‘Author Contribution Details’ and not ‘Authorship Sequence’ as a merit to determine credit: A need to relook at the current Indian practice

Abstract

The Medical Council of India (MCI) has made research publications in indexed medical journals an obligatory requirement for promotion of medical teachers. In 2015, MCI guidelines said the first and the second author would receive credit for a research paper. In 2017, the amended guidelines provided credit to the first and the corresponding authors instead. We reviewed the common types of authorship order in medical publications from across the world and noted that before the 1990s, corresponding authors were rarely acknowledged and were not considered more important than any of the co-authors. By 2016, the corresponding author was usually the first or the last author. With an increase in collaborative research globally, more and more papers are published with multiple first, last or corresponding authors. Some journals have revised their Instructions to Authors to acknowledge co-first authors equally. Since 2017, PubMed also displays equal contributors in the author byline while still allowing searches for 'First author' and 'Last author' supporting the 'first and last author emphasis'. However, most guidelines mention that the authorship order is a collective decision of the authors. Any association between authorship sequence and credit for an article is debatable. Some journals allow or even insist on authorship statements to explain each contributor's role. Standardized vocabularies and taxonomies such as the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) system can highlight contributions of individual authors. Some suggest doing away with the authorship order altogether. Readers and assessors should look at the 'author contribution details' rather than the 'authorship order' before drawing any conclusions about contributions of each author.

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