An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication

Abstract

This article explores the impact of an Increase in the average Number of Authors per Publication (INAP) on known ethical issues of authorship. For this purpose, the ten most common ethical issues associated with scholarly authorship are used to set up a taxonomy of existing issues and raise awareness among the community to take precautionary measures and adopt best practices to minimize the negative impact of INAP. We confirm that intense international, interdisciplinary and complex collaborations are necessary, and INAP is an expression of this trend. However, perverse incentives aimed to increase institutional and personal publication counts and egregious instances of guest or honorary authorship are problematic. We argue that whether INAP is due to increased complexity and scale of science, perverse incentives or undeserved authorship, it could negatively affect known ethical issues of authorship at some level. In the long run, INAP depreciates the value of authorship status and may disproportionately impact junior researchers and those who contribute to technical and routine tasks. We provide two suggestions that could reduce the long-term impact of INAP on the reward system of science. First, we suggest further refinement of the CRediT taxonomy including better integration into current systems of attribution and acknowledgement, and better harmony with major authorship guidelines such as those suggested by the ICMJE. Second, we propose adjustments to the academic recognition and promotion systems at an institutional level as well as the introduction of best practices.

A systematic scoping review of the ethics of contributor role ontologies and taxonomies

“…Examples like these or instances wherein journal instructions suggest using CRediT contrary to what is prescribed by its developers (seeHosseini et al, 2022a for an example about the PLOS Biology journal) show that communicating information about CROTs by means of peer-reviewed publications is not always effective. CROTs such as CRediT could be misused and misunderstood in many ways, and researchers will not always have the knowledge necessary to identify, read and understand the instructions embedded in peer-reviewed publications.…”

“…Thus far, no published study has systematically analyzed CROTs from an ethical perspective [7], which given their growing significance in scholarly publications, is a needed area of work. Indeed, with the steady increase of collaborative and international research [8], and a continuous rise of the number of diverse roles required in research projects, exploring the ethics of CROTs (i.e., the relevant obligations, values, and virtues in relation to CROTs) increases the likelihood of their ethical development and deployment [2]. Furthermore, by having ethical issues categorized under specific themes, future research will be provided with an indication of most frequently discussed themes in relation to CROTs.…”

“…The uptake of CROTs has not been limited to journals. CROTs have also been adopted by repositories (e.g., DARIAH-DE, Zenodo) and universities (e.g., University of Glasgow), and are among recommended solutions to improve research assessment, promotion, and funding processes (Hosseini et al, 2022a). Accordingly, CROTs are becoming a pivotal part of scholarly publications and associated workflows, as they are beneficial not only to researchers (e.g., to receive the deserved credit for their contributions) but also for publishers and their editorial teams (e.g., to enhance understanding about who did what in relation to a publication and who is responsible for each task), funding organizations (e.g., to clarify who benefitted from provided funds), universities' administration and research offices (e.g., to improve tenure and assessment processes) and libraries (e.g., to enable indexing publications based on involved contributions) (Hosseini et al, 2022b).…”

Perish and publish: Dynamics of biomedical publications by deceased authors

“…It is possible that honorary authorship could be conferred on deceased individuals with a high profile and established reputation to improve a study’s impact [ 30 , 31 ]. The increasing contribution of deceased authors in the biomedical literature could also exacerbate the growing trend in average number of authors per publication which also poses an ethical issue for authorship in general [ 32 ]. However, improper motives may be less likely to be at play in the majority of cases of deceased authors as the majority do not have significant publication records and further they cannot exert undue pressure or coerce co-authors for honorary authorship after death.…”

Authorship

“…What are the mechanisms for oversight, guidance, and advice? These are complex questions, and have led to considerable deliberation, hand‐wringing, and soul‐searching 5–10 …”