Prevalence of honorary and ghost authorship in Cochrane reviews

Ref ID 701
First Author G. Mowatt
Journal JAMA
Year Of Publishing 2002
URL https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12038907/
Keywords • Author
• Cochrane
• Allegiance
Problem(s) • Weaknesses identified in some Cochrane reviews
• Guest / gift / ghost authorship
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Survey/questionnaire of authors opinions/practices
First Author Country United Kingdom
Aim To assess the prevalence of honorary authorship (naming as an author, an individual who does not meet authorship criteria) and ghost authorship (failure to name an individual who has made substantial contributions that merited authorship or an unnamed individual who participated in writing the article) in Cochrane reviews using a web-based questionnaire.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings 39% of the 362 included Cochrane reviews had evidence of honorary authors (named as authors but not meeting all 3 ICMJE criteria). 9% had evidence of ghost authors (most commonly a member of the Cochrane editorial team) and 2% had evidence of both honorary and ghost authors.
Number of systematic reviews included 362
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 577
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description