.5
Acknowledgment Irene Hames. 1
Royal Gwent Hospital, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, Cardiff Road, Newport, Gwent, U.K. 2 Cardiff University School of Medicine, Heath Park, Cardiff, U.K. E-mail: [email protected]
A L E X A N S T E Y 1,2
References 1 Pope A. An Essay on Criticism. 1771; Ib, line 212. 2 Allen L, Scott J, Brand A et al. Publishing: credit where credit is due. Nature 2014; 508:312–13. 3 International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Updated December 2013. Available at: http://icmje.org (last accessed 30 April 2014). 4 Iverson C, Christiansen S, Flanagin A et al. AMA Manual of Style, 10th edn. JAMA and Archives Journals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 5 Hewitt RM. Exposition as applied to medicine: a glance at the ethics of it. JAMA 1954; 156:477–9. 6 De Solla Price DJ. Ethics of scientific publication: rules for authors and editorials may depend on something more than taste or convention. Science 1964; 144:655–7. 7 International Committee of Journal Editors. Guidelines on authorship. BMJ 1985; 291:722. 8 Huth EJ. Guidelines on authorship of medical papers. Ann Intern Med 1986; 104:269–74. 9 Angell M. The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive us and What to Do about it. New York, NY and Toronto, ON: Random House, 2004. 10 Goldacre B. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. London: Fourth Estate, 2012. 11 Wiley. Best Practice Guidelines on Publishing Ethics: A Publisher’s Perspective, 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Available at: http:// exchanges.wiley.com/ethicsguidelines (last accessed 30 April 2014). 12 Eva KW. Titles, abstracts and authors. In: How to Write a Paper (Hall CM, ed.), 5th edn, Chapter 6. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2013; 38.
© 2014 British Association of Dermatologists
BJD
British Journal of Dermatology
Authorship issues: grizzles, guests and ghosts
Authorship disputes (grizzles) are one of the commonest manifestations of publication ethics abuses. Furthermore, they may be hard to resolve; it is not possible on reading a multiauthor paper to determine who did what. However, a paper published recently in Nature suggests that this may soon change.2 Developments in digital technology present the prospect of researchers and journals using manuscript submission software to assign contributor roles in structured formats during the process of developing and publishing a paper.2 It was speculated that this would create a better description of contributions, a more useful currency for individual researchers than simply being one of many authors.2 Additionally, greater transparency might prevent or resolve authorship disputes.2 However, for such software to work, a common taxonomy is required to define authors’ contributions. Allen et al.2 tested a 14-role taxonomy on a sample of 230 authors; most found the taxonomy easy to use and comprehensive in covering all the roles of contributors to their papers. Although only a pilot, the themes explored in this study are universal to medical academic publishing; a growing consensus suggests that change in attribution for authors’ contributions is now overdue. Meanwhile, when is a researcher’s contribution of sufficient substance to merit their inclusion as a coauthor on a paper? It is apparent that the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) term ‘substantial contribution’ has not been adequately defined.3 This may have been deliberate to allow for wider application of the ICMJE criteria for authorship. After all, if the definition and criteria for authorship were flouted by the academic community it would not help to address the issue of abuse of authorship. Thus, the ICMJE first criterion, ‘conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of the data’ is open to broad interpretation.3 The American Medical Association Manual of Style, an authority on such matters, defines substantial contribution as follows: ‘a substantial contribution is an important intellectual contribution, without which the work, or an important part of the work, could not have been completed or the manuscript could not have been written or submitted for publication’.4 Sixty years ago, Richard Hewitt of the Mayo Clinic published an article in which he laid the first foundation stones for the discipline of publication ethics.5 He captured the essence of authorship by defining ethical responsibilities and obligations as follows: ‘Authorship cannot be conferred; it
may be undertaken by one who will shoulder the responsibility that goes with it. The reader of a report issued by two or more authors has a right to assume that each author has some authoritative knowledge of the subject, each has contributed to the investigation, and that each has labored on the report to the extent of weighing every word and quantity in it. If we would define publication of unoriginal, repetitious medical material as a violation of medical ethics, and would officially reprove it as such, the tawdry author would be silenced and the genuine one helped. The by-line, then, is not merely a credit-line. He who took some part in the investigation, be it ever so minor, is entitled to credit for what he did. . ..Further, the generous chap who would bestow authorship on another, perhaps without even submitting the manuscript to him, may do his colleague no favor. . .Fundamentally, your integrity is at stake.’5 Ten years later, Derek de Solla Price urged the academic community to be steadfast in maintaining standards of ethics, scholarship and science in the face of the ‘information explosion’.6 Despite the importance of Hewitt’s and de Solla Price’s contributions, it was not until 1978 that uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (URMs) were agreed. A small group of journal editors met in Vancouver in 1978 to consider the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals; their aim was to standardize manuscript format and preparation across journals. Criteria for authorship were subsequently published in the BMJ7 and the Annals of Internal Medicine8 in the mid-1980s, the former being the first guidelines of the ICMJE.9 Multiple revisions, updates and amendments have been published, culminating in the latest version ‘Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals’ (ICMJE Recommendations), published in 2013.3 What is ‘guest’ authorship and how can it be eradicated? In the past, research supervisors and departmental chairs in some disciplines may occasionally have been given guest authorship without necessarily meeting all of the ICMJE criteria for authorship. With academic progress in medicine still largely determined by publications, it may still be hard for contemporary academics to reconcile their aspiration for academic success with the need for strict adherence to publication ethics guidelines. Although senior academics in dermatology have moved with the times, the practice of guest authorship may not yet have been fully eradicated. However, such guest authorship is contrary to the ICMJE guidelines, which clearly state that ‘general supervision of a research group is not sufficient for authorship’. The guidelines go on to explain that ‘acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision does not justify authorship’.
© 2014 British Association of Dermatologists
British Journal of Dermatology (2014) 170, pp1209–1210
DOI: 10.1111/bjd.13095 Some judge of author’s names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Alexander Pope1
1209
1210 Editorial
More pernicious than these examples of guest authorship is the practice of guest authorship for pharmaceutical-sponsored publications that have been ghost written. Ghost authors are defined as having participated sufficiently in the research or analysis and writing of a manuscript to satisfy the ICMJE guidelines, but are not named as coauthors and may not even be acknowledged. The American Medical Association Manual of Style advises that ‘Those participants who have made substantial contributions to a paper, but do not meet all of the authorship criteria should be named, with their permission, in the Acknowledgement along with their contributions and institutional affiliations’.4 A more detailed summary of guest and ghost authorship is beyond the scope of this Editorial, but can be found in scholarly accounts of these practices by Angell9 and Goldacre.10 Both guest and ghost authorship can be reduced and even eradicated by stricter adherence by journals to ICMJE guidelines on authorship, which state ‘Journals that do not use contribution declarations for all authors may require that the submission letter includes a statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors, that the requirements for authorship as stated earlier in this document have been met, and that each author believes that the manuscript represents honest work if that information is not provided in another form’. Ultimately, appropriate and fair authorship attribution rests upon the need for greater awareness of current guidance and for authors to act with integrity in the application of these rules. What does the BJD do to address these authorship issues? Our procedures are underpinned by the experience and guidance of our publisher, Wiley. The BJD editorial team all have access to Wiley’s best practice guidelines (second edition © 2014 Wiley) on publication ethics.11 Additionally, the editor of the BJD is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; http://publicationethics.org/). At the time of writing, COPE serves more than 8500 members around the world and provides practical tools, e-learning, seminars and conferences for journal editors. This creates a forum for journal editors to contribute to the debate on publication ethics and to develop robust practice for their own journals aimed at identifying and dealing effectively with publication ethics issues. Resources offered by COPE include flowcharts to guide editors through the most common publication ethics issues, including authorship disputes. How can contributing authors prevent authorship disputes from contaminating their work? Kevin Eva has the following practical advice: ‘The best way to deal with authorship issues is to discuss them with your team as soon as it becomes clear that a goal is to disseminate your findings and be sure that every member of the team understands the ICMJE criteria,
British Journal of Dermatology (2014) 170, pp1209–1210
because they must be followed’.12 Authors who wish to learn more about publication ethics issues may use free resources from COPE (http://publicationethics.org/). BJD authors also have the option of contacting the editorial office, or our publisher Wiley, for advice. Why should authors take this issue seriously? As Hewitt said, ‘fundamentally, your integrity is at stake’.5
Acknowledgment Irene Hames. 1
Royal Gwent Hospital, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, Cardiff Road, Newport, Gwent, U.K. 2 Cardiff University School of Medicine, Heath Park, Cardiff, U.K. E-mail: [email protected]
A L E X A N S T E Y 1,2
References 1 Pope A. An Essay on Criticism. 1771; Ib, line 212. 2 Allen L, Scott J, Brand A et al. Publishing: credit where credit is due. Nature 2014; 508:312–13. 3 International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Updated December 2013. Available at: http://icmje.org (last accessed 30 April 2014). 4 Iverson C, Christiansen S, Flanagin A et al. AMA Manual of Style, 10th edn. JAMA and Archives Journals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 5 Hewitt RM. Exposition as applied to medicine: a glance at the ethics of it. JAMA 1954; 156:477–9. 6 De Solla Price DJ. Ethics of scientific publication: rules for authors and editorials may depend on something more than taste or convention. Science 1964; 144:655–7. 7 International Committee of Journal Editors. Guidelines on authorship. BMJ 1985; 291:722. 8 Huth EJ. Guidelines on authorship of medical papers. Ann Intern Med 1986; 104:269–74. 9 Angell M. The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive us and What to Do about it. New York, NY and Toronto, ON: Random House, 2004. 10 Goldacre B. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. London: Fourth Estate, 2012. 11 Wiley. Best Practice Guidelines on Publishing Ethics: A Publisher’s Perspective, 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Available at: http:// exchanges.wiley.com/ethicsguidelines (last accessed 30 April 2014). 12 Eva KW. Titles, abstracts and authors. In: How to Write a Paper (Hall CM, ed.), 5th edn, Chapter 6. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2013; 38.
© 2014 British Association of Dermatologists
