gift authorship

We publish “mini-reviews” of published articles. Our faculty of eminent researchers and clinicians write these evaluations. One of the conditions we insist on from our faculty is that they may not evaluate work on which they are an author. We received a review of a paper, the authorship of which was listed as:

Name A, Name B, Name C; study group X

As the reviewer was a member of “study group X”, we rejected the submission. The reviewer wrote back claiming that:

“I am not an author on the “Name A” paper. The latter is a substudy, which uses the “study group X” database. While we entered some patients into the main trial, in no way do I fulfil authorship criteria given that I never even saw a draft of the paper nor knew it was being submitted.”

We published the review with the declaration above listed as a “competing interest”. We then informed the journal in question.

Did we act correctly?

We have noticed some authors who are publishing at a rate that is exceptionally high.

(1) An author of a recent submission has published over 100 articles since January 2005; he had published fewer than 50 in the preceding 5 years. This is quite a sudden increase. On average, he published 1 article every 8 days in 2005, and in 2006 this increased to 1 every 4 days. The author is on the board of his institute, and is a department head.

(2) Another recent author published nearly 100 articles in PubMed in 2006, and more than 50 in both 2004 and 2005. This is 1 article every 4 days in 2006, every 6 days in 2005 and every 7 days in 2004. The author is a laboratory director.

Publication rates that are this high have raised our suspicions that the authors may not truly qualify for authorship under the ICMJE guidelines for each article. 

It has been shown that some infamous cases of fraud were by prolific authors ("High annual publication rates had characterised many of the international research misconduct cases, which had begun to come to light in the mid-1970s" http://www.bmj.com/

cgi/reprint/331/7511/281.pdf; Lock S, Wells F: Fraud and misconduct in biomedical research. BMJ Books, 1993), for example, Robert Slutsky published 1 paper every 10 days.

Questions for COPE:

(1)  

Is our suspicion of these authors reasonable, and at what levels do other editors become concerned about whether or not an author is truly deserving of authorship?

(2)  

When should we, as journal editors, raise concerns about overly prolific authors to institutions?

(3)  

Is there any way to identify the most prolific authors on a systematic basis (databases, search engines, software)?

A manuscript was submitted to our journal. After review we asked for revision. At this time we sent a formatting checklist which includes criteria for authorship. Two authors were removed in the resubmission. Eventually the manuscript was published.

At this time one of the formerly included authors contacted us, asking why they were no longer cited. We asked the submitting author, who explained that the complainant should never have been listed as an author by our definition (which matches the ICMJE criteria), but should have been acknowledged. We are currently in communication with the complainant over the exact nature of their involvement with the manuscript.

During discussion of this situation, the submitting author revealed what may be institutionalised authorship problems at their university.

“According to the rules of the university, PhD students have one supervisor and several advisors. They have to publish at least one article with each advisor (whether the advisors help the students or not). Students do not choose their advisors and the university managers directly propose them to the students, so some of the advisors could not or do not want to help the students.

At that time, I submitted several papers concurrently and I had to include the advisors’ names in all of the submitted articles to get at least one acceptance in an international journal. Before my paper was accepted in your journal, another article with all of my advisors as authors was accepted in another journal. So my supervisor recommended that I remove the advisors’ names, because they did not help me in preparing this paper”.

We contacted the supervisor (senior author on the manuscript) and received confirmation that they had made this recommendation. Neither the submitting author nor the supervisor have indicated that they are aware that gift authorship is generally considered wrong.

Would COPE read this situation as a university in need of education, in addition to individuals in need of education? Would COPE recommend contacting the editor of the journal publishing the author's previous article and explaining this situation?

A review article by an expert group plagiarised an article from another journal. It was largely a direct translation, involving large slabs of the text. Some of the authors are on the editorial board of the journal where the paper was published. There was no declaration that this was a translation of another article.

Dr X submitted a paper to a journal that was assigned by a rather hung-over editorial assistant to an associate editor who was a co-author on the paper. Realising the mistake, she emailed the associate editor to reassign the paper. He expressed surprise as he did not know Dr X, had not seen the paper before submission, and knew of no reason why he should be a co-author.

Dr X was asked to explain and account for all the co-authors’ accreditations. From his reply it was clear that he did not understand the requirements for authorship as the associate editor was listed as having been the inspiration for several of his papers.

A decision was taken to contact the head of department who also appeared on the paper as the final co-author, asking him to clarify the accreditations given by Dr X. The head of department replied:

“I share your concern regarding the proper use of the authorship credit. As the Chair of the Department, it is my responsibility to provide academic and professional guidance within the department for all of our students, including our post doctoral associates. This includes developing and disseminating an accurate understanding of what “authorship” means academically.

Upon reading your email I was at first quite surprised to see my name listed as a co-author. My second thought was that the questions that you raised with respect to co-authorship are related to the relative naivety of Dr X. He has only been in this country and at this university for the past three months.

Earlier today I met with both Professor Y, who is Dr X’s faculty sponsor, and Dr X. We discussed your concerns and questions in detail, as well as the greater implications of the ethical principals of authorship. During that meeting it became clear to both Dr X and myself that the inappropriate crediting of authorship was not intentional and instead represents a cultural misunderstanding. Dr X used the author title as an honorific with some of the persons he identified. It was his belief that such a practice was expected and condoned in this country.

Professor Y did not catch this error since Dr X submitted the manuscript to your journal without his review and input. Your email and the resulting meeting allowed me to fully explain this misunderstanding to Dr X in hopes that he does not make similar mistakes in the future. It also provided a mechanism by which Professor Y and I could explain the responsibilities of an author in properly submitting a manuscript for review and publication.”

The head of department asked Dr X to:

• Withdraw the manuscript from consideration for publication while all the issues related to authorship are resolved.
• Make clear that the work described was conducted in his country of origin and not at this university, should he resubmit.
• Work with Professor Y to ensure that any future articles for publication meet the highest ethical and professional standards.

Is this case resolved?

Sixteen randomly chosen papers were examined from a PubMed search of 370 publications between 1995–2000 by the same author. Two papers were virtually identical, differing only in the form of the introductory paragraph and the list of authors. Neither publication acknowledges the other. Another paper reported a “second ever published case”, and two subsequent papers reported the same “second” case without reference to the earlier published paper. The text was again very similar. Subsequently Journal A received a paper which was rejected. Apart from a change to the list of authors, it was identical to a paper that had been published two years earlier in a different journal. A paper with the same title and introduction had also been published in another journal. This could not be inspected as the journal is not available in any UK research library. Two further manuscripts were submitted to Journal B, one in the form of a letter, and the second a full research paper. The letter was lifted directly from the paper; furthermore one of the tables was identical to that presented in the paper. A further paper which had originally been rejected was resubmitted to Journal B, albeit slightly expanded, but with an entirely new list of authors. An independent statistician reviewed both papers and found that the content of two tables was identical except for the p values. Many of these had acquired a significance not suggested in the first manuscript. Further to this example and the examination of just a few of the listed publications, clear cases of duplicate publication and attempted duplication were found. It’s worrying that seemingly similar work can have different lists of authors, which suggests “gift” authorship. Changes in details of treatment and statistical significance throws the veracity of some of the work into question. Furthermore, the group’s general failure to cite its own publications suggests a deliberate attempt to cover up duplication. The editor of Journal B wants to inform the author that his publication will not consider any further submissions from this group. There is no guarantee that manuscripts would be original and issues of copyright are unclear. The editor would also like to alert the editors of the other journals involved. Is this a reasonable course of action to take?

A paper was submitted for which there were seven contributors, but no corresponding author. The only identification of who had sent the paper was an accompanying e-mail from a public relations company. When contacted by the editorial office, the PR company confirmed that the paper was to be considered for possible publication. The named contributors were then contacted and asked whether they had given permission for their name to be attached to the paper, asked who was the corresponding author, and also if they wished to declare any conflict of interest. This produced a very interesting flurry. One author said the paper had been produced as a result of a seminar to which he and the other contributing authors had been invited. He himself believed that he was simply giving advice to the drug company concerned, for which he had received a fee. He believed that a misunderstanding had led to the PR company to send the paper for review, but that he had no knowledge that they had done so, and suggested that the paper be shredded. Another author telephoned to say he could remember very little about it and certainly hadn’t seen the final document. A third author telephoned in some distress, anxious that he might be accused of some form of misconduct and had never thought that his involvement would lead to a paper being submitted to a journal. The most interesting letter of all was from the first named author who had subsequently written an editorial for the journal that was fairly critical of the drug concerned. The PR company who was acting for the drug company, she said, had submitted the paper on her behalf without her knowledge. Guidelines about the drug had also been published, with which she was not happy, but she had eventually signed an agreement to let her name be used in connection with these. The company told her that she was the only person among all those attending the seminar who had refused to do so, and as such, was creating unnecessary difficulties. The same company had previously published another article to which they had put her name, but which she had not written. This author feels very abused, particularly as she wrote to the PR company requesting that they did not use her name again. The intriguing finale to the story is that a Royal College had been negotiating with the PR company to represent it. On hearing of this incident, the College decided to make other arrangements.