Authorship and Contributorship in Scholarly Journals

which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Currently science editing is a discipline which covers various issues in science writing, ethical editing, peer review, publishing and scientomet-rics. Authorship in scholarly journals, and its abuses, is one of the key topics in this discipline and shapes its core values. The basic principles of authorship underlie the foundations of research, academic promotion and advancement in science. It's hardly possible to create knowledge and scientific products without following fair authorship criteria. Though a universally acceptable definition of authorship does not exist, there are two main components of any definition which have gained wide recognition-credit and responsibility. Journal publications are the end result of creative work of individuals, or increasingly multi-expert research teams, who are aiming to gain credit from the scientific community and to contribute to knowledge creation. Traditional authorship models, largely based on the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), consider the au-thors' byline in the papers as the key for attributing credit. Securing a place in the byline is itself a credit, whilst taking the first place is often the reward for contributing the most to the multi-authored work (1). However, credit brings with it responsibility, which is straightforward in solo work but quite complicated for multi-authored publications, the hallmark of science communication in our time. A recent essay in European Science Editing questioned the objectivity of attributing responsibility based on the traditional model of authorship (2) and favoured the model of contributorship, originated 15 years ago by the former deputy editor of JAMA, Drummond Rennie, and strongly supported by the former editor of BMJ, Richard Smith (3, 4). Apparently, the contributorship model fits well the current trends in multi-expert research cooperation and publishing, where contribution and responsibility are to be shared by generators of ideas, technical staff, research supervisors, and professional writers. Perhaps it can be the best option for fair and transparent authorship in papers on large trials, quantitative systematic reviews and meta-analyses. This alternative model disfavours instances of guest, gift and honorary authorship and encourages honest listing of all contributors, including those who might refrain from putting their names in the papers (ie ghost-writers). Both traditional and alternative models emphasise responsibility as the virtue of research integrity. In most research institutions in the mainstream science countries the main responsibility is often attributed to …