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Editor's Notes |
Mysteries can be entertaining, particularly when they are eventually solved. Determining whether Professor Plum killed someone in the library with a knife provides hours of pleasure to devotees of the game Clue, as do the dogged pursuits of Miss Marple and the machinations of the cigar-chomping Columbo. But some things should not be mysteries. Have you ever looked at a list of authors in this or other journals and wondered who did what, and, more importantly, whether any one person was responsible for what you are reading? In most cases, even after obsessive detective work, it still isn't possible to discern who did what.
Determining authorship is not a new problem. Biblical scholars toil over old texts to discover whose hand wrote which of the books. Their daunting task is made necessary by the frequency with which authors seem to have described their own deaths (a remarkable achievement for any author!). But few devoted readers of the new and old testaments feel obliged to suspend belief while they wait for scholars to assign authorship. For readers, the moral authority and power of the document arise not from earth-bound authors but from the force that guided the writers' hands. The same is not true for scientific communication. We would be wary of any fanatic who assured us that authorship of research is not important because the contents were derived by divine inspiration!
Why has authorship suddenly become a hot topic among editors, ethicists, and others? Is this just their issue, or is it relevant to all of us? Authors have many reasons to care. In the words of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors1 in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, all people listed as authors should
...have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based on substantial contributions to (1) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on (3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions (1), (2), and (3) must all be met.
Authorship therefore is a public declaration of an effort. By placing his or her name in the byline, an author signals that a contribution has been made and that his or her credibility and competence are inextricably tied to the paper.
Only through publication and authorship can there be widespread evaluation of the efforts and competence of researchers, clinicians, and faculty members. In most fields, an absence of publication by any given individual suggests that the individual may be unable to achieve the most minimal level of contribution to knowledge within a field. By extension, people who can find no way to contribute to a field's knowledge base (remember this includes all sorts of papers, including case reports and other non-research papers) often are deemed inadequate as academic or clinical faculty and usually are viewed as inappropriate contributors to educational efforts (especially continuing education). This is not a judgment of a person. It is a judgment of a person's performance as a clinician and scientist.
In physical therapy, our failure to appreciate this standard has hurt our credibility and productivity. Authorship should be something we all care about. It is a means by which we can judge academic departments and faculty and determine whether self-proclaimed clinical experts are credible (by virtue of their publication in peer-reviewed journals).
Among editors of biomedical journals, there is little doubt that the criteria for authorship detailed in the Uniform Requirements are widely ignored. But until recently we did not have a strategy for dealing with this issue. Editors do not view themselves as police in the process of assigning authorship. Such a role would be not only questionable but impractical. We depend on authors to conform to the standards of which we inform them, but we know that in the end this does not usually happen. Editors have, by default, become conduits of misinformation because we have failed to actively seek innovative mechanisms to improve the manner in which we assign authorship and credit.
Next month, the Journal will take a first step toward changing the system. We will retain bylines, and we will still ask that people be listed as authors only when their roles meet the Uniform Requirements as described in this Note. But we also will follow the lead of many other journals by adding a new mechanism to recognize the people who contribute to each article. At the beginning of each article we will have what is sometimes referred to as "rolling credits," a name derived from the list of credits given at the end of movies. The rolling credits will indicate the exact role that each author in the byline played in the development of the paper and its content. In addition, other people who made contributions can be named and their efforts specified. Readers will know who did what and who to hold primarily accountable for any aspect of a paper. As a journal, however, we still will insist that all authors of a work remain equally accountable for issues relating to the credibility and the integrity of that work.
Just as the content of papers offers readers information that they can use to make judgments, so can the rolling credits. You now will know who to call to ask questions about specific aspects of a paper, and you also will know who was clever enough (or silly enough) to formulate a given method. Journals are in the information business, and more detailed information about authorship should be part of that mission.
Because publication is so important to the careers of so many academics, there has been growing bloat in author lists. We see ghosts and guests in bylines. Authorship may be improperly used—to extort patient referrals, supplies, or equipment—and people who control resources may bargain for authorship when they do little or nothing to add to the content of papers. When we query authors about who really did what, they often remind us that they need to give credit to colleagues to continue working relationships or to foster the careers of their fellows. Although we believe that these arguments are insufficient to justify authorship, we also understand the peer pressure. Through rolling credits, authors can do the right thing and be very explicit about who did what.
We hope that this new system will be part of a generalized revolution in assigning credit for scientific efforts, a revolution that enhances credibility and responsibility. We now will offer more information to promotion committees and others who need to judge the efforts of authors, instead of asking them to depend on capricious interpretations of whether the second author did substantively less than the first author. Often the efforts are equal, but there has to be a sequenced list, and, as a result, authors may be deprived of the recognition they deserve. On other occasions, first-listed authors may have done 90% of the work and the second author very little.
Adding the names of department heads to papers written by faculty members is inappropriate unless the department head adds to the paper in a manner that is consistent with the Uniform Requirements. In the rolling credits, however, a department head who consistently facilitates research can be recognized for that critical role, and it can be noted whether he or she contributed dialogue, time, equipment, or funds. Similarly, we can finally recognize the important contribution of those who edit and help us write more clearly.
Let's give credit where credit is due, and reserve the mysteries for novels.
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