Accommodating an Uninvited Guest: Perspectives of Researchers in Switzerland on 'Honorary' Authorship.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the attitudes and reactions of researchers towards an authorship claim made by a researcher in a position of authority who has not made any scientific contribution to a manuscript or helped to write it. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 33 researchers at three seniority levels working in biomedicine and the life sciences in Switzerland. This manuscript focuses on the analysis of participants' responses when presented with a vignette describing an authorship assignment dilemma within a research group. The analysis indicates that researchers use a variety of explanations and arguments to justify inclusion of what guidelines would describe as honorary or guest authorship. Fuzzy parameters such as "substantial contribution" lead to varied interpretation and consequently convenient application of authorship guidelines in practice. Factors such as the culture of the research group, the values and practice shaped by the research leaders, the hierarchy and relative (perceived) positions of power within research institutions, and the importance given to publications as the currency for academic success and growth tend to have a strong influence on authorship practice. Unjustified authorship assignment practices can be reduced to some extent by creating empowering research cultures where each researcher irrespective of his/her career stage feels empowered to confidently raise concerns without fearing adverse impact on their professional lives. However, individual researchers and research institutions currently have limited influence on established methods for evaluating academic success, which is primarily based on the number of high impact publications.

Industry Collaboration and Primary Guest Authorship of High-Impact Randomized Clinical Trials: A Cross-Sectional Study.

BACKGROUND: Journals have increased disclosure requirements in recent years, in part to deter guest authorship. The prevalence of guest authorship among primary authors (first and last) in the current era of increased disclosure requirements is unknown. OBJECTIVES: Our aim was to examine the self-reported prevalence of guest authorship among primary authors from a sample of randomized clinical trials with and without industry funding and industry collaboration in the design, analysis or reporting of trials. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of randomized, drug/device clinical trials with published details on the "Role of the Funding Source/Sponsor" published in high-impact biomedical journals between 1 December 2011 and 31 November 2012. Phase 1 or 2 trials, secondary trial analyses, and trials that were not listed on ClinicalTrials.gov were excluded. Primary guest authorship was defined, based on International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria, when neither the first nor last author contributed to either of the following: 1) the design of the trial or the analysis/interpretation of data; or 2) drafting part or all of the manuscript. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred and sixty-eight randomized clinical trials that met inclusion criteria were included. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We measured differences in the prevalence of guest authorship between trials with neither industry funding nor collaboration and 1) trials with industry funding without collaboration, and 2) trials with industry funding with collaboration. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of primary guest authorship was 6 % (10/168). Primary guest authorship was significantly more common in trials with industry funding with collaboration than in those with neither industry funding nor collaboration [13.2 % (10/76) vs. 0 % (0/39); p < 0.02]. Primary guest authorship did not differ between trials with industry funding without collaboration and trials with neither industry funding nor collaboration. CONCLUSIONS: Among a sample of randomized, drug/device clinical trials in high-impact biomedical journals, primary guest authorship was overall uncommon and occurred exclusively among trials with industry funding with collaboration.

The "Monsanto papers" and the nature of ghostwriting and related practices in contemporary peer review scientific literature.

The Monsanto company - now acquired by Bayer - has been accused of ghostwriting articles within peer review literature, with the goal of using influential names to front its content in defence of the herbicide Roundup. Here, I conduct a detailed analysis of three Monsanto review articles and a five-article journal supplement for which detailed information from company emails is publicly available following litigation over Roundup. All the articles had external, but not Monsanto authors, and ghostly practices including ghost authorship, corporate ghost authorship and ghost management were evident in their development. There was clear evidence of ghostwriting - that is, drafting of the manuscript by non-authors - in only two cases. I found no evidence of undeserving authorship among the external authors. The articles complied with the disclosure requirements of their journals, save for the journal supplement. While crude ghostwriting did occur, much of the literature involved subtler practices through which Monsanto exercised control over content, while the attribution of the articles downplayed the company's role - and correspondingly aggrandized that of the external authors. Such practices are widespread within industry journal literature and are the responsibility of byline authors and journals as well as corporations. I discuss these cultural problems and consider remedies.

Honorary authorship in health sciences: a protocol for a systematic review of survey research.

BACKGROUND: Honorary authorship refers to the practice of naming an individual who has made little or no contribution to a publication as an author. Honorary authorship inflates the output estimates of honorary authors and deflates the value of the work by authors who truly merit authorship. This manuscript presents the protocol for a systematic review that will assess the prevalence of five honorary authorship issues in health sciences. METHODS: Surveys of authors of scientific publications in health sciences that assess prevalence estimates will be eligible. No selection criteria will be set for the time point for measuring outcomes, the setting, the language of the publication, and the publication status. Eligible manuscripts are searched from inception onwards in PubMed, Lens.org , and Dimensions.ai. Two calibrated authors will independently search, determine eligibility of manuscripts, and conduct data extraction. The quality of each review outcome for each eligible manuscript will be assessed with a 14-item checklist developed and piloted for this review. Data will be qualitatively synthesized and quantitative syntheses will be performed where feasible. Criteria for precluding quantitative syntheses were defined a priori. The pooled random effects double arcsine transformed summary event rates of five outcomes on honorary authorship issues with the pertinent 95% confidence intervals will be calculated if these criteria are met. Summary estimates will be displayed after back-transformation. Stata software (Stata Corporation, College Station, TX, USA) version 16 will be used for all statistical analyses. Statistical heterogeneity will be assessed using Tau2 and Chi2 tests and I2 to quantify inconsistency. DISCUSSION: The outcomes of the planned systematic review will give insights in the magnitude of honorary authorship in health sciences and could direct new research studies to develop and implement strategies to address this problem. However, the validity of the outcomes could be influenced by low response rates, inadequate research design, weighting issues, and recall bias in the eligible surveys. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: This protocol was registered a priori in the Open Science Framework (OSF) link: https://osf.io/5nvar/ .