Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in the health sciences: meta-analysis of survey research

Abstract

Abstract A systematic review with meta-analysis was conducted to assess the prevalence of automatically listing (a) senior member(s) of a department as co-author(s) on all submitted articles in health sciences and the prevalence of various justifications for doing so. Survey research was searched in PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. until January 5 2023. We assessed the methodological quality of studies and conducted quantitative syntheses. We identified 15 eligible surveys, that provided 67 results, of which all were rated as having low quality. A pooled estimate of 20% [95% CI 16–25](10 surveys, 3,619 respondents) of researchers in various health sciences reported that a senior member of their department was automatically listed as an author on all submitted articles. Furthermore, 28%[95% CI 22–34] of researchers (10 surveys, 2,180 respondents) felt that this practice was ‘never’, 24%[95% CI 22–27] ‘rarely’, 25%[95% CI 23–28] ‘sometimes’, 13%[95% CI 9–17] ‘most of the time’, and 8%[95% CI 6–9] ‘always justified’. The practice of automatically assigning senior members of departments as co-authors on all submitted manuscripts is common in the health sciences and yet those who conduct it do not find it justified in most cases. Increasing awareness of authorship guidelines, or credit taxonomies may help alleviate these issues. Registration of the protocol. The protocol was registered in Open Science Framework. Link: https://osf.io/4eywp/