Ghost Writing Persists in Major Medical Journals

[Guest guest]

Ghost writing is common, even routine, in Government and the Defense

industry evidently. It seems that medical journals can only hold it down to

just

21 percent _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ghostwriter_

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ghostwriter) )

blessings, Shan

Ghost Writing Persists in Major Medical Journals

_http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_117987.html_

(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_117987.html)

Analysis of 6 journals found **inappropriate authorship** despite ethical

concerns

By Preidt

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Honorary and ghost authors were

involved in 21 percent of articles published in six leading medical journals in

2008, which shows that this type of inappropriate authorship remains a

problem, a new study says.

Honorary authors are people named as authors despite not making a

substantial enough contribution to take responsibility for the research. Ghost

authors are people who play a major role in the research or who participate in

writing the article, but are not named as authors.

The lack of transparency and accountability associated with both types of

inappropriate authorship has been a concern for decades, according to the

study authors.

More than 600 biomedical journals have adopted guidelines for responsible

and accountable authorship established by the International Committee of

Medical Journal Editors, but previous research has found that the prevalence

of honorary authors in articles is as high as 39 percent and the use of

ghost authors as high as 11 percent.

In this new study, U.S. researchers compared the prevalence of honorary

and ghost authors in articles published in six leading medical journals in

1996 and 2008.

Information from 630 authors who responded to the researchers' survey

showed that the overall prevalence of articles with inappropriate authorship

fell from 29 percent in 1996 to 21 percent in 2008.

There was no change in the prevalence of honorary authors over that time,

but there was a large decline in the prevalence of ghost authors.

Original research articles had higher rates of both types of inappropriate

authorship than review articles or editorials.

The study was published online Oct. 25 in the British Medical Journal.

**Increased efforts by scientific journals, individual authors and

academic institutions are essential to promote responsibility, accountability

and

transparency in authorship, and to maintain integrity in scientific

publication,** the researchers wrote in a journal news release.

SOURCE: British Medical Journal, news release, Oct. 25, 2011