The DOI matches its Crossref record; 20 of the 20 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Ghost Authorship in Industry-Initiated Randomised Trials
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Ghost authorship, the failure to name, as an author, an individual who has made substantial contributions to an article, may result in lack of accountability. The prevalence and nature of ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials is not known. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a cohort study comparing protocols and corresponding publications for industry-initiated trials approved by the Scientific-Ethical Committees for Copenhagen and Frederiksberg in 1994-1995. We defined ghost authorship as present if individuals who wrote the trial protocol, performed the statistical analyses, or wrote the manuscript, were not listed as authors of the publication, or as members of a study group or writing committee, or in an acknowledgment. We identified 44 industry-initiated trials. We did not find any trial protocol or publication that stated explicitly that the clinical study report or the manuscript was to be written or was written by the clinical investigators, and none of the protocols stated that clinical investigators were to be involved with data analysis. We found evidence of ghost authorship for 33 trials (75%; 95% confidence interval 60%-87%). The prevalence of ghost authorship was increased to 91% (40 of 44 articles; 95% confidence interval 78%-98%) when we included cases where a person qualifying for authorship was acknowledged rather than appearing as an author. In 31 trials, the ghost authors we identified were statisticians. It is likely that we have overlooked some ghost authors, as we had very limited information to identify the possible omission of other individuals who would have qualified as authors. CONCLUSIONS: Ghost authorship in industry-initiated trials is very common. Its prevalence could be considerably reduced, and transparency improved, if existing guidelines were followed, and if protocols were publicly available.
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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 [39]
In the citing paper
“Only a minority of reviews (2%) reported being funded by for-profit sources, but the true proportion may be higher [171].”
From The PRISMA Statement for Reporting Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of Studies That Evaluate Health Care Interventions: Explanation and Elaboration (2009) · cites this paper as [171]
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Citations
Cites
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Self-citationUneasy alliance—clinical investigators and the pharmaceutical industry
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“We conclude that ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials is very common, and we believe that this practice serves commercial purposes [13,17,21,22].”
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Self-citationPrevalence of Honorary and Ghost Authorship in Cochrane Reviews
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“In contrast, these two surveys, which relied on self-reporting, found rates of ghost authorship of 13% [1] and 11% [6], respectively.”
InfluentialInterface between authorship, industry and science in the domain of therapeutics
Healy, D., & Cattell, D. (2003) · The British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.183.1.22 · Cited by 218 · cited 4×
“We conclude that ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials is very common, and we believe that this practice serves commercial purposes [13,17,21,22].”
InfluentialGood publication practice for pharmaceutical companies
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Research works printed but not linked: 20
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Metadata
- Authors
- Gøtzsche, P. C., Hróbjartsson, A., Johansen, H. K., Haahr, M. T., Altman, D. G., & Chan, A.-W.
- Affiliations
- Cochrane (DK)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Gøtzsche, Peter C
- Venue
- PLoS Medicine
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2007-01-16
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- e19
- ISSN
- 1549-1277 (ISSN-L)
- 1549-1676
- PMC
- PMC1769411
- OpenAlex
- W2095312096
- Cited by
- 289
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 9
- FWCI
- 25.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Cancer Research UK
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Issues, ethics and legal aspects › Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare
- Social Sciences › Education › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Keywords
- ghost authorship, authorship criteria, pharmaceutical industry, acknowledgment of contributors, research transparency
- MeSH terms
- Authorship, Humans, Publishing, Scientific Misconduct, Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic, Biomedical Research
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