| Title: |
Awareness, usage and perceptions of authorship guidelines: an international survey of biomedical authors ; BMJ Open |
| Authors: |
SCHROTER, S.; MONTAGNI, Ilaria; LODER, E.; EIKERMANN, M.; SCHAFFNER, E.; KURTH, T. |
| Publication Year: |
2020 |
| Subject Terms: |
HEALTHY; Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]/Santé publique et épidémiologie |
| Description: |
Objectives To investigate authors’ awareness and use of authorship guidelines, and to assess their perceptions of the fairness of authorship decisions. Design A cross-sectional online survey. Setting and participants Corresponding authors of research papers submitted in 2014 to 18 BMJ journals. Results 3859/12 646 (31%) researchers responded. They worked in 93 countries and varied in research experience. Of these, 1326 (34%) reported their institution had an authorship policy providing criteria for authorship; 2871 (74%) were ‘very familiar’ with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ authorship criteria and 3358 (87%) reported that guidelines were beneficial when preparing manuscripts. Furthermore, 2609 (68%) reported that their use was ‘sometimes’ or ‘frequently’ encouraged in their research setting. However, 2859 respondents (74%) reported that they had been involved in a study at least once where someone was added as an author who had not contributed substantially (honorary authorship), and 1305 (34%) where someone was not listed as an author but had contributed substantially (ghost authorship). Only 740 (19%) reported that they had never experienced either honorary or ghost authorship; 1115 (29%) reported that they had experienced both at least once. There was no clear pattern in experience of authorship misappropriation by continent. For their last coauthored article, 2187 (57%) reported that explicit authorship criteria had been used to determine eligibility, and 3088 (80%) felt that the decision made was fair. When institutions frequently encouraged use of authorship guidelines, authorship eligibility was more likely to be discussed early (817 of 1410, 58%) and perceived as fairer (1273 of 1410, 90%) compared with infrequent encouragement (974 of 2449, 40%, and 1891 of 2449, 74%). Conclusions Despite a high level of awareness of authorship guidelines and criteria, these are not so widely used; more explicit encouragement of their use by institutions may result in more favourable use of ... |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| Language: |
English |
| DOI: |
10.1136/bmjopen-2020-036899 |
| Availability: |
https://oskar-bordeaux.fr/handle/20.500.12278/26259; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12278/26259; https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-036899 |
| Rights: |
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States ; open ; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.CD1C6A56 |
| Database: |
BASE |