Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Oct 25:343:d6128.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.d6128.

Honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals: a cross sectional survey

Joseph S Wislar  1 , Annette Flanagin, Phil B Fontanarosa, Catherine D Deangelis
Affiliations

Honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals: a cross sectional survey

Joseph S Wislar et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the prevalence of honorary and ghost authors in six leading general medical journals in 2008 and compare this with the prevalence reported by authors of articles published in 1996.

Design: Cross sectional survey using a web based questionnaire.

Setting: International survey of journal authors.

Participants: Sample of corresponding authors of 896 research articles, review articles, and editorial/opinion articles published in six general medical journals with high impact factors in 2008: Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Nature Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, and PLoS Medicine.

Main outcome measures: Self reported compliance with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship for all authors on the selected articles.

Results: A total of 630/896 (70.3%) corresponding authors responded to the survey. The prevalence of articles with honorary authorship or ghost authorship, or both, was 21.0% (95% CI 18.0% to 24.3%), a decrease from 29.2% reported in 1996 (P = 0.004). Based on 545 responses on honorary authorship, 96 articles (17.6% (95% CI 14.6% to 21.0%)) had honorary authors (range by journal 12.2% to 29.3%), a non-significant change from 1996 (19.3%; P = 0.439). Based on 622 responses on ghost authorship, 49 articles (7.9% (6.0% to 10.3%)) had ghost authors (range by journal 2.1% to 11.0%), a significant decline from 1996 (11.5%; P = 0.023). The prevalence of honorary authorship was 25.0% in original research reports, 15.0% in reviews, and 11.2% in editorials, whereas the prevalence of ghost authorship was 11.9% in research articles, 6.0% in reviews, and 5.3% in editorials.

Conclusions: Evidence of honorary and ghost authorship in 21% of articles published in major medical journals in 2008 suggests that increased efforts by scientific journals, individual authors, and academic institutions are essential to promote responsibility, accountability, and transparency in authorship, and to maintain integrity in scientific publication.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the Unified Competing Interest form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare that none of the authors, their spouses or families, have any financial or non-financial interests or relationships that may be relevant to the submitted work

Comment in

References

    1. Place F. Ghost writing. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1934;22:209-13. - PMC - PubMed
    1. DeBakey L. Rewriting and the by-line: is the author the writer? Surgery 1974;75:38-48. - PubMed
    1. Price DES. Multiple authorship. Science 1981;212:986. - PubMed
    1. Smith J. Gift authorship: a poisoned chalice. BMJ 1994;309:1456. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rennie D, Flanagin A. Authorship! Authorship! Guests, ghosts, grafters and the two-sided coin. JAMA 1994;271:469-71. - PubMed