Abstract
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Authorship should be considered if one has made substantial contributions to the conception, acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data, drafted or revised the work, approved the final manuscript, and willingness to take responsibility (ICMJE criteria).
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Authorship is attractive as it helps in professional growth and leads to respect from the peers. It also makes people susceptible to potential malpractices to get authorship.
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Authorship comes with important responsibilities like honesty, transparency, and ensuring originality of work.
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The sequence of authors is decided by quantum and importance of their contributions.
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An individual having a role in the research is eligible to be considered as a contributor. The role of all contributors must be mentioned in the publication.
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People helping only in data collection, performing statistics, technical contributions, and data entry, or those who have obtained grants or head of the department should be all acknowledged but cannot be considered as authors unless they fulfill the ICMJE criteria.
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Gift authorship or honorary authorship is to bestow authorship upon an individual when that individual does not fulfill the criteria for authorship.
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Ghost authorship is the absence of the name of an individual as an author, despite making a substantial contribution to the article and fulfilling ICMJE criteria. It is especially prevalent in industry-initiated or industry-sponsored trials.
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Plagiarism is an act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person and is common in medical literature. Anti-plagiarism software are now available to check this menace at least partially.
If you haven’t done the work, don’t put your name on it. If you put your name on the paper, then you are stuck with it. – CF Wooley
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A PhD student has done the thesis under the guidance of associate professor in the department. They conceived the study, wrote the protocol, did the research, and wrote the manuscript. The head of the department helped by permitting the research and providing space and equipment. A senior professor got the funding for the project. Another PhD student helped in the collection of data for 3 months when the researcher was on maternity leave. Who will all be authors in the manuscript?
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Shukla, A., Supe, A. (2017). Authorship and Contributorship. In: Parija, S., Kate, V. (eds) Writing and Publishing a Scientific Research Paper. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4720-6_13
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