• Eur. J. Cancer · Oct 2016

    Honorary and ghost authorship in reports of randomised clinical trials in oncology.

    • Francisco Emilio Vera-Badillo, Marc Napoleone, Monika K Krzyzanowska, Shabbir M H Alibhai, An-Wen Chan, Alberto Ocana, Arnoud J Templeton, Bostjan Seruga, Eitan Amir, and Ian F Tannock.
    • Division of Medical Oncology & Hematology, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, 610 University Ave, Toronto, M5G 2M9, Canada.
    • Eur. J. Cancer. 2016 Oct 1; 66: 1-8.

    BackgroundThe International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has developed guidelines for responsible and accountable authorship. Few studies have assessed the frequency and nature of ghost and honorary authorship in publications of oncology trials.Materials And MethodsReports of randomised clinical trials evaluating systemic cancer therapy published from July 2010 to December 2012 in six high-impact journals were identified systematically. Ghost authorship was determined to be present in any scenario where investigators or statisticians listed in the protocol were not included as authors and not acknowledged in the report of the trial. The list of contributions for authors of published articles was recorded, and we defined an article as having an honorary author if any author did not meet all three criteria established by ICMJE in 1985.ResultsTwo hundred publications were identified. For 61 articles, protocols with listed investigators were available, and 40 (66%) of these articles met our definition of ghost authorship. Medical writers were involved in 89 articles (45%), and assistance was acknowledged only in sponsored trials. Contributions of each author were provided in 195 articles, and 63 (33%) articles met our definition for honorary authorship. Funding source was not a predictor for either honorary or ghost authorship. Journal impact factor was positively associated with honorary authorship (odds ratio = 1.03; 95% confidence interval = 1.004-1.065; P = 0.03), but not with ghost authorship.ConclusionGhost and honorary authorship are prevalent in articles describing trials for systemic therapy of cancer. Guidelines should be enforced to improve transparency and accountability.Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…