Ashkenazi Itamar, Olsha Oded
The Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
General Surgery Department, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel.
Rambam Maimonides Med J. 2023 Jul 31;14(3):e0015. doi: 10.5041/RMMJ.10503.
When authorship disputes arise in academic publishing, research institutions may be asked to investigate the circumstances. We evaluated the association between the prevalence of misattributed authorship and trust in the institution involved.
We measured trust using a newly validated Opinion on the Institution's Research and Publication Values (OIRPV) scale (range 1-4). Mayer and Davies' Organizational Trust for Management Instrument served as control. Association between publication misconduct, gender, institution type, policies, and OIRPV-derived Trust Scores were evaluated.
A total of 197 responses were analyzed. Increased reporting of authorship misconduct, such as gift authorship, author displacement within the authors' order on the byline, and ghost authorship, were associated with low Trust Scores (P<0.001). Respondents from institutions whose administration had made known (declared or published) their policy on authorship in academic publications awarded the highest Trust Scores (median 3.06, interquartile range 2.25 to 3.56). Only 17.8% favored their administration as the best authority to investigate authorship dispute honestly. Of those who did not list the administration as their preferred option for resolving disputes, 58.6% (95/162) provided a Trust Score <2.5, which conveys mistrust in the institution.
Increased reporting of publication misconducts such as gift authorship, author displacement within the order of the authors' byline, and ghost authorship was associated with lower Trust Scores in the research institutions. Institutions that made their policies known were awarded the highest Trust Scores. Our results question whether the research institutions' administrations are the appropriate authority for clarifying author disputes in all cases.
当学术出版中出现作者身份争议时，研究机构可能会被要求调查相关情况。我们评估了错误归属作者身份的发生率与对相关机构的信任之间的关联。
我们使用新验证的机构研究与出版价值观意见（OIRPV）量表（范围为1 - 4）来衡量信任度。梅耶和戴维斯的管理组织信任工具作为对照。评估了出版不当行为、性别、机构类型、政策与OIRPV得出的信任分数之间的关联。
共分析了197份回复。诸如赠送作者身份、在署名行中作者顺序内的作者替换以及代笔作者身份等作者身份不当行为报告的增加与低信任分数相关（P<0.001）。其管理层已公布（声明或发布）学术出版物中作者身份政策的机构的受访者给出了最高信任分数（中位数3.06，四分位间距2.25至3.56）。只有17.8%的人认为其管理层是诚实地调查作者身份争议的最佳权威。在那些未将管理层列为解决争议首选选项的人中，58.6%（95/162）给出的信任分数<2.5，这表明对该机构不信任。
诸如赠送作者身份、在作者署名顺序内的作者替换以及代笔作者身份等出版不当行为报告的增加与研究机构中较低的信任分数相关。公布其政策的机构获得了最高信任分数。我们的结果质疑了研究机构管理层在所有情况下是否是澄清作者争议的合适权威。
