Ghost and Honorary Authorship: Common in Top Med Journals

After submitting an online survey to the authors of 900 research, review, or editorial articles that were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, Nature Medicine, the NEJM, or PLoS Medicine during 2008, Wislar et al reported the following, preliminary results (author response rate, 70%).

When compared with survey results from 1996, these data indicate that the rate of honorary authorship has increased, while the rate of ghost authorship has decreased slightly. (The meeting abstract does not provide data on the statistical significance of these temporal differences.)

The rate of ghostwriting was highest in the NEJM (11%) and lowest in Nature Medicine (2%). The reverse was true for honorary authorship: Nature Medicine, 39%; NEJM, 16%. Ghost authorship was significantly more common with original research articles (12%) than among reviews (6%) or editorials (5%). Honorary authorship was reported frequently with all article types: original research, 31%; reviews, 24%; and editorials, 22%.

The JAMA investigators found no authorship differences between journals that require contribution disclosures and those that do not.

The results of the survey will presumably be published in JAMA at some point in the near future. The anchor author of the abstract, JAMA Editor-in-Chief Catherine DeAngelis, is presumed to be an actual contributing author and not an honorary author.