“Issues in Authorship”

Dr Virginia Barbour, Chair, COPE

Medicine and Biology Editorial Director, PLOS

vbarbour@plos.org @ginnybarbour

www.publicationethics.org; @C0PE

Publication Ethics: what’s it about?

• Ensuring the integrity of the scientific literature

• Part of research ethics more widely• Important in ensuring the literature is

trusted

NB Medicine has often driven publication ethics but no field is immune

• Analysis of 16 years of COPE Cases (1997- 2012)

• Team: Irene Hames (COPE Council), Charon Pierson (COPE Council), Natalie Ridgeway (COPE Operations Manager), Virginia Barbour (COPE Chair)

• Presented at 7th International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, 8 September 2013, Chicago

COPE case analysis project

Classification of COPE cases, 1997-2012, categories with >7 instances in a 4-year period

Issues related to authorship that have been & remain major topics

Authorship itself• disputed 45%

• changes 34%

• gift 10%

• ghost 9%

Plagiarism (~70% occurred 2005-12)

• in published article 52%

• in submitted article 38%

• text recycling 10% (most 2009-12)

Should we be rethinking authorship?

• Unique ID• Move to contributorship model

• Micro-attribution

• Debating issues of credit and responsibility in authorship

Unique Author ID

Contributorship

Where COPE comes in

• Education of editors and publishers

• Advice to member editors

• Facilitate and lead debate on publishing ethics

COPE

• More than 9000 members

• International in scope and fully inclusive in subject matter

• All academic disciplines and fields are now covered, eg:• Biomedicine• Pure and applied sciences• Engineering and technology• Arts, humanities and social sciences

COPE resourcesFlowchartsGuidance eg retractionsDiscussion documents, eg reviewer guidelinesSample letters Code of ConductBest Practice guidelinesDatabase of casesBlog/discussionForum meetings/seminars

Issues to consider

Publication ethics is becoming more public and more complex

• A power imbalance is often at the basis of authorship disputes

• The research literature is becoming more complex

• How do we deal with blogs, tweets & other new academic activity?

• We need an informed debate and acceptance of increased scrutiny and responsibility

• Does the current academic climate predispose to problems with authorship?

Sources of information on publication/research ethics

•COPE publicationethics.org/•Council of Science Editors www.councilscienceeditors.org/

• White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications

•World Congress on Research Integrity wcri2013.org/• Singapore Guidelines on Responsible research publication:

international standards for authors

•WAME www.wame.org/•ICMJE www.icmje.org/•UKRIO www.ukrio.org/