ATTRIBUTION OF CREDIT BY CONTRIBUTION
Timothy C Smith and Peter V Scott
Dept of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Alexandra Hospital, Woodrow Dr, Redditch, Worcestershire B98 7UB, UK
Objective: To determine the relationship between author placing and status in medical papers
Design: Journals in our library of general or anaesthesia content, which were published in November 1996, were included. Single author papers and journals omitting author status were excluded. Status was assessed for medical and academic rank, using an ordered list.
Results: Our library held 9 different journals in 1996 that are of general or anaesthetic content containing a total of 3,872 research articles. The bimonthly journal issued in October and December was excluded. Five journals did not document author status. Three journals (7 individual issues) satisfied the criteria. One non-clinical paper was excluded. Fifty-six papers were reviewed. The highest ranked author was the first author in 5 (9%), and definitely the final author in 28 (50%) papers. The final author was 1 of the highest ranked in 44 (79%).
Conclusions: Credit and responsibility for research is currently attributed to the authors who should meet the requirements of the International Commitee of Medical Journal Editors. Many authors do not meet these criteria , devaluing authorship in general and multiauthorship in particular. In our study, the final author is the highest rank and the first author is usually a trainee. Most work is seemingly done by the first author with only partial contributions from the others and the departmental head or other senior figure may simply "rubber-stamp" the finished paper. If this is so, then minimal contributions are rewarded and substantial contributions by authors other than the first are undervalued. We will propose a method of appropriately rewarding partial contributions to reduce gift authorship and improve the value of authorship.
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