Stakeholders must also be mindful of competing priorities. For example, in situations where following up with senior authors may not be culturally acceptable, a desire to avoid delays in submitting a manuscript for publication should not override the need for input and approval to submit from every author. It is important to remember that senior authors may wish to offer comment and expert insight prior to submission and that submission is dependent on their approval. A case study on effective multinational collaboration in publication development in the Asia-Pacific region is provided in Case Study 4 in Additional file 1.
All authors should have access to relevant aggregated study data and other information for example, the study protocol required to understand and report research findings. The authors should take responsibility for the way in which research findings are presented and published, be fully involved at all stages of publication and presentation development, and be willing to take public responsibility for all aspects of the work.
Explaining the roles and responsibilities of authors prior to developing a publication is essential. If a group discussion among the authors and other stakeholders will be used to formally initiate publication development, informally approaching individual authors in advance to ensure their understanding of their role and responsibilities ideally by a speaker of their native language may be helpful. All authors should contribute to the development of publications and approve the final version before it is submitted, as recommended by the ICMJE.
Developing a manuscript with contributions from more than 10 authors, while ensuring that agreement is reached on the final content prior to submission, can be challenging to achieve. In situations where authors are not comfortable providing feedback to their colleagues, an intermediary, such as a professional medical writer or representative of the study sponsor, may assist with collating and incorporating feedback from individuals.
Any feedback requiring discussion among all authors can then be anonymised. The lead author may be asked to adjudicate on any conflicting comments. Alternatively, authors can provide consolidated comments representing the views of more than one author as part of the revision process.
If an author has no comments during the review process, they should clearly communicate that they have thoroughly reviewed the manuscript. Some stakeholders may wish to use technology to electronically track the opening and review of documents, but should advise authors in advance if such technology is used.
In the North American and European context, this has been interpreted as authors providing feedback on numerous drafts of a manuscript. However, consideration is needed as to what may be reasonably expected of authors in the Asia-Pacific region.
Study sponsors and professional medical writers may need to develop novel methods of engaging authors to maximise their contribution. For example, when delivering a draft publication, a study sponsor or professional medical writer may schedule a face-to-face meeting with an author to allow them to dictate their comments.
Alternatively, senior authors in the Asia-Pacific region may prefer to only be asked for comment after their junior collaborators have first provided their input. Whenever possible, authors should be supported through the publication process by a speaker of their native language to ensure understanding of roles and responsibilities and accurate recording of comments.
Therefore, all authors, regardless of seniority, should have access to all data related to the study. For speakers of English as a second language, care should be taken to ensure that any translation or English-language editing service maintains the integrity of the publication.
Academic discussion, led by the lead author or professional medical writer, should be encouraged to resolve any disagreements. If an impasse is reached, an author may wish to consider politely declining authorship. Guest, honorary or gift authorship to authors who do not meet the ICMJE criteria must not be permitted. The US National Institutes of Health have provided a useful tool for assessing whether a supervisor qualifies for authorship in this regard [ 19 ].
Likewise, it has been suggested that performing technical editing, language editing or proofreading; collating author comments; and making minor corrections for grammar, language, formatting or layout does not constitute a substantial contribution to the manuscript [ 23 ].
Even if these senior researchers are ultimately responsible for the research nominally performed under their supervision, this, by itself, does not qualify the researcher for authorship. Likewise, all individuals who qualify for authorship should be named as authors of a manuscript, including employees of study sponsors or junior researchers who have met the ICMJE criteria.
Some study sponsors may have policies that require an employee of the sponsor be a named author. The involvement of the study sponsor in the manuscript development process should not be understated. Furthermore, in some instances, a professional medical writer may qualify as an author according to the ICMJE authorship criteria for example, a review article where the medical writer did the literature research and drafted the article and should be given authorship.
Instances of authorship being offered for sale, which have been reported in the Asia-Pacific region, are not acceptable under any circumstances [ 9 ]. Author lists and contributorship statements should accurately reflect all substantial intellectual contributions to the research, data analyses, and publication or presentation development.
Relevant contributions from persons who did not qualify as authors should also be disclosed. Some journals provide examples of authorship statements to guide authors. The US National Institutes of Health has provided a useful pictorial guide of demonstrating what contributions may support a claim to authorship and the strength of such claims [ 19 ].
This may be provided to authors to explain the expectations surrounding authorship, particularly if it is adapted and translated to meet local needs. Authors may also be offered a list of potential contributions in their native language to provide a record of their contribution and help draft contributorship statements for publications.
The author list should only be revised during the peer-review process under exceptional circumstances. The GPP3 publication provides statement templates that may be used to disclose funding sources for research, statistical analysis and professional medical writing or editing support [ 2 ]. The role of the sponsor in the design, execution, analysis, reporting, and funding if applicable of the research should be fully disclosed in all publications and presentations of the findings.
Any involvement by persons or organizations with an interest financial or nonfinancial in the findings should also be disclosed. All authors and contributors should disclose any relationships or potential competing interests relating to the research and its publication or presentation. Transparency regarding any relationships or potential competing interests relating to the research on both an individual and institutional level should always be encouraged since disclosing potential or perceived conflicts of interest is unlikely to negatively impact the chance of acceptance for publication [ 24 ].
Conflicts of interest have not been uniformly defined but include financial, personal, social or other interests that may be perceived as directly or indirectly influencing the conduct of the author with respect to manuscript development [ 7 , 24 ]. Therefore, authors should carefully consider the conflict of interest and disclosure policies of individual journals when submitting their research for publication. Defaulting to authors having no conflicts of interest is not recommended because failing to declare potential conflicts of interest is more likely to result in a negative outcome both during the peer-review process and post-publication compared with making appropriate declarations [ 20 ].
Offering authors a tick-box list of common disclosures of potential conflicts of interest in their native language may also help prompt full disclosure. Many journals do not require acknowledgement of individuals providing English-language editor services or the source of funding for any such support. However, this support should be disclosed, as required for any other professional services used during manuscript development. Financial compensation for authoring a publication or presentation is discouraged, although authors may be reimbursed for reasonable publication- or presentation-related out-of-pocket expenses, such as travel, accommodation and congress registration expenses.
All authors in the Asia-Pacific region should be encouraged to register for an ORCiD identifier to facilitate clear identification of individual authors. Cross-cultural differences in the use of first versus last names in the Asia-Pacific region versus Europe and North America can make identifying common authors across multiple manuscripts difficult.
Data sharing requirements have been introduced by the ICMJE and many journals require data sharing statements to be incorporated into manuscripts [ 25 ]. Anecdotally, awareness of data-sharing requirements in the Asia-Pacific region is low. Replicating efforts to communicate data-sharing requirements in medical journals published in Asian languages, as has been done in local Polish [ 26 ] and Portuguese [ 27 ] journals, may be a first step, in addition to general communication via journal instructions to authors, publications-focused conferences and the ICMJE website.
Guidance on how data will be shared is lacking. Principles for sharing data that are not curated in the English language are an ongoing concern, which may make compliance particularly onerous for researchers in the Asia-Pacific region versus other regions worldwide. As such, it remains unknown how researchers should interpret and manage any data sharing requests, and what potential barriers to data sharing may emerge. Data sharing requirements may also need to be considered as part of the publication planning process.
There is currently no generally accepted definition of a predatory journal or conference, but common characteristics are deceptive conduct, a lack of transparency, poor quality standards and unethical publication practices [ 29 ]. In general, researchers should be wary of unsolicited communications offering opportunities to publish or suspiciously low publication fees [ 28 , 30 , 31 ]. Publication in a predatory journal may have unforeseen consequences, including reputational damage and its implications for career progression, the inability to publish in a more reputable journal, a lack of discoverability in commonly searched publication databases for example, MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE and a risk of the manuscript being lost if the journal collapses [ 28 , 32 ].
Accordingly, medical and research departments in developing Asian countries are encouraged to educate both early career and experienced researchers on methods of avoiding fraudulent journals [ 33 ]. Journals, medical publication professionals, research institutions and leading researchers in the region need to provide greater leadership regarding ethical publication practices. Contributed by Contributions: EET conceived the review, conducted literature search, wrote and revised the manuscript; MK and FBZ also conducted the literature search and critically reviewed the manuscript; all authors approved the final manuscript.
Received Jun 10; Accepted Jun Tarkang et al. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Key words: Responsible authorship, Common publication practice, Conflict of interest, Universal publication guidelines. Competing interest statement Conflict of interest: the authors declare no potential conflict of interest.
Background A research publication is the highest level of dissemination of research findings. Authorship It is a contradiction to be an author but then plead ignorance if there is controversy regarding data in your published paper. Methods To achieve this, a systematic and critical review of the literature was undertaken. Uniform requirements for authorship Authorship is best decided by standard guidelines rather than reliance on favouritism.
Scholarship : substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; Authorship : drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; Approval : final approval of the version to be published; and Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Contribution ambiguity The specific roles of individual authors in a research project are not always clear, especially when a manuscript is attributed to a large group. Responsibilities of authors and co-authors Researchers should have an understanding of who among them will have primary responsibility for the writing, submission, and editing required for a paper.
Lead author As a practical matter in the case of publications with multiple authors, one author should be designated as the lead author. The lead author is responsible for: Authorship : Including as co-authors all and only those individuals who meet the authorship criteria set forth by ICMJE. Responsible for archiving and documenting all data and files Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the ICMJE recommends that editors send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.
Co-authors All co-authors of a publication are responsible for: Authorship : By providing consent to authorship to the lead author, co-authors acknowledge that they meet the authorship criteria set forth by ICMJE. Authorship order In many disciplines, the author order indicates the magnitude of contribution, with the first author adding the most value and the last author representing the most senior, predominantly supervisory role.
Abuses of publication practices Several cases of abuse of publication practices are identified here. Simultaneous submissions One example of abuses of publication practices is the simultaneous submission of manuscripts to multiple journals with the intent of withdrawing the manuscript as soon as one of the journals indicates acceptance.
Plagiarism Plagiarism is an unethical publication practice and can be readily detected with relatively inexpensive software at the disposal of journal editors and associate editors. Adding and changing list of authorship during resubmission This section presents issues regarding adding to, or changing, the listing of authorship upon resubmission of a paper following an initial peer review by a journal.
Ghost, gift and guest authorship Guest, gift, and ghost authorship are all inconsistent with the definition of authorship and are unacceptable. Guest authorship According to the Committee on publication ethics, guest authorship is defined as granting authorship out of appreciation or respect for an individual, or in the belief that expert standing of the guest will increase the likelihood of publication, credibility, or status of the work.
Gift authorship Gift authorship occurs when someone who has not made an intellectual contribution to a paper accepts an authorship. Ghost authorship Ghost authorship, on the other hand, is the practice of omitting authors who have made a major contribution to a paper.
Acknowledgments Deciding who to formally acknowledge in your paper requires almost as much consideration as deciding authorship and contribution, although the criteria are less contentious. Conflict of interest As part of the desire for transparency, signed conflict of interest statements are typically required from all authors prior to actual publication.
Conclusions The inclusion of an author on a research paper should be based on the extent of their contributions to the conception, design, analysis and interpretation of data or acquisition of data. References 1. Grant MJ. Writing academic papers: lost in translation? Health Info Libr J ; 28 Struck by fraud? Science ; Authorship, collaboration and gender: fifteen years of publication productivity in selected geography journals.
Professional Geographer ; 64 Faculty-student collaborations: ethics and satisfaction in authorship credit. Ethics Behav ; 15 Rothman K.
Writing for epidemiology. Epidemiology ; 9 Sokol D. Adhering to authorship criteria in research while maintaining good relations with colleagues may be difficult, but it is an ideal to which we must continually aspire. BMJ ; Sharma BB, Singh V. Ethics in writing: learning to stay away from plagiarism and scientific misconduct. Lung India ; 28 International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals.
Ann Intern Med : Suhonen R. Academic writing for publication—how to start and proceed? Scand J Caring Sci ; 28 Central Afr J Public Health ; 1 Perceived susceptibility of persons with physical disability to factors contributing to the risk of contracting HIV in Cameroon: a qualitative study. Horton R, Smith R. Time to redefine authorship. Van Der Weyden MB. Authorship: is there an identity crisis? Med J Aust ; Smith J. Gift authorship: a poisoned chalice?
Savitz DA. What can we infer from author order in epidemiology? Am J Epidemiol ; Sponsorship, authorship and accountability. JAMA ; Smith R. Maintaining the integrity of the scientific record. Committee on publication ethics COPE. How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers. The details of the results of the original study, and images, DNA sequences, and other information derived from the specimens, are also made available.
An author who publishes a paper is expected to share materials related to that publication to other scientists for research purposes, but that does not prevent an author from seeking intellectual property rights protection in order to realize the commercial value of those materials.
To encourage the disclosure of scientific information, the patent system bestows inventors of a novel, nonobvious, and useful innovation with the right, for a limited time, to prevent others from making or using that innovation, unless licensed to do so. Scientific publication provides no such incentive, but to the contrary, encourages other scientists to use and integrate into new research those things described in a scientific publication. An author who publishes a scientific paper describing a patented process, for example, may have a legal right to prevent others from using it, but the scientific community holds the expectation that an author will make available a license to use that process for research.
From a social perspective, the two systems are complementary: patenting fosters the commercialization of ideas;. Publishers of journals include for-profit companies and not-for-profit enterprises, such as university presses, scientific societies, and associations, and each publisher is motivated by the intellectual objectives and fiduciary responsibilities of its own constituencies.
Journal editors often compete for papers that increase the impact and standing of their journals in the scientific community and their mass media coverage.
On occasion, journal editors have been willing to make exceptions to their usual policies on data sharing in return for the opportunity to publish a paper they believe will be of high impact in the scientific community and, increasingly, in the general public.
The extent to which journals state their policies for the sharing of materials and data is highly variable Table 2—1. That variability and the diverse nature of journals might suggest that common principles and standards do not exist. But even the stated policies of journals do not capture what are generally recognized as accepted practices and expectations of the community.
For example, most journals today explicitly require that authors provide enough detail about their materials and methods to allow a qualified reader to replicate all experimental procedures.
A logical, often implicit, extension of that requirement is that authors must make available the data and materials needed for others to verify or refute the findings reported in a paper. Thus, for example, in a paper citing genetic results from one or a series of organisms, voucher specimens should be cited and deposited in an appropriate public repository where the identity of the organisms can be checked by subsequent workers with the obvious exception of well-known and easily-available.
Table Note: Journals were identified in a search of the Institute for Scientific Information Journal Citation Reports in the life sciences and medicine. The output was sorted by impact factor; review journals were excluded.
The policies of the top 56 journals as found on their Web pages were the basis for the table. Percentages were rounded to whole numbers. Insofar that scientific publication is central to the forward progress of the scientific community, it is presumed that an author must provide data and materials in a way that others can build on them. These widely held expectations are not necessarily incorporated in current journal policies. It found that a majority of the scientific community held common ideas and values about publication and the role it plays in science, and that those ideas have guided the development of community standards that facilitate the use of scientific information and ensure its quality.
Community standards for sharing publication-related data and materials should flow from the general principle that the fundamental purpose of publication of scientific information is to move science forward. More specifically, the act of publishing is a quid pro quo in which authors receive credit and acknowledgment in exchange for disclosure of their scientific findings.
All members of the scientific community— whether working in academia, government, or commercial enterprise—share responsibility for upholding community standards as equal participants in the publication system, and all should be equally able to derive benefits from it. It provides ethical principles of the collection, storage and use of identifiable data and biological material after the care of the patient and is applied in conjunction with the Declaration of Helsinki.
This is also aimed primarily at physicians and states all the rights of the individual involved. There are a multitude of resources available to authors and publishers containing advice on how to navigate difficult ethical issues that may arise during publication. The commitment and work of these associations ensure that the publication process will continue to improve and become ever more streamlined and transparent. This can only aid the reproducibility of the data and contribute to the advancement of science through speedy and responsible dissemination of important results.
Skip to content You currently have JavaScript disabled in your web browser, please enable JavaScript to view our website as intended. Blog Blog posts and articles from the Royal Society Browse by category. Good publication practice standards A recent survey on Author Perspectives on the Publishing System run by Editage Insights revealed that nearly half of all respondents had never heard of any of the industry-recognised Good Publication Practice standards.
By Kelly Woods 27 September 5 min read. Kelly Woods. Credit: Editage Insights Why is it important? COPE Since its establishment in by three journal editors, the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE has gone from strength to strength and its membership has grown to over 12 , including all journals published by the Royal Society.
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