Variations in Courtesy Authorship Perceptions and Practices Among Modern Surgical Journals: The Generation Gap

Bibliometric Analysis of the English Musculoskeletal Literature over the Last 30 Years

“…Power asymmetry among coauthors leads to this phenomenon, as powerful senior researchers often simply read their junior colleague's manuscript, and by approving it, feel entitled to authorship [ 97 ]. Indeed, Kovacs states that, “without ensuring a really democratic framework for authorship decisions, the law of the jungle prevails, as often is the case today in publication science.” Finally, a 2020 study of the surgical literature regarding courtesy authorship and different generations of surgeons [ 98 ] noted that both junior and senior faculty publishing in the surgical literature had similar historical rates of adding a courtesy author (58% junior, 51% senior) and that junior faculty more frequently added a courtesy author compared to senior faculty (23% versus 13%). The junior faculty felt more pressure by superiors to add courtesy authors, although interestingly senior faculty stated the reason to add courtesy authors was to avoid conflicts more frequently than junior faculty (33% vs. 17%).…”

Courtesy Authorship Practices Among First and Senior Authors

“…Of great concern is that multiple first/senior authors described a direct threat to their career if they did not add the courtesy author. This is a break from the rationales of team building and supporting early career faculty that is often cited in discussion of courtesy authorship 3,5,6,16 . A cultural shift starting with those holding leadership roles in academic surgery is needed to stop courtesy authorship from furthering the hegemony of late career male surgeons.…”

“…Prior studies by members of our group evaluated several components of courtesy authorship practice in a sample of academic surgery journals. This work uncovered a continued high overall prevalence of courtesy authorship in academic surgery 5,6 . Further, it demonstrated that there is a wide range of opinion about the practice, and that opinions varied between different author roles and authors of work published in journals with high versus low impact factors.…”

“…This work uncovered a continued high overall prevalence of courtesy authorship in academic surgery. 5,6 Further, it demonstrated that there is a wide range of opinion about the practice, and that opinions varied between different author roles and authors of work published in journals with high versus low impact factors. Interestingly, the survey respondents stated that even though they believed courtesy authorship is bad for academia, they continued to engage in it because they felt pressure to or thought that their career might otherwise suffer.…”

“…Lastly, efforts to stop courtesy authorship have been designed with little data about what drives the practice or the efficacy of any proposed or enacted interventions. 4,6,[16][17][18] There are currently no other studies examining patterns of who is added as a courtesy author or the specific motivations for their addition. Knowing more about these demographic patterns and underlying motivations and pressure for courtesy authorship may help those in decision making positions develop more efficient processes and strategies to curtail the practice.…”