TIME Research Area, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Department of Business Decisions and Analytics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
PLoS One. 2022 May 5;17(5):e0267312. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267312. eCollection 2022.
The proliferation of team-authored academic work has led to the proliferation of two kinds of authorship misconduct: ghost authorship, in which contributors are not listed as authors and honorary authorship, in which non-contributors are listed as authors. Drawing on data from a survey of 2,222 social scientists from around the globe, we study the prevalence of authorship misconduct in the social sciences. Our results show that ghost and honorary authorship occur frequently here and may be driven by social scientists' misconceptions about authorship criteria. Our results show that they frequently deviate from a common point of authorship reference (the ICMJE authorship criteria). On the one hand, they tend to award authorship more broadly to more junior scholars, while on the other hand, they may withhold authorship from senior scholars if those are engaged in collaborations with junior scholars. Authorship misattribution, even if it is based on a misunderstanding of authorship criteria rather than egregious misconduct, alters academic rankings and may constitute a threat to the integrity of science. Based on our findings, we call for journals to implement contribution disclosures and to define authorship criteria more explicitly to guide and inform researchers as to what constitutes authorship in the social sciences. Our results also hold implications for research institutions, universities, and publishers to move beyond authorship-based citation and publication rankings in hiring and tenure processes and instead to focus explicitly on contributions in team-authored publications.
团队合作的学术成果大量涌现，导致了两种署名不当行为的滋生：一是幽灵作者，即贡献者未被列为作者；二是挂名作者，即非贡献者被列为作者。本研究基于对全球 2222 名社会科学家的调查数据，对社会科学领域署名不当行为的普遍程度进行了研究。结果表明，幽灵作者和挂名作者的现象在这里很常见，这可能是由于社会科学家对署名标准存在误解。我们的研究结果还表明，他们经常偏离共同的署名参考标准（ICMJE 署名标准）。一方面，他们倾向于更广泛地将署名授予更年轻的学者；另一方面，如果资深学者与年轻学者合作，他们可能会剥夺资深学者的署名权。即使署名错误是基于对署名标准的误解，而不是严重的不当行为，也会改变学术排名，并可能对科学的完整性构成威胁。基于我们的发现，我们呼吁期刊实施贡献披露，并更明确地定义署名标准，以指导和告知研究人员在社会科学中什么构成署名。我们的研究结果还对研究机构、大学和出版商提出了要求，要求他们在招聘和任期过程中超越基于署名的引用和出版排名，而是明确关注团队合作出版物中的贡献。
