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J Med Ethics 2005;31:308 doi:10.1136/jme.2004.009308
  • Research ethics

The scandal of unfair behaviour of senior faculty

  1. E J Wagena
  1. Correspondence to:
 E J Wagena
 Pulmonary Rehabilitation Centre Hornerheide, PO Box 4080, 6080 AB Haelen, the Netherlands; edwinwagenaproteion.nl

    Misappropriation of authorship needs to be abolished

    Academia bases reputation and standing on the number of published articles. As a result, the abilities and potential of (junior) researchers are also being judged by the number of (scientific) articles they write, as well as on the impact factor of the journals in which their articles are being published. In itself this is not a problem, although one could of course question the assumption that the quantity of the output (and the impact factor of journals) reflects the competence of individual researchers. As Altman has stated: “The length of a list of publications is a dubious indicator of ability to do good research.”1 However, if senior faculty decide that the career progress of junior researchers in academia should be based on these criteria, academic medicine is bound to fail in fulfilling (one of) its role(s), namely maximising the quality of medical research and doing research for the right reasons. And to some extent it already has.1 …

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