Pondering authorship: a symptom of a deeper malaise

Abstract

Pondering authorship: a symptom of a deeper malaise'Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contribution to (a) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to (b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on (c) final approval of the version to be published.Conditions (a), (b) and (c) must all be met.' [l] 'The most serious potential consequence of "gift" authorship is the spectre of dishonesty.' [2] Just a few months after Rollin wrote these words in her editorial, 'How many authors?, the practice of gift authorship deprived British obstetrics and gynaecology of its journal editor and the president of its Royal College, when he admitted that he had allowed his name to be put on a paper simply because he was head of the department in which the work was done.These bare facts omit the most important and most telling part of the story.The resignation was forced not because of gift authorship, but because the paper, a case report of a re-implanted ectopic pregnancy, was fraudulent [3].The story received much media attention, but the Dairy Mail, with the rest of the press in pursuit, would probably have shown little interest if the report had been genuine-despite the scientifically prestigious journal Nature believing that gift authorship is a scientific dishonesty: 'a disreputable and also a dangerous practice'

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