Increasing number of authors in Cochrane reviews

Ref ID 46
First Author S. Gülen
Journal JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE‐BASED MEDICINE
Year Of Publishing 2020
URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jebm.12371
Keywords • Transparency
• Author
• Cochrane
• General medical
Problem(s) • Guest / gift / ghost authorship
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Denmark
Aim To assess authorship trends in Cochrane reviews from 1996 to 2018, and to examine if the authorship criteria from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) were met for Cochrane reviews with more than 15 authors based on the text in the section “Contributions of authors.”
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 7447 Cochrane reviews from 1996 to 2018. Within each editorial group, the total number of authors either increased (26/55, 47%) or was unchanged (29/55, 53%). Based on the text in “Contributions of authors,” 59% (16/27) of the reviews with more than 15 authors had authors that did not fulfil the ICMJE authorship criteria. However, the text in “Contributions of authors” was often difficult to interpret.
Number of systematic reviews included 7447
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 7905
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description