Honorary Authorship in Health Sciences: A Protocol for a Systematic Review of Survey Research

Reynders, Reint Meursinge; Riet, Gerben ter; Girolamo, Nicola Di; Malički, Mario

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-511533/v1

Cited by 2 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…A narrative systematic synthesis was rst conducted for all outcomes. Based on the criteria delineated in the Appendix and in our established protocol, we refrained from conducting certain meta-analyses [4]. When conducting quantitative syntheses, proportions are presented in forest plots with 95% con dence intervals.…”

Section: Occurrence Measures and Synthesis Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We used a critical appraisal tool tailored to our review to assess how the non-implementation of speci c quality safeguards could have affected each eligible result of each survey. This tool consists of a 14 items pilot-tested checklist [4]. Congruent with the AMSTAR-2 tool [9], 7 of the 14 items were labeled as 'critical'.…”

Section: Study Risk Of Bias Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the case of disagreements, we implemented the same strategies as reported for the study selection and data collection procedures. The 14-item checklist of our quality assessment tool with user's instructions is given in the protocol [4] and in the Appendix.…”

Section: Study Risk Of Bias Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The presence and extent of heterogeneity was inspected visually by assessing the overlap of the con dence intervals in the forest plot, by conducting the test of homogeneity (Chi 2 ), and by calculating tau 2 i.e., the estimate of between study variance, and by calculating I 2 to assess the inconsistency in the results of the surveys [11]. We explored heterogeneity through meta-regression and subgroup analyses of a series of survey-and methodology-related explanatory variables de ned in our protocol [4]. Additional information on our methods to explore possible causes of heterogeneity among study results and sensitivity analyses to assess the robustness of pooled results are reported in the Appendix.…”

Section: Investigation Of Heterogeneity and Sensitivity Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We included publications on this topic in any language, and any setting and time point. Except for the 3 new outcomes, all criteria were identical to those in our previous review on HA in health sciences [4]. Full eligibility criteria are in the Appendix.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in the health sciences: meta-analysis of survey research

Reynders,

Cavagnetto,

Riet

et al. 2023

Preprint

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A systematic review with meta-analysis was conducted to assess the prevalence of automatically listing (a) senior member(s) of a department as co-author(s) on all submitted articles in health sciences and the prevalence of various justifications for doing so. Survey research was searched in PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. until January 5 2023. We assessed the methodological quality of studies and conducted quantitative syntheses. We identified 15 eligible surveys, that provided 67 results, of which all were rated as having low quality. A pooled estimate of 20% [95% CI 16–25](10 surveys, 3,619 respondents) of researchers in various health sciences reported that a senior member of their department was automatically listed as an author on all submitted articles. Furthermore, 28%[95% CI 22–34] of researchers (10 surveys, 2,180 respondents) felt that this practice was ‘never’, 24%[95% CI 22–27] ‘rarely’, 25%[95% CI 23–28] ‘sometimes’, 13%[95% CI 9–17] ‘most of the time’, and 8%[95% CI 6–9] ‘always justified’. The practice of automatically assigning senior members of departments as co-authors on all submitted manuscripts is common in the health sciences and yet those who conduct it do not find it justified in most cases. Increasing awareness of authorship guidelines, or credit taxonomies may help alleviate these issues. Registration of the protocol. The protocol was registered in Open Science Framework. Link: https://osf.io/4eywp/

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Section: Occurrence Measures and Synthesis Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Risk Of Bias Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Risk Of Bias Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Investigation Of Heterogeneity and Sensitivity Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in the health sciences: meta-analysis of survey research

Reynders,

Cavagnetto,

Riet

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Honorary authorship is highly prevalent in health sciences: systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys

Reynders,

Riet,

Girolamo

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

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A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey research was conducted to estimate honorary authorship prevalence in health sciences. We searched PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. until January 5 2023. Methodological quality was assessed and quantitative syntheses were conducted. Nineteen surveys were included and rated as having low methodological quality. We found a pooled prevalence of 26% [95% CI 21–31](6 surveys, 2,758 respondents) of researchers that perceived co-author(s) as honorary on the publication at issue (when they were not referred to any authorship criteria). That prevalence was 18% [95% CI 15–21](11 surveys, 4,272 respondents) when researchers were referred to Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, and 51% [95% CI 47–56](15 surveys, 5,111 respondents) when researchers were asked to declare their co-author(s) contributions on the publication at issue (and these were then compared to ICMJE criteria). 10% of researchers [95% CI 9–12](11 surveys, 3,663 respondents) reported being approached by others to include honorary author(s) on the publication at issue and 16% [95% CI 13–18](2 surveys, 823 respondents) admitted adding (an) honorary author(s). Survey research consistently indicates that honorary authorship in the health sciences is highly prevalent, however the quality of the surveys’ methods and reporting needs improvement. Registration and publication of the protocol. Our protocol was preregistered (https://osf.io/5nvar/) and published at: (https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13643-022-01928-1)

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Honorary Authorship in Health Sciences: A Protocol for a Systematic Review of Survey Research

Cited by 2 publications

References 29 publications

Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in the health sciences: meta-analysis of survey research

Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in the health sciences: meta-analysis of survey research

Honorary authorship is highly prevalent in health sciences: systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys

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