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Knowledge and Perceptions of Honorary Authorship among Health Care Researchers: Online Cross-sectional Survey Data from the Middle East

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Abstract

One of the core problems of scientific research authorship is honorary authorship. It violates the ethical principle of clear and appropriate assignment of scientific research contributions. The prevalence of honorary authorship worldwide is alarmingly high across various research disciplines. As a result, many academic institutions and publishers were trying to explore ways to overcome this unethical research practice. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommended criteria for authorship as guidance for researchers submitting manuscripts to biomedical Journals. However, despite the ICMJE guidelines, honorary authorship is still significantly present across various health research disciplines. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and knowledge of health care researchers towards honorary authorship according to the ICMJE guidelines across different health care fields in Jordan, which to our knowledge was never explored before. Data from an electronic survey that was distributed among researchers working in different healthcare fields across several major universities in Jordan, revealed that most of the respondents were assistant professors working mainly in the schools of Medicine and Pharmacy. The majority of the respondents (65.5%) were not aware of the ICMJE authorship guidelines. And, around 37% reported the inclusion of an honorary author, in which the most common non-authorship task reported by 73% of the respondents was reviewing the manuscript. Our findings emphasize the need for national academic and research institutions to address the issue of authorship in their educational programs and internal policies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the mentors (Dr. Kenneth Goodman, Dr. Wael Aldeliamy, Dr. Omar Khabour, and Dr. Karem Alzoubi) in the Responsible Conduct of Research fellowship program in Jordan who greatly influenced their development as ethics educators and researchers. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Afef Skhiri for her assistance in data collection.

Funding

Work on this project was supported by Grant 5R25TW010026–02 from the Fogarty International Centre of the U.S. National Institutes of Health on behalf of the Research Ethics Program in Jordan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiotherapy, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

    Mayis Aldughmi & Dania Qutaishat

  2. Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan

    Reema Karasneh

Authors
  1. Mayis Aldughmi
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  2. Dania Qutaishat
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  3. Reema Karasneh
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Correspondence to Mayis Aldughmi.

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Conflict of interest

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Ethical approval

Approval was obtained from the research ethics committee of the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Jordan. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent to participate

Data was collected anonymously using an electronic survey, but informed consent was automatically obtained from the participants through a statement in the survey email that states: by completing the survey, the participants consent to be part of the study.

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Appendix: Honorary Authorship Survey

Appendix: Honorary Authorship Survey

This is a survey about your perceptions on Honorary Authorship “Honorary Authorship is also known as guest authorship, occurs when a person is listed as an author on a paper who has not provided significant contributions to the study ".

Please note that all the questions are related to the last manuscript you were leading between the period of 2014–2019.

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Aldughmi, M., Qutaishat, D. & Karasneh, R. Knowledge and Perceptions of Honorary Authorship among Health Care Researchers: Online Cross-sectional Survey Data from the Middle East. Sci Eng Ethics 27, 39 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00317-6

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