Awareness, usage and perceptions of authorship guidelines: an international survey of biomedical authors
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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 guidelines by authors.
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“Naming of authors can also help to identify conflicts of interest (item 7b) and reduce ghost and gift authorship.38 39 40 41”
From SPIRIT 2025 explanation and elaboration: updated guideline for protocols of randomised trials (2025) · cites this paper as [40]
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SPIRIT 2025 explanation and elaboration: updated guideline for protocols of randomised trials
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- Authors
- Schroter, S., Montagni, I., Loder, E., Eikermann, M., Schäffner, E., & Kurth, T.
- Affiliations
- BMJ Group (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Université de Bordeaux (FR)
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (US)
- Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Montagni, Ilaria
- Venue
- BMJ Open
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2020-09
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- e036899
- ISSN
- 2044-6055 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7507845
- OpenAlex
- W3087759576
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 9.87
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- BMJ Open (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
- Oskar-Bordeaux (Universite de Bordeaux) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Keywords
- authorship criteria, ICMJE authorship criteria, honorary authorship, ghost authorship, co-authorship, research integrity
- MeSH terms
- Authorship, Cross-Sectional Studies, Humans, Perception, Publishing, Surveys and Questionnaires, Biomedical Research
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