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• Authorship for the grant winners and postgraduates
  Atif A Baig
  Published on: 27 October 2014

• Published on: 27 October 2014

  Authorship for the grant winners and postgraduates

  • Atif A Baig, Medical researcher

  Dear Sir,

  The article was well read and understood. I would like to draw the attention of readers to the current reality, of having grant winners who are not the authors even though their hypothesis and proposal writing has contributed significantly and scientifically towards achieving the grant/funds, followed by processing of the entire scientific/social projects based on the proposed hypothesis. Authorship i...

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  Dear Sir,

  The article was well read and understood. I would like to draw the attention of readers to the current reality, of having grant winners who are not the authors even though their hypothesis and proposal writing has contributed significantly and scientifically towards achieving the grant/funds, followed by processing of the entire scientific/social projects based on the proposed hypothesis. Authorship is considered to be reserved only for persons who have been receiving primary credit and have been holding a primary responsibility for published work (experimental data or data from other means like literature review, meta-analysis etc) (APA Publication manual, 2001). International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, 1997) has formulated regulations for scientific writing and ethical regulations in publishing/ maintaining the quality of scientific writing globally. These regulations are currently acceptable all over the world, in its original form or these regulations have been modified by respective countries, institutes, departments, units and research groups as per need of the time, space, funding and legislations.

  According to the ICMJE, the authorship credit should be defined/ based on meeting all four of the following conditions:

  1) Substantial contribution to the study includes: i. Conception and design, (e.g. Co-investigator, consultant or research support staff who have intellectually contributed to the grant proposal) OR ii. Clinical or methodological support throughout the implementation of the study (generally through participation in regular team meetings) OR iii. Analysis and interpretation of data

  AND

  2) Provide important intellectual contribution towards the conceptualization or writing and reviewing multiple drafts of the article or abstract in a timely fashion.

  AND

  3) Final approval of the version to be published (or may waive final approval at a point where no more substantial changes are to be made).

  AND

  4) Are prepared to take public responsibility for the paper.

  Keeping in view the above mentioned conditions, There are a variety of formal strategies of weighting the contributions of co-authors (Digiusto, 1993). For instance, issues where students are considered as co author or/ and student as grant holders still need a lot of discussion and regulation as per consensus of the entire group to be agreed upon. Many countries (for example, Malaysia) now allows a Phd or MSc student to be a Principle investigator to hold the grant, where supervisors and the seniors still have the final say as to whether student can be the first author/ coauthor even though he/she is holding a grant as a grant winner. Another important issue in this aspect is the biased authorship privilege, which is abducted from the articles written by the students as main authors. This is done for the sake of either maintaining the keep performance index (KPI) of the university or for personal professional benefits to improve the CV of supervisor or any of the members of the research group. Still it could be legal though it is not ethical. The issues regarding the ghost authors taking privilege from the grant winners is another area to be discussed. I will suggest that there is a need to compile a meta analysis of all such studies to be discussed strategically and conclusively with reference to ICMJE and as per my opinion that a single article can't bring in any necessary change without consulting the ICMJE.

  References:

  American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

  Diguiusto, E. (1993). Equity in authorship: A strategy for assigning credit when publishing. Social Science and Medicine, 38(1), 55-58.

  Conflict of Interest:

  None declared

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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