Survey of equal contributions in biomedical research publications

ABSTRACT

We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 1,540 researchers concerning their experiences with and attitudes toward the ethics of equal contribution (EC) designations in publications. Over half the respondents (58.3%) said they had been designated as an EC at least once. Although most respondents agreed that EC designations can be a useful way of promoting collaborations (81.7%) or resolving disagreements about authorship order (63.3%), a substantial proportion of respondents (38.1%) regarded these designations as useful but ethically questionable. 31.7% of respondents said EC designations are ethically questionable because ECs are difficult to define or measure and 25.9% said they are ethically questionable because people rarely contribute equally. Most respondents (71.8%) agreed that it is unfair to name two people as ECs when they have not contributed equally and that journals (73.4%), research teams (69.5%), and research institutions (63%) should develop policies concerning EC designations. Views concerning the ethics and policies of EC designations were influenced by the race/ethnicity and position of respondents but not by gender. Researchers who had been designated as ECs were less likely to regard this practice as ethically questionable than those who had not.

KEYWORDS:

• Authorship
• ethics
• equal contribution
• policy
• journals

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Stacey Mantooth and the NIEHS library for assisting with sampling. This research was supported by the Intramural Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH). It does not represent the views of the NIEHS, NIH, or U.S. government. Elise Smith is supported by a collaborative fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec en Santé (FRQ-S). Zubin Master is supported through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) (UL1 TR002377) grant at Mayo Clinic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported, in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) (UL1 TR002377) grant at Mayo Clinic.