Authorship

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Authorship

• Kazem Heidari

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Who is an author?
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Decision about Authorship

• The most sensitive part of writing a paper

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• An author is generally considered to be someone
  who has made substantive intellectual
  contributions to a published study
• Biomedical authorship continues to have important
  academic, social, and financial implications.

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Criteria for authorship

• Authorship credit should be based on
• Substantial contributions to conception and
  design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and
  interpretation of data.
• Drafting the article or revising it critically
  for important intellectual content.
• Final approval of the version to be published
• Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3

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• Group author When submitting a manuscript, the
  corresponding author should clearly indicate the
  preferred citation and should clearly identify
  all individual authors as well as the group name

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• Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or
  general supervision of the research group, alone,
  does not justify authorship.

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• All persons designated as authors should qualify
  for authorship
• Each author should have participated sufficiently
  in the work to take public responsibility for
  appropriate portions of the content.

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• Authorship of multi-center trials
• All members of the group who are named as authors
  should fully meet the above criteria for
  authorship

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Order of authors names

• The sequence of authors should be determined by
  the relative overall contributions to the
  manuscript.

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• The order of authorship on the byline should be a
  joint decision of the co-authors
• Authors should be prepared to explain the order
  in which authors are listed.

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• Some journals now also request that one or more
  authors, referred to as "guarantors" be
  identified as the persons who take responsibility
  for the integrity of the work as a whole, from
  inception to published article, and publish that
  information.

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First Author

• The first author should be that person who
  contributed most to the work, including writing
  of the manuscript

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First Author

• Should have ...
• adapted a hypothesis
• defined precise methods
• participated in a major way in analysis and
  interpretation of results
• written the paper

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Lead authorCorresponding author

• A person who is responsible for ensuring that all
  other authors review and approve the final
  version.

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Co-Author
Should have made significant contributions to the
planning and execution of the research, the
methods and procedures, the collection and
analysis of the data, etc.
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Senior Author
Formulated the original hypothesis or provided
significant intellectual resources provided
constructive criticism of the manuscript
accepted responsibility for the findings and the
authorship
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Order of authorss names

• It is common practice to have the senior author
  appear last, sometimes regardless of his or
• her contribution.

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For young authors

• There are two positions that count first and
  last. And attached to either position is the
  status associated with being the author for
  correspondence.

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For young authors

• The best combination is to be first author and
  the author for correspondence.

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• All contributors who do not meet the criteria for
  authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments
  section
• who provided purely technical help
• writing assistance
• department chair who provided only general
  support
• Financial and material support

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AuthorshipWhat Doesnt Count

• Supervision of first author, Chair of dept.,
  Chief of division, director of laboratory, etc.
• Statistical advice (alone)
• Data entry, processing, or management
• Providing or helping obtain space, money, staff,
  or other resources

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Order of authors names

• The senior author sometimes takes
  responsibility for writing the paper, especially
  when the research student has not yet learned the
  skills of scientific writing. The senior author
  then becomes the corresponding author, but should
  the student be the first author?

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Order of authors names

• Some supervisors put their students first,
  others put their own names first. Perhaps it
  should be decided on the absolute amount of time
  spent on the project by the student (in getting
  the data) and the supervisor (in providing help
  and in writing the paper). Or perhaps the
  supervisor should be satisfied with being
  corresponding author, regardless of time
  committed to the project

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Order of authors names

• A sensible policy adopted by many supervisors
  is to give the student a fixed period of time to
  write the first draft of the paper. If the
  student does not deliver, the supervisor may then
  write the paper and put her or his own name
  first.

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Most scientists have their own policy !

• Whatever policy your supervisor or colleagues
  have, there are usually good reasons for them
  tradition, experience, or just the plain old
  selfish genes that we all carry.

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How to avoid problems with authorship?

• Agree with your collaborators that you will
  follow the international guidelines.

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• 2-Agree before starting the research who will be
  an author, and if necessary discuss why each
  person should be an author. (Clarify the
  requirements)

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• 3- Agree on the tentative order of authors and on
  who will be corresponding author.

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• 4-Dont add a senior author to improve the
  chances of publication

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Honorary vs Ghost !

• Honorary authors named authors who have not met
  authorship criteria
• Ghost authors individuals not named as authors
  but who contributed substantially to the work

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Prevalence of Articles With Honorary Authors and
Ghost Authors in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals

• - 19 had evidence of honorary authors
• - 11 had evidence of ghost authors
• - 2 had evidence of both.
• (JAMA. 1998280222-224)

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Honorary authorship

• Three large studies
• 26 of 1,014 authors in 10 journals(Shapiro et
  al 1994)
• 17 of 884 authors in AJR (Sloan1996)
• 19 of 809 articles in Ann Intern Med,JAMA, N
  Engl J Med

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Honarary authorship

• Three specialty journals (Flanagin et al, 1998)
• 16 of research articles
• 26 of review articles
• 21 of editorials and commentaries

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Gost authorship

• Largest study
• 11 of 809 articles in Ann Intern Med, JAMA,N
  Engl J Med
• Three specialty journals (Flanagin et al, 1998)
• 13 of research articles
• 10 of review articles
• 6 of editorials and commentaries

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AuthorshipWhat Doesnt Count

• Providing or recruiting study patients or other
  material
• Collecting interview data or other specimens or
  measurements 
• Coordinating the data collection process

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Authors contributionvsContributors
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Example for authors contribution

• Shahin Akhondzadeh
• (principle investigator and statistical support,
  clinical neuropsychopharmacologist)
• Mohammad Reza Mohammadi (clinical coordinator,
  psychiatrist)
• Hassan Mohajeri (trialist ,resident of
  psychiatry )
• Homayoun Amini (clinical coordinator ,
  psychiatrist )

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Comments on Vancouver criteria

• The Vancouver criteria suggest that all authors
  should have a significant input tothe design,
  organisation, analysis and write up of a study.
  This is over the top, even with the best will in
  the world it is rarely possible for more than 3
  people to have a significant input to all areas
  of a study. The authors would be falling over
  each other.
• to be continued

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Comments on Vancouver criteria

• In reality the best that is usually achieved is
  each author offers a specificexpertise and all
  authors comment on the final draft of the
  manuscript. Only theprimary author is truly
  involved in all aspects of the study.
• Stuart Derbyshire

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Authorship

• How easy it is to get into gray areas about
  right and wrong!

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Thank you!