Authorship of health education articles: Guests, ghosts, and trends

Objective: To Investigate health education faculty members' perceptions of criteria for manuscript coauthorship and the perceived status of guest and ghost authorship in health education journals. Methods: National survey of 300 health education faculty members. Results: Three inclusion criteria for authorship were supported by more than 40% of respondents. A majority felt that guest authorship should not be bestowed on others because they are im portant colleagues. Most respondents had never coauthored a paper that incl uded a ghost author, nor had they been ghost authors. Conclusions: An estab lished set of guidelines concerning authorship may help alleviate some of t he presented authorship concerns.