Ghost-writers and “honorary” authors still haunt a fifth of articles in the top medical journals, despite efforts to combat inappropriate authorship over the last decade, new research shows.
Writing in the BMJ, research and editorial staff from the journal, JAMA, concluded that 21% of articles published in 2008 in general medical journals with the highest impact factors had “an inappropriate honorary author”, while nearly 8% “may have had an unnamed important contributor”.
Their study surveyed corresponding authors of 630 articles published in six high impact journals in 2008 – the Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, Nature Medicine, the NEJM and PLoS Medicine.
Articles were classed as ghost-written if it became apparent that they were authored by someone not listed as an author.
Authors were considered “honorary” if they did not meet accepted criteria including being able to explain the major conclusions of the article and having written at least part of the manuscript.
Ghost authorship had declined from 11.5% to 7.9% between 1996 and 2008, however there was no significant change in honorary authorship, the study found.