Integrity in authorship and publication.

I n recent years, seemingly frequent examples of problems related to the integrity of authorship and publication have plagued the medical literature. These issues have been primarily related to the appropriateness of authorship (including ghostwriting and so-called " guest authorship " of manuscripts), duplicate publication of articles, plagiarism, scientific misconduct in the form of falsification of data, and failure to disclose conflicts of interest. Although authorship and publication issues arise relatively rarely at the CJHP, the Journal has, on occasion, been faced with some of these concerns. Two issues that have received attention recently in the scientific literature and even in the lay press are the ghostwriting and guest authorship of scientific articles. Ghostwriting has been defined as " the failure to designate an individual (as an author) who has made a substantial contribution to the research or writing of a manuscript. " 1 Particular attention was drawn to this practice in a review of industry documents obtained during litigation related to rofecoxib, 1 in which it was discovered that numerous review articles had been prepared by people who were not recognized as authors or otherwise acknowledged. Instead, the authorship of these papers was attributed to investigators with academic affiliations. This review also revealed that many clinical trial manuscripts were written primarily by industry employees, with first authorship on each paper being attributed to an investigator with an academic affiliation. 1 Research has identified ghostwriting in 13% of research articles, 10% of review articles, 6% of editorials, and 11% of Cochrane reviews. 1-3 Guest authorship has been defined as " the designation of an individual who does not meet authorship criteria as an author. " 1 Guest authorship includes the practice of naming as authors individuals in senior positions (e.g., the director of a laboratory) in recognition of their perceived " support " of the project, even if they did not contribute to conducting the study or writing the paper (sometimes referred to as " honorary authorship " 3). Guest authorship has been found in 16% of research articles, 26% of review articles, 21% of editorials, and 41% of Cochrane reviews. 1-3 Ghostwriting and guest authorship are dishonest practices that undermine the medical and scientific literature. All authors of papers submitted to the CJHP must meet the authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (see http://www.icmje.org), which states that authorship credit should be based on " 1) …