The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidelines

A starting point for a discussion of authorship may be the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines. In 1978, a small selection of editors of general medical journals met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, to ascertain guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became referred to as Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the National Library of Medicine, were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group evolved and expanded into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which meets annually. The ICMJE gradually has broadened its concerns to include ethical principles related to publication in biomedical journals. Through the years, ICMJE has issued updated versions of exactly what are called Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals as well as other statements relating to policy that is editorial. The absolute most update that is recent in November 2003. Approximately 500 biomedical journals subscribe towards the guidelines.

In accordance with the ICMJE guidelines:

The Schцn Case: Taking responsibility for other people’ work
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  • Authorship credit should be predicated on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of information, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the content or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval regarding the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
  • When a large, multi-center group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the requirements for authorship defined above and editors will ask these people to perform journal-specific author and conflict of interest disclosure forms. When submitting a group author manuscript, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and really should clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals will generally list other members of the combined group in the acknowledgements. The National Library of Medicine indexes the combined group name together with names of individuals the group has defined as being directly responsible for the manuscript.
  • Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision associated with research group, alone, does not justify authorship.
  • Each author must have participated sufficiently within the strive to take public responsibility for appropriate portions associated with the content.
  • Your order of authorship regarding the byline must be a decision that is joint of co-authors. Authors must certanly be willing to explain the order by which authors are listed.
  • All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship must be placed in an acknowledgments section.

C. Issues with ICMJE recommendations

Two major difficulties with the ICMJE guidelines are that numerous people in the scientific community are unaware of them and lots of scientists do not sign up to them. According to Stanford University’s Mildred Cho and Martha McKee, writing in Science’s Next Wave in 2002, a 1994 study revealed that 21% of authors of basic science papers and 30% of authors of clinical studies had no involvement within the conception or design of a project, the style regarding the scholarly study, the analysis and interpretation of information, or perhaps the writing or revisions. Actual practice, this indicates, disagrees with ICMJE recommendations.

Eugene Tarnow, writing in Science and Ethics in 2002, reports findings related to your 1994 study. He cited a 1992 study of 1,000 postdoctoral fellows at the University of California, bay area, by which less than half knew about any university, school, laboratory, or departmental guidelines for research and publication. Half thought that being head for the laboratory was sufficient for authorship, and slightly fewer thought that getting funding was enough for authorship.

A research by Tarnow of postdoctoral fellows in physics in the 1990s also shows divergences from ICMJE precepts and points to many other concerns about authorship into the sciences. Tarnow discovered that 74% for the postdoctoral fellows failed to recognize the American Physical Society’s guidelines or thought it had been vague or available to interpretations that are multiple. Half the guidelines were thought by the respondents suggested that obtaining funding was sufficient for authorship, even though the other half did not. The findings also revealed that in 75% regarding the postdoc-supervisor relationships authorship criteria had not been discussed; in 61% the postdoc’s criteria were not “clearly agreed upon”; as well as in 70% for the relationships the criteria for designating other authors was not “clearly agreed upon.”

Clearly, different laboratories have different practices about who must certanly be included as an author on a paper. At some institutions, it’s quite common for heads of departments to be listed as authors, as so-called “guest authors” or authors that are”gift” even though they have never directly contributed to the research. At other institutions, laboratory heads would routinely include as authors technicians and also require performed many experiments but may not have made a significant contribution that is intellectual a paper, while some would give a technician only an acknowledgment at the end of a paper. Some supervisors that are academic have their graduate students collect data, do research, and write up results, yet not give them credit on a paper, while others will provide authorship credit to students. Some foreigners in the usa may feel obligated to put mentors from their home countries on a paper even though they would not take part in the investigation.

Alternatives to ICMJE

Another problem using the ICMJE guidelines which have show up is the fact that each author may not be in a position to take full responsibility for the totality of a http://www.domyhomework.services paper. In a day and age of increasing specialization, one person knowing all the statistical analyses and methodology that is scientific went into getting good results might be unlikely. Because of this, some journals, like the British Medical Journal and Lancet, have turned away from the idea of an author and instead think in terms of an individual who is happy to take responsibility when it comes to content of this paper. The Journal of this American Medical Association also now requires authors to submit a form attesting into the nature of their contribution to a paper.

The British Medical Journal says that listing authorship according to ICMJE guidelines does not clarify who is accountable for overall content and excludes those whose contribution happens to be the number of data. Because of this, the journal lists contributors in 2 ways: it publishes the authors’ names at the start of the paper, and lists contributors, several of whom may not be included as authors, at the end, and provides information on who planned, conducted, and reported the work. One or more for the contributors are considered “guarantors” of this paper. The guarantor must definitely provide a written statement that he or she accepts full responsibility for the conduct of the study, had access to the information, and controlled your decision to publish. BMJ says that researchers must determine among themselves the particular nature of every person’s contribution, and encourages open discussion among all participants.

American Psychological Association excerpt on publications.
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With increased knowing of the problem, ICMJE now has with its guidelines a clause concerning contributorship: “Editors are strongly encouraged to produce and implement a contributorship policy, along with an insurance policy on identifying who is in charge of the integrity for the work as a complete.”

E. Other authorship responsibilities

An author has many other responsibilities (what is listed below has been adapted from Michael Kalichman’s educational material for the University of California, San Diego) besides clarifying the issue of who is an author and who deserves credit for work:

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  • Good writing: Authors must write well and explain methods, data analysis and conclusions so they can be understood by a reader and be able to replicate findings. Charts, tables and graphs must also be clear.
  • Accuracy: Although every effort should be designed to not have mistakes in a paper, be they in a footnote or from the research itself, unintentional errors creep in. Authors ought to be careful.
  • Context and citations: the writer has to put research into appropriate context and supply citations into the manuscript that both agree and disagree utilizing the work.
  • Publishing negative results: If researchers never publish negative results, it makes a impression that is false biases the literature. If email address details are not published from a drug trial, as an example, that either shows a medication doesn’t work or has negative effects, clinicians reviewing the literature could easily get the wrong idea concerning the medication’s value that is true. Because of this, other researchers may continue with studies about a drug that is potentially bad.
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