Authorship Rights in Scientific Publication and Problems
Abstract
While authorship is the key to science and academic career and confers reputation and credit to the author, it also places significant responsibility on the author. Ethical deception and fraud in scientific publications not only casts doubt on the integrity of science, but also weakens public support. Research results are published with the names of all individuals who have carried out the research. Although there are variations depending on the fields of study, the general rule is that everyone who has substantially contributed to the research and publication are given credit as authors. Activities such as obtaining funding, language editing, technical editing, or administrative support do not qualify an individual for authorship. However, despite clear guidelines, forms of ethical misconduct such as granting authorship to those who fail to meet the authorship criteria, omission of deserving authorsfrom the authorlist and making inappropriate and unjustifiable modifications to the author list are prevalent. One way to solve these problems would be to determine and document the list and order of authors, and require the signatures of all authorsin the planning stage, even before starting to do the research andwrite the manuscript.
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References
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