TY - JOUR
T1 - Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in health sciences
T2 - meta-analysis of survey research
AU - Meursinge Reynders, Reint A.
AU - Cavagnetto, Davide
AU - ter Riet, Gerben
AU - Di Girolamo, Nicola
AU - Malički, Mario
N1 - With supplementary file.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - 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 degrees of support on a 5-point justification scale. 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, all of which were rated as having low quality. A pooled estimate of 20% [95% CI 16–25] (10 surveys, 3619 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, 2180 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 may be common in the health sciences; with those admitting to this practice finding it unjustified in most cases.Registration of the protocol The protocol was registered in Open Science Framework. Link: https://osf.io/4eywp/.
AB - 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 degrees of support on a 5-point justification scale. 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, all of which were rated as having low quality. A pooled estimate of 20% [95% CI 16–25] (10 surveys, 3619 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, 2180 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 may be common in the health sciences; with those admitting to this practice finding it unjustified in most cases.Registration of the protocol The protocol was registered in Open Science Framework. Link: https://osf.io/4eywp/.
KW - Health care
KW - Medical research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85187412501&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-024-55966-x
DO - 10.1038/s41598-024-55966-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 38467762
AN - SCOPUS:85187412501
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 14
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
M1 - 5883
ER -