The "Monsanto papers" and the nature of ghostwriting and related practices in contemporary peer review scientific literature.

The Monsanto company - now acquired by Bayer - has been accused of ghostwriting articles within peer review literature, with the goal of using influential names to front its content in defence of the herbicide Roundup. Here, I conduct a detailed analysis of three Monsanto review articles and a five-article journal supplement for which detailed information from company emails is publicly available following litigation over Roundup. All the articles had external, but not Monsanto authors, and ghostly practices including ghost authorship, corporate ghost authorship and ghost management were evident in their development. There was clear evidence of ghostwriting - that is, drafting of the manuscript by non-authors - in only two cases. I found no evidence of undeserving authorship among the external authors. The articles complied with the disclosure requirements of their journals, save for the journal supplement. While crude ghostwriting did occur, much of the literature involved subtler practices through which Monsanto exercised control over content, while the attribution of the articles downplayed the company's role - and correspondingly aggrandized that of the external authors. Such practices are widespread within industry journal literature and are the responsibility of byline authors and journals as well as corporations. I discuss these cultural problems and consider remedies.

Allonymous science: the politics of placing and shifting credit in public-private nutrition research.

Ideally, guidelines reflect an accepted position with respect to matters of concern, ranging from clinical practices to researcher behaviour. Upon close reading, authorship guidelines reserve authorship attribution to individuals fully or almost fully embedded in particular studies, including design or execution as well as significant involvement in the writing process. These requirements prescribe an organisation of scientific work in which this embedding is specifically enabled. Drawing from interviews with nutrition scientists at universities and in the food industry, we demonstrate that the organisation of research labour can deviate significantly from such prescriptions. The organisation of labour, regardless of its content, then, has consequences for who qualifies as an author. The fact that fewer food industry employees qualify is actively used by the food industry to manage the credibility and ownership of their knowledge claims as allonymous science: the attribution of science assisted by authorship guidelines blind to all but one organisational frame.

Perish or Publish Dilemma: Challenges to Responsible Authorship.

Controversies related to the concept and practice of responsible authorship and its misuse have been among the most prominent issues discussed in the recent literature on research integrity. Therefore, this paper aims to address the factors that lead to two major types of unethical authorship, namely, honorary and ghost authorship. It also highlights negative consequences of authorship misuse and provides a critical analysis of different authorship guidelines, including a recent debate on the amendments of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship definition. Empirical studies revealed that honorary authorship was the most prevalent deviation from the responsible authorship standards. Three different modalities of honorary authorship were distinguished: gift authorship, guest authorship, and coercive authorship. Prevalence of authorship misuse worldwide and in Europe was alarmingly high, covering approximately one third of all scientific publications. No significant differences were reported in authorship misuse between different health research disciplines. The studies conducted in North America highlighted the most effective means to cope with unethical authorship. These were training in publishing ethics, clear authorship policies developed by medical schools, and explicit compliance with the authorship criteria required by the medical journals. In conclusion, more empirical research is needed to raise awareness of the high prevalence of authorship misuse among scientists. Research integrity training courses, including publication ethics and authorship issues should be integrated into the curricula for students and young researchers in medical schools. Last but not least, further discussion on responsible authorship criteria and practice should be initiated.

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

BACKGROUND: The 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 METHODS: Reports 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. RESULTS: Two 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. CONCLUSION: Ghost and honorary authorship are prevalent in articles describing trials for systemic therapy of cancer. Guidelines should be enforced to improve transparency and accountability.

Autoría en artículos biomédicos: el caso de imaginología / Authorship in biomedical articles: the case of imaging

The definition of authorship is a subject of ongoing discussion wherein elements of prestige and academic career are involved. As a potential source of conflicts, it must be handled with extreme strictness to avoid difficulties when presenting scientific outcomes. Both a review of international standards relating to regarding authorship, accepted to date, and the position of the editorial board of the Revista Chilena de Radiología are presented.

La definición de autoría es un tema de discusión permanente, donde se ven involucrados elementos de prestigio y carrera académica. Siendo una potencial fuente de conflictos, debe ser manejado con extrema rigurosidad, para evitar dificultades al momento de presentar resultados científicos. Se presenta una revisión de los criterios internacionales referidos a autoría, aceptados a la fecha, y la postura del cuerpo editorial de la Revista Chilena de Radiología.

Medical ghost-writing.

Any assistance an author receives with writing a scientific article that is not acknowledged in the article is described as ghost-writing. Articles ghost-written by medical writers engaged by pharmaceutical companies who have a vested interest in the content have caused concern after scandals revealed misleading content in some articles. A key criterion of authorship in medical journals is final approval of the article submitted for publication. Authors are responsible for the content of their articles and for acknowledging any assistance they receive. Action taken by some journals and medical writer associations to encourage acknowledgement is an uphill task in the light of disinterest from the pharmaceutical industry and ignorance or similar lack of interest by those who agree to be named authors. However, acknowledgment alone is not sufficient to resolve medical ghost-writing; issues of how the acknowledgement is formulated, permission to acknowledge and access to raw data also need to be tackled.