Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University, , Kuwait, Kuwait.
J Med Ethics. 2014 May;40(5):346-8. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2012-101311. Epub 2013 Aug 17.
The number of coauthors in the medical literature has increased over the past 50 years as authorship continues to have important academic, social and financial implications.
The study aim was to determine the prevalence of honorary authorship in biomedical publications and identify the factors that lead to its existence. An email with a survey link was sent anonymously to 9283 corresponding authors of PubMed articles published within 1 year of contact.
A completed survey was obtained from 1246 corresponding authors, a response rate of 15.75%. One-third (33.4%) admitted that they had added authors who did not deserve authorship credit. Origin of the study from Europe and Asia (p ≤ 0.001 and 0.005, respectively), study type as case report/case series (p=0.036) and increasing number of coauthors were found to be the associated factors on multivariate analysis. Journal impact factor was also found to be associated with honorary authorship (mean journal impact factor was 4.82 (SD 6.32) for those who self-reported honorary authorship and 5.60 (SD 7.13) for those who did not report unjust authorship, p=0.05). In retrospect, 75% of the authors indicated that they would remove unjustified names from the authorship list. Reasons for adding honorary authors were complimentary (39.4%), to avoid conflict at work (16.1%), to facilitate article acceptance (7.2%), and other (3.6%).
Honorary authorship is relatively common in biomedical publications. Researchers should comply with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' criteria for authorship.
随着作者身份继续具有重要的学术、社会和经济意义，医学文献中的合著者数量在过去 50 年中有所增加。
本研究旨在确定生物医学出版物中荣誉作者的流行程度，并确定导致其存在的因素。向在联系后一年内发表在 PubMed 文章中的 9283 位对应作者匿名发送带有调查链接的电子邮件。
从 1246 位对应作者中获得了一份完整的调查问卷，回复率为 15.75%。三分之一（33.4%）的作者承认他们添加了没有作者身份的作者。研究起源于欧洲和亚洲（分别为 p≤0.001 和 0.005）、研究类型为病例报告/病例系列（p=0.036）以及合著者数量的增加在多变量分析中被发现是相关因素。期刊影响因子也与荣誉作者有关（自我报告荣誉作者的平均期刊影响因子为 4.82（SD 6.32），而未报告不公正作者的期刊影响因子为 5.60（SD 7.13），p=0.05）。事后，75%的作者表示他们将从作者名单中删除不合理的名字。添加荣誉作者的原因包括：表示感谢（39.4%）、避免工作中的冲突（16.1%）、为了促进文章被接受（7.2%）以及其他原因（3.6%）。
荣誉作者在生物医学出版物中较为常见。研究人员应遵守国际医学期刊编辑委员会的作者标准。
