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Can authorship policies help prevent scientific misconduct? What role for scientific societies?

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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to encourage and help inform active discussion of authorship policies among members of scientific societies. The article explains the history and rationale of the influential criteria for authorship developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, examines questions about those criteria that emerge from authorship policies adopted by several U.S. medical schools, and summarizes the arguments for replacing authorship with the contributorguarantor model. Finally, it concludes with a plea for scientific societies to play a prominent role in the ongoing debates about authorship and the alternatives as part of their efforts to encourage ethical conduct among their members. Whether or not scientific societies develop authorship policies of their own, they should undertake vigorous educational efforts to keep their new members adequately informed about the importance of authorship practices in ethical scientific research and publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the Medical Humanities, The University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd., 2.210 Ashbel Smith Bldg., 77555-1311, Galveston, TX, USA

    Anne Hudson Jones Ph.D.

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  1. Anne Hudson Jones Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Anne Hudson Jones Ph.D..

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Portions of this article are based on Anne Hudson Jones’s chapter “Changing Traditions of Authorship,” in Ethical Issues in Biomedical Publication, edited by Anne Hudson Jones and Faith McLellan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 3–29. Copyright © 2000 by Anne Hudson Jones and Faith McLellan.

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Jones, A.H. Can authorship policies help prevent scientific misconduct? What role for scientific societies?. SCI ENG ETHICS 9, 243–256 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-003-0011-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-003-0011-3

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