Honorary Authorship: Is There Any Chance to Stop It? Analysis of the Literature and a Personal Opinion

Activity for CUREs to increase student understanding and application of responsible authorship and publication practices

Professional development of scientists is enhanced by training students in responsible conduct of research earlier in their careers. One aspect of responsible conduct of research is authorship ethics, which concerns granting of credit to those who make intellectual contributions to the research. The activity discussed in this article emphasizes how authorship ethics can be integrated with Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) and includes an adaption that could also be used for independent research students. The activity allows students to reflect upon inequalities and problems seen in scientific authorship, including gender bias, failure to credit effort (ghostwriters), and inclusion of authors that did not meaningfully contribute to the work (honorary/gift authorship). Themes seen in student reflections on how they could demonstrate ethics in authorship included: determining authorship by contribution, appropriate attributions on curriculum vitas (CV) and posters, different credit levels, understanding authorship criteria, and tracking contributions. Themes seen in student reflections on the importance of authorship were proper authorship credit distribution, authorship impacting career opportunities, and accountability in research. In the activity, students also created attributions for a poster to be presented from their research. We found that most students were able to create attributions that were correctly formatted, included the same authors, and positioned authors in the same order as other group members, matching what was presented on the finalized poster. We found that students' reflection on authorship and this professionalization of their activities in their CURE led to modest increases in their view of themselves as scientists.

Undeserved authorship in surgical research: an underestimated bias with potential side effects on academic careers

The incidence of courtesy authorship in research over time has probably increased due to the enormous pressure to publish to increase the bibliometric indexes necessary to achieve an academic role. The aim of this survey was to quantify and characterize this research malpractice among a very selected group of surgeons from different surgical specialties belonging to the European Association of Surgery (ESA). E-mail addresses for the invitation to take part to the survey were collected by the Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting final program. Five-item were designed and developed by the authors using an online platform. Eighty-six members from 21 countries completed the survey (female/male ratio: 0.09). In the last 10 years, almost half of the responders (41, 47.7%, 37 academics) have included colleagues for courtesy authorship. The most common reason of courtesy authorships was to support the academic career of another researcher (62.5%). Other reasons were fear of retaliation (12.5%), reciprocal authorship (12.5%) or support for a partner (10%). This survey showed that undeserved authorship is sadly confirmed to be a common research misconduct across any countries and medical specialties, even among a very selected group of surgeons with international reputation irrespective of the academic position.

Bibliometric Analysis: Six Decades of Scientific Production from a Nationwide Institution: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) from Mexico

BACKGROUND

This study employed bibliometric analysis to ascertain the research focus areas among a group of Mexican physicians affiliated with the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE). ISSSTE, a healthcare institution catering to a diverse range of diseases, offers a distinctive perspective on the investigated specialties within the realm of health. The primary objective was to identify knowledge gaps in medical care disciplines through a comprehensive examination of scholarly publications.

METHODS

We retrieved Scopus papers affiliated with "ISSSTE" and saved them as .CSV files. Subsequently, we employed VOSviewer, biblioshiny, and bibliometrix for bibliometric analysis. This enabled us to identify prominent institutions, prolific authors, highly cited researchers, and their respective affiliations.

RESULTS

Our analysis identified 2063 publications; the specialty internal medicine accounted for the greatest proportion with 831 publications. Original papers accounted for 82% of the total, with 52% of them being written in Spanish. The majority of scientific output, 92%, originated from Mexico City. The annual production has steadily increased since 2010, peaking in 2021 with over 200 publications. However, papers on prevalent conditions, such as metabolic syndrome, received limited citations, and the L0 index (percentage of uncited items) for all papers is close to 60%. Scopus mislabeled one affiliation, and some cases show a low paper-to-author ratio of 0.5 Discussion: Additional concerns, such as honorary authorship due to excessive authors per paper, and the underlying causes of low citation rates in Mexican publications, warrant further examination. Moreover, our research emphasizes the urgency of bolstering research and development funding, which was consistently below 0.5% of GDP for the past four decades, falling short of legal mandates and international benchmarks. We endorse the establishment of robust research collectives in Latin America to address these challenges, foster regional scientific output, and transition from knowledge consumers to knowledge producers, thereby reducing dependence on foreign technology.

Integrity in cardiovascular imaging research

OBJECTIVE

To gain more insight in scientific integrity in the field of cardiovascular imaging research by conducting a survey among all corresponding authors who published in cardiovascular imaging journals.

METHODS

Corresponding authors who published in one of eight major cardiovascular imaging journals in 2021 were requested to complete a questionnaire about scientific integrity in the field of cardiovascular imaging.

RESULTS

Responses from 160 corresponding authors were received. The majority of respondents had a medical doctor degree (81.1%), held an academic position (93.8%, of which 44.0% as full professor), and had >10 years of research experience (72.5%). Overall confidence in the integrity of published scientific work in cardiovascular imaging was high, with a median score of 8 out of 10 (IQR 2). 5 respondents (3.1%) declared having committed scientific fraud in the past 5 years and 38 respondents (23.8%) declared having witnessed or suspected scientific fraud by anyone from their department in the past 5 years. 85.6% of respondents think that publication bias is present. 50% of respondents declared that any of their publications in the past 5 years had a co-author who actually did not deserve this co-authorship.

CONCLUSION

Experts in the field report that several forms of scientific fraud, publication bias, and honorary authorship are present in cardiovascular imaging research. Despite these reports of academic dishonesty, overall confidence in the integrity of cardiovascular imaging research is deemed high.

Scientific Fraud, Publication Bias, and Honorary Authorship in Nuclear Medicine

Our objective was to investigate nuclear medicine scientists' experience with scientific fraud, publication bias, and honorary authorship. Methods: Corresponding authors who published an article in one of the 15 general nuclear medicine journals (according to Journal Citation Reports) in 2021 received an invitation to participate in a survey on scientific integrity. Results: In total, 254 (12.4%) of 1,897 corresponding authors completed the survey, of whom 11 (4.3%) admitted to having committed scientific fraud and 54 (21.3%) reported having witnessed or suspected scientific fraud by someone in their department in the past 5 y. Publication bias was considered present by 222 (87.4%) respondents, and honorary authorship practices were experienced by 100 (39.4%) respondents. Respondents assigned a median score of 8 (range, 2-10) on a 1- to 10-point scale for their overall confidence in the integrity of published work. On multivariate analysis, researchers in Asia had significantly more confidence in the integrity of published work, with a β-coefficient of 0.983 (95% CI, 0.512-1.454; P < 0.001). A subset of 22 respondents raised additional concerns, mainly about authorship criteria and assignments, the generally poor quality of published studies, and perverse incentives of journals and publishers. Conclusion: Scientific fraud, publication bias, and honorary authorship appear to be nonnegligible practices in nuclear medicine. Overall confidence in the integrity of published work is high, particularly among researchers in Asia.

Cancer research across Africa: a comparative bibliometric analysis

INTRODUCTION

Research is a critical pillar in national cancer control planning. However, there is a dearth of evidence for countries to implement affordable strategies. The WHO and various Commissions have recommended developing stakeholder-based needs assessments based on objective data to generate evidence to inform national and regional prioritisation of cancer research needs and goals.

METHODOLOGY

Bibliometric algorithms (macros) were developed and validated to assess cancer research outputs of all 54 African countries over a 12-year period (2009-2020). Subanalysis included collaboration patterns, site and domain-specific focus of research and understanding authorship dynamics by both position and sex. Detailed subanalysis was performed to understand multiple impact metrics and context relative outputs in comparison with the disease burden as well as the application of a funding thesaurus to determine funding resources.

RESULTS

African countries in total published 23 679 cancer research papers over the 12-year period (2009-2020) with the fractional African contribution totalling 16 201 papers and the remaining 7478 from authors from out with the continent. The total number of papers increased rapidly with time, with an annual growth rate of 15%. The 49 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries together published just 5281 papers, of which South Africa's contribution was 2206 (42% of the SSA total, 14% of all Africa) and Nigeria's contribution was 997 (19% of the SSA total, 4% of all Africa). Cancer research accounted for 7.9% of all African biomedical research outputs (African research in infectious diseases was 5.1 times than that of cancer research). Research outputs that are proportionally low relative to their burden across Africa are paediatric, cervical, oesophageal and prostate cancer. African research mirrored that of Western countries in terms of its focus on discovery science and pharmaceutical research. The percentages of female researchers in Africa were comparable with those elsewhere, but only in North African and some Anglophone countries.

CONCLUSIONS

There is an imbalance in relevant local research generation on the continent and cancer control efforts. The recommendations articulated in our five-point plan arising from these data are broadly focused on structural changes, for example, overt inclusion of research into national cancer control planning and financial, for example, for countries to spend 10% of a notional 1% gross domestic expenditure on research and development on cancer.

Scientific integrity and fraud in radiology research

PURPOSE

To investigate the view of radiologists on the integrity of their own and their colleagues' scientific work.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Corresponding authors of articles that were published in 12 general radiology journals in 2021 were invited to participate in a survey on scientific integrity.

RESULTS

A total of 219 (6.2 %) of 3,511 invited corresponding authors participated. Thirteen (5.9 %) respondents reported having committed scientific fraud, and 60 (27.4 %) witnessed or suspect scientific fraud among their departmental members in the past 5 years. Misleading reporting (32.2 %), duplicate/redundant publication (26.3 %), plagiarism (15.3 %), and data manipulation/falsification (13.6 %) were the most commonly reported types of scientific fraud. Publication bias exists according to 184 (84.5 %) respondents, and 89 (40.6 %) respondents had honorary authors on their publications in the past 5 years. General confidence in the integrity of scientific publications ranged between 2 and 10 (median: 8) on a 0-10 point scale. Common topics of interest and concern among respondents were authorship criteria and assignments, perverse incentives (including the influence of money, funding, and academic promotions on the practice of research), and poorly performed research without intentional fraud.

CONCLUSION

Radiology researchers reported that scientific fraud and other undesirable practices such as publication bias and honorary authorship are relatively common. Their general confidence in the scientific integrity of published work was relatively high, but far from perfect. These data may trigger stakeholders in the radiology community to place scientific integrity higher on the agenda, and to initiate cultural and policy reforms to remove perverse research incentives.