Background: Honorary authorship refers to the practice of naming an individual who has made little or no contribution to a publication as an author. Honorary authorship inflates the output estimates of honorary authors and deflates the value of the work by authors who truly merit authorship. This manuscript presents the protocol for a systematic review that will assess the prevalence of five honorary authorship issues in health sciences. Methods: Surveys of authors of scientific publications in health sciences that assess prevalence estimates will be eligible. No selection criteria will be set for the time point for measuring outcomes, the setting, the language of the publication, and the publication status. Eligible manuscripts are searched from inception onwards in PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. Two calibrated authors will independently search, determine eligibility of manuscripts, and conduct data extraction. The quality of each review outcome for each eligible manuscript will be assessed with a 14-item checklist developed and piloted for this review. Data will be qualitatively synthesized and quantitative syntheses will be performed where feasible. Criteria for precluding quantitative syntheses were defined a priori. The pooled random effects double arcsine transformed summary event rates of five outcomes on honorary authorship issues with the pertinent 95% confidence intervals will be calculated if these criteria are met. Summary estimates will be displayed after back-transformation. Stata software (Stata Corporation, College Station, TX, USA) version 16 will be used for all statistical analyses. Statistical heterogeneity will be assessed using Tau2 and Chi2 tests and I2 to quantify inconsistency. Discussion: The outcomes of the planned systematic review will give insights in the magnitude of honorary authorship in health sciences and could direct new research studies to develop and implement strategies to address this problem. However, the validity of the outcomes could be influenced by low response rates, inadequate research design, weighting issues, and recall bias in the eligible surveys. Systematic review registration: This protocol was registered a priori in the Open Science Framework (OSF) link: https://osf.io/5nvar/.
Artikel gepubliceerd in NTvG: Richtlijnen geven soms aan dat je iemands huidskleur of afkomst mee moet laten spelen bij de afwegingen over een behandeling. Een bekend voorbeeld hiervan zijn de specifieke behandeladviezen voor ‘zwarte personen’ met hypertensie. Wij gingen na hoe bruikbaar dit onderscheid is in de Nederlandse situatie. Elders in het NTvG leest u dat onderscheid maken soms nodig is om goede zorg te verlenen.1 De NHG-standaard ‘Cardiovasculair risicomanagement’ adviseert, net als belangrijke internationale richtlijnen, om ‘zwarte personen’ met hypertensie bij wie geen duidelijke voorkeur is voor een specifiek antihypertensivum op basis van bijvoorbeeld zwangerschap, hartfalen of albuminurie, anders te behandelen dan niet-zwarte personen.2,3 Wij zochten uit hoe bruikbaar dit advies is in de Nederlandse spreekkamer. De term ‘zwart’ Om deze vraag te beantwoorden is het noodzakelijk om eerst terminologie te verhelderen. In de NHG-standaard wordt de term ‘zwarte personen’ gebruikt, maar wie zijn dat eigenlijk? Zijn dat alle mensen ‘van kleur’ (met een niet-witte huidskleur of identiteit), of gaat het dan om iedereen met huidtype 5 of 6 volgens de Fitzpatrick-indeling (5: diepbruin, verbrandt bijna nooit; 6: zeer donkerbruin tot zwart, verbrandt nooit)?
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A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey research was conducted to estimate honorary authorship prevalence in health sciences. We searched PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. until January 5 2023. Methodological quality was assessed and quantitative syntheses were conducted. Nineteen surveys were included and rated as having low methodological quality. We found a pooled prevalence of 26% [95% CI 21–31] (6 surveys, 2758 respondents) of researchers that perceived co-author(s) as honorary on the publication at issue (when they were not referred to any authorship criteria). That prevalence was 18% [95% CI 15–21] (11 surveys, 4272 respondents) when researchers were referred to Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, and 51% [95% CI 47–56] (15 surveys, 5111 respondents) when researchers were asked to declare their co-author(s) contributions on the publication at issue (and these were then compared to ICMJE criteria). 10% of researchers [95% CI 9–12] (11 surveys, 3,663 respondents) reported being approached by others to include honorary author(s) on the publication at issue and 16% [95% CI 13–18] (2 surveys, 823 respondents) admitted adding (an) honorary author(s). Survey research consistently indicates that honorary authorship in the health sciences is highly prevalent, however the quality of the surveys’ methods and reporting needs improvement.
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