Reliability of disclosure forms of authors' contributions

Ilakovac, Vesna; Fišter, Kristina; Marušić, Matko; Marušić, Ana

doi:10.1503/cmaj.060687

Cited by 70 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…In the medical literature however, concerns have been raised about the validity of the contribution disclosure forms (Bates, Anić, Marušić, & Marušić, 2004;Ilakovac, Fister, Marusic, & Marusic, 2007;Marušić, Bates, Anić, & Marušić, 2006). Hence it remains unclear why the percentages of co-pilot practices in the current study based on author contribution statements were so different than the percentages found in survey.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…First, the contribution disclosure forms used for the author contribution sections in published articles may not always yield a reliable picture of actual author contributions (Ilakovac et al, 2007). Second, we used the number of authors responsible for all analyses in the articles as a measure of co-piloting, while in the study reported in Chapter 3, we used the number of authors responsible for the first or only study reported in the article as a measure of co-piloting.…”

Section: Human Error In Psychological Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Doctoral thesis: The human fallibility of scientists - dealing with error and bias in academic research

Veldkamp¹

2017

Preprint

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THE HUMAN FALLIBILITY OF SCIENTISTSDealing with error and bias in academic researchRecent studies have highlighted that not all published findings in the scientific literature are trustworthy, suggesting that currently implemented control mechanisms such as high standards for the reporting of research methods and results, peer review, and replication, are not sufficient. In psychology in particular, solutions are sought to deal with poor reproducibility and replicability of research results. In this dissertation project I considered these problems from the perspective that the scien¬tific enterprise must better recognize the human fallibility of scientists, and I examined potential solutions aimed at dealing with human error and bias in psychological science. First, I studied whether the human fallibility of scientists is actually recognized (Chapter 2). I examined the degree to which scientists and lay people believe in the storybook image of the scientist: the image that scientists are more objective, rational, open-minded, intelligent, honest and communal than other human beings. The results suggested that belief in this storybook image is strong, particularly among scientists themselves. In addition, I found indications that scientists believe that scientists like themselves fit the storybook image better than other scientists. I consider scientist’s lack of acknowledgement of their own fallibility problematic, because I believe that critical self-reflection is the first line of defense against potential human error aggravated by confirmation bias, hindsight bias, motivated reasoning, and other human cognitive biases that could affect any professional in their work. Then I zoomed in on psychological science and focused on human error in the use of null the most widely used statistical framework in psychology: hypothesis significance testing (NHST). In Chapters 3 and 4, I examined the prevalence of errors in the reporting of statistical results in published articles, and evaluated a potential best practice to reduce such errors: the so called ‘co-pilot model of statistical analysis’. This model entails a simple code of conduct prescribing that statistical analyses are always conducted independently by at least two persons (typically co-authors). Using statcheck, a software package that is able to quickly retrieve and check statistical results in large sets of published articles, I replicated the alarmingly high error rates found in earlier studies. Although I did not find support for the effectiveness of the co-pilot model in reducing these errors, I proposed several ways to deal with human error in (psychological) research and suggested how the effectiveness of the proposed practices might be studied in future research. Finally, I turned to the risk of bias in psychological science. Psychological data can often be analyzed in many different ways. The often arbitrary choices that researchers face in analyzing their data are called researcher degrees of freedom. Researchers might be tempted to use these researcher degrees of freedom in an opportunistic manner in their pursuit of statistical significance (often called p-hacking). This is problematic because it renders research results unreliable. In Chapter 5 I presented a list of researcher degrees of freedom in psychological studies, focusing on the use of NHST. This list can be used to assess the potential for bias in psychological studies, it can be used in research methods education, and it can be used to examine the effectiveness of a potential solution to restrict oppor¬tunistic use of RDFs: study pre-registration. Pre-registration requires researchers to stipulate in advance the research hypothesis, data collection plan, data analyses, and what will be reported in the paper. Different forms of pre-registration are currently emerging in psychology, mainly varying in terms of the level of detail with respect to the research plan they require researchers to provide. In Chapter 6, I assessed the extent to which current pre-registrations restricted opportunistic use of the researcher degrees of freedom on the list presented in Chapter 5. We found that most pre-registrations were not sufficiently restrictive, but that those that were written following better guidelines and requirements restricted opportunistic use of researcher degrees of freedom considerably better than basic pre-registrations that were written following a limited set of guidelines and requirements. We concluded that better instructions, specific questions, and stricter requirements are necessary in order for pre-registrations to do what they are supposed to do: to protect researchers from their own biases.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Human Error In Psychological Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Doctoral thesis: The human fallibility of scientists - dealing with error and bias in academic research

Veldkamp¹

2017

Preprint

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“…We've broken the terminology we found (but which we do not believe to be exhaustive) into three categories: (1) the commonplace-lead, first, last, senior, single, plural, collaborative, contributing, corresponding; (2) the hyphenated-co-, multi-, sub-, hyper-; and (3) the emerging 11 /problematic-corporate, collective but non-collaborative, ambiguous, honorary, gift, guest, promiscuous, surprise, ghost. For the most part, the terms in our first category are common and do not need explanation, although a few of them have specific definitions in science. A corresponding author is the person who submits an article to a journal for review and thereby is the conduit of information between a journal and multiple authors (Ilakovac et al 2007). The label senior author, as it sounds, refers to one's seniority or prominence, but this label is attached to various problematic behaviors to which we will return.…”

Section: O L L a B O R At I O N A N D A U T H O R S H I Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Detailed contribution forms may be less reliable than they at first appear, at least if that information is conveyed through a corresponding author. In "Reliability of Disclosure Forms of Author's Contributions," Ilakovac et al (2007) report on a study including over 900 authors of over 200 articles in medicine in which they found that there was inconsistent reporting of contributions in multiple ways. While a single study is not generalizable, it does give pause as to whether or not contribution listings solve the multiple problems raised by collaborative authorship.…”

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confidence: 99%

Who owns this text?: plagiarism, authorship, and disciplinary cultures

2009

Choice Reviews Online

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“…2,5,12,17,23 Analysis performed on a sample of authors of 896 articles published in leading medical journals (Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Nature Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine and PLoS Medicine) showed a reasonable proportion (17.6%) of cases in which individuals who were included as authors had not contributed suffi ciently to merit this designation, characterizing the so-called "honorary authorship". Considering only research articles, this proportion reached 25%.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Múltipla autoria: crescimento ou bolha inflacionária?

Camargo

Coeli

2012

Rev. Saúde Pública

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OBJECTIVE:To analyze the increase in number of authors per article in Brazilian scientifi c journals on public health. METHODS:Articles published between 1999 and 2010 in six journals on public health and one medical journal (for comparison) from SciELO with Qualis (Capes) classifi cation equal or superior to B-1, were searched on the LILACS database. The evolution of the median number of authors/article and the proportion of articles with more than four authors were evaluated. The association between the the triennium of publication and the presence of four or more authors per paper was estimated through the Mantel-Haenzel odds ratio, adjusted for the type of journal. RESULTS:An increase of the median number of authors and the proportion of articles with more than four authors was observed in all journals, especially in the last triennium. The odds ratio for articles with four or more authors, adjusted for the type of journal, were: second triennium 1.3 (95%CI 1.1;1.4); third triennium 1.5 (95%CI 1.3;1.8), fourth triennium 2.39 (95%CI 2.1;2.8).

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Reliability of disclosure forms of authors' contributions

Cited by 70 publications

References 16 publications

Doctoral thesis: The human fallibility of scientists - dealing with error and bias in academic research

Doctoral thesis: The human fallibility of scientists - dealing with error and bias in academic research

Who owns this text?: plagiarism, authorship, and disciplinary cultures

Múltipla autoria: crescimento ou bolha inflacionária?

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