THE VEXED QUESTION OF AUTHORSHIP - VIEWS OF RESEARCHERS IN A BRITISH MEDICAL-FACULTY

Objective: To assess knowledge, views, and behaviour of researchers on criteria for authorship and causes and control of gift authorship. De sign: Interview survey of stratified sample of researchers. Setting: U niversity medical faculty. Subjects: 66 staff (94% response rate) comp rising several levels of university academic and research appointments . Main outcome measures: Awareness and use of criteria for authorship, views on which contributions to research merit authorship, perception s about gift authorship and strategies for reducing it, and experience s of authorship problems. Results: 50 (76%) respondents supported crit eria for authorship, but few knew about or used available criteria. Of the five people who could specify all three criteria of the Internati onal Committee of Medical Journal Editors, only one knew that all crit eria had to be met Forty one respondents (62%) disagreed with this sti pulation. A range of practical and academic contributions were seen as sufficient for authorship, Gift authorship was perceived as common, p romoted by pressure to publish, to motivate research teams, and to mai ntain working relationships. A signed statement justifying authorship and a published statement of the contribution of each author were perc eived as practical ways of tacking gift authorship. Most researchers h ad experienced problems with authorship, most commonly the perception that authorship had been deserved but not awarded (49%). Conclusion: T here seems to be a gap between editors' criteria for authorship and re searchers' practice. Lack of awareness of criteria is only a partial e xplanation. Researchers give more weight than editors to practical res earch contributions. Future criteria should be agreed by researchers a nd not be imposed by editors.