1. Authorship
Kazem Heidari

2. Who is an author?

3. Decision about Authorship
The most sensitive part of writing a paper

4. An “author” is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study
Biomedical authorship continues to have important academic, social, and financial implications.

5. Criteria for authorship
Authorship credit should be based on:
Substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
Final approval of the version to be published
Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3

6. Group author :When submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and should clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name

7. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.

8. All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship
Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

9. Authorship of multi-center trials:
All members of the group who are named as authors should fully meet the above criteria for authorship

10. Order of authors’ names
The sequence of authors should be determined by the relative overall contributions to the manuscript.

11. The order of authorship on the byline should be a joint decision of the co-authors
Authors should be prepared to explain the order in which authors are listed.

12. Some journals now also request that one or more authors, referred to as "guarantors" be identified as the persons who take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article, and publish that information.

13. First Author
The first author should be that person who contributed most to the work, including writing of the manuscript

14. First Author Should have ... adapted a hypothesis
defined precise methods
participated in a major way in analysis and interpretation of results
written the paper

15. Lead author = Corresponding author
A person who is responsible for ensuring that all other authors review and approve the final version.

16. Co-Author
Should have made significant contributions to the planning and execution of the research, the methods and procedures, the collection and analysis of the data, etc.

17. Senior Author
Formulated the original hypothesis or provided significant intellectual resources & provided constructive criticism of the manuscript & accepted responsibility for the findings and the authorship

18. Order of authors’s names
It is common practice to have the senior author appear last, sometimes regardless of his or
her contribution.

19. For young authors
There are two positions that count: first and last. And attached to either position is the status associated with being the author for correspondence.

20. For young authors
The best combination is to be first author and the author for correspondence.

21. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section
who provided purely technical help
writing assistance
department chair who provided only general support
Financial and material support

22. Authorship–What Doesn’t Count
Supervision of first author, Chair of dept., Chief of division, director of laboratory, etc.
Statistical advice (alone)
Data entry, processing, or management
Providing or helping obtain space, money, staff, or other resources

23. Order of authors’ names
The senior author sometimes takes responsibility for writing the paper, especially when the research student has not yet learned the skills of scientific writing. The senior author then becomes the corresponding author, but should the student be the first author?

24. Order of authors’ names
Some supervisors put their students first, others put their own names first. Perhaps it should be decided on the absolute amount of time spent on the project by the student (in getting the data) and the supervisor (in providing help and in writing the paper). Or perhaps the supervisor should be satisfied with being corresponding author, regardless of time committed to the project

25. Order of authors’ names
A sensible policy adopted by many supervisors is to give the student a fixed period of time to write the first draft of the paper. If the student does not deliver, the supervisor may then write the paper and put her or his own name first.

26. Most scientists have their own policy !
Whatever policy your supervisor or colleagues have, there are usually good reasons for them: tradition, experience, or just the plain old selfish genes that we all carry.

27. How to avoid problems with authorship?
Agree with your collaborators that you will follow the international guidelines.

28. 2-Agree before starting the research who will be an author, and if necessary discuss why each person should be an author. (Clarify the requirements)

29. 3- Agree on the tentative order of authors and on who will be corresponding author.

30. 4-Don’t add a senior author to improve the chances of publication

31. Honorary vs Ghost !
Honorary authors: named authors who have not met authorship criteria
Ghost authors : individuals not named as authors but who contributed substantially to the work

32. - 11% had evidence of ghost authors - 2% had evidence of both.
Prevalence of Articles With Honorary Authors and Ghost Authors in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals
- 19% had evidence of honorary authors
- 11% had evidence of ghost authors
- 2% had evidence of both.
(JAMA. 1998;280: )

33. Honorary authorship Three large studies
26% of 1,014 authors in 10 journals (Shapiro et al 1994)
17% of 884 authors in AJR (Sloan1996)
19% of 809 articles in Ann Intern Med, JAMA, N Engl J Med

34. Honarary authorship Three specialty journals (Flanagin et al, 1998)—
16% of research articles
26% of review articles
21% of editorials and commentaries

35. Gost authorship
Largest study
11% of 809 articles in Ann Intern Med, JAMA, N Engl J Med
Three specialty journals (Flanagin et al, 1998)
13% of research articles
10% of review articles
6% of editorials and commentaries

36. Authorship–What Doesn’t Count
Providing or recruiting study patients or other material
Collecting interview data or other specimens or measurements 
Coordinating the data collection process

37. Authors’ contribution vs Contributors

38. Example for authors’ contribution
Shahin Akhondzadeh
(principle investigator and statistical support, clinical neuropsychopharmacologist)
Mohammad Reza Mohammadi (clinical coordinator, psychiatrist)
Hassan Mohajeri (trialist ,resident of psychiatry )
Homayoun Amini (clinical coordinator , psychiatrist )

39. Comments on Vancouver criteria
The Vancouver criteria suggest that all authors should have a significant input to the design, organisation, analysis and write up of a study. This is over the top, even with the best will in the world it is rarely possible for more than 3 people to have a significant input to all areas of a study. The authors would be falling over each other.
to be continued

40. Comments on Vancouver criteria
In reality the best that is usually achieved is each author offers a specific expertise and all authors comment on the final draft of the manuscript. Only the primary author is truly involved in all aspects of the study.
Stuart Derbyshire

41. Authorship
How easy it is to get into gray areas about right and wrong!

42. Thank you!