Beyond Plagiarism: 5 Other Authorship Issues in Research

When it comes to authorship disputes in academic research, plagiarism definitely gets the lion’s share of the attention, especially in the public eye. 

However, authorship in academia is a complicated subject. Who gets credit for what work and what deserves publication are all difficult questions that often don’t have easy answers. 

Even without committing traditional plagiarism, it’s possible for a paper to raise serious issues when it comes to authorship. In fact, many of these ways are easier and, most likely, much more common.

So, to that end, we’re going to look at some of the more common authorship issues that go beyond plagiarism. We’re going to look at what they are, why they are important and, most importantly, how to avoid them.

Guest/Gift Authorship

One of the easiest and most common ways to misuse authorship is through guest or gift authorships. 

The two are very similar in nature, but are done for different reasons. However, both involve an author being added to a paper even though they had little to no involvement in the research. 

In cases of guest authorship, this is often done as part of an authorship exchange where multiple people are trying to boost their publication count. In cases of gift authorship, it’s done to boost the profile of the paper by having a prominent author (or sometimes simply to impress a supervisor).

These kinds of authorship have been an issue for a very long time. One of the most important papers in cosmology, the so-called “Alphabet Article” from 1949 was an excellent example of this. 

While there are legitimate questions about how much of a contribution one should make before getting authorship, this one is generally avoided by not adding people who didn’t work on the paper to the author list, instead considering extending thanks to them rather than an author credit.

Duplicative Publication

Another common tactic to bolster one’s publication count is to simply submit the same research to multiple publications. This can be as simple as submitting the same paper to multiple journals or drafting new papers based on the same research.

While there are situations where this can be acceptable, such as publishing in multiple languages or, if research has overlaps between different fields, publishing to different audiences, it has to be properly disclosed both to the journal at the time of submission and to the reader at the time of publication.

This is also an authorship issue that some researchers find themselves in partially by accident. Some researchers will submit their paper to multiple journals in hopes of improving their chance of acceptance. However, when they get accepted to multiple journals, they neither inform the journals of the duplicate publication nor withdraw from the additional ones.

To that end, avoiding it is simple enough: Don’t submit the same research to multiple publications. Wait for acceptance or rejection from one journal before moving on. If you are submitting to multiple publications, be transparent about it with the journal and make sure the journal is transparent with the audience.

Salami Slicing

Salami slicing is a term in the research community that refers to taking a piece of research and then breaking it up into smaller papers so that one can get more publications off the same amount of work.

The reason this does work is because, often times, when a study is completed, there is enough data to either produce one in-depth paper with a great deal of information, or several smaller, tightly-focused ones. Some researchers opt for the latter, simply because it gets them more publications.

The problem with this approach is twofold. First, it misleads the audience into thinking that the research was done specifically for each individual paper. Second, it takes up publication space that could go to genuinely new research.

That said, there are situations where salami slicing may be justified. However, those cases tend to be very rare and most cases of salami slicing involve authors seeking additional publications, not trying to optimize how the information is presented.

As such, it’s best to default to turning a single study into a single paper, unless there is a rare exception. However, even then, the slicing and the duplicate publication of the research should be disclosed to both the journal and the audience.

The Ghostwriter

The ghostwriter is one of the more controversial ones. First, many consider it simply a form of plagiarism, making it improper to include on this list. Second, many others view it as a non-issue, especially if the ghostwriter didn’t participate in the research in any meaningful way.

In short, this is divisive, both in terms of whether it is plagiarism or not or whether it is a problem or not. However, since it’s not what most consider “traditional plagiarism” in this space, it’s worth examining here.

With that in mind, ghostwriting is exactly what it sounds like, it’s the use of a ghostwriter to write the article, but not listing that person as an author or acknowledging their contribution.

One of the most common reasons for using a ghostwriter is researchers who are not native English speakers seeking to publish in English language journals. They often recruit a ghostwriter to write the actual article, even though the author was not involved in the research and will not receive acknowledgement or authorship credit.

That said, the use of a ghostwriter isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, the use needs to be disclosed to the journal (thus defeating the “ghost” part of ghostwriter) and the journal should make the decision about if and how to attribute that contribution. 

This is an area where there is a great deal of divide on what the ethics are. So the best step is to be transparent about the use and follow the guidance of editors on what steps should be taken. If in doubt, turn to organizations like COPE to determine the appropriate steps to take. 

The Removed Author

Finally, there are cases where an author is removed from a paper, though their contributions would ordinarily warrant inclusion in the list.

In many cases, this is actually just traditional plagiarism. An author or a group of authors taking credit for the work of others without attribution or citation, and doing so against the wishes of that author. But, sometimes, the removed author actually agrees to be removed to improve the chances of publication.

While that might seem insane in an industry where everyone is seeking to gain more publications, but there are reasons that one might agree to accept it. 

The most common is that the removed author has a conflict of interest that might hinder the paper’s chances of publication. Removing the author removes the perception of the conflict, but not the actual conflict, and makes it so that the remaining authors don’t have to disclose the conflict. 

Obviously, the author with the conflict of interest may agree to this simply because of that conflict of interest. If the author sees the paper’s publication as being more important than them getting credit, it’s easy to see why they would agree to do it.

To that end, avoiding this issue is simple: Don’t remove authors who have earned that title, and disclose any conflicts of interest that those authors bring. It seems simple, yet it’s something that many seem to struggle with.

Bottom Line

Most of the time, avoiding authorship issues isn’t that complicated. If you give authorship only to those that earned it, avoid duplicative publication and properly disclose the people who helped with your paper, you should be fine.

That said, there are edge cases where legitimate questions can be raised. In those cases, it’s important to work with editors to determine the proper course of action. If you are an editor need assistance, COPE is an excellent organization for finding or receiving guidance on how to handle these situations.

That said, if you’re thinking about these issues and genuinely trying to do the correct thing, you are likely doing more than many. The simple truth is that, in our current research climate, the “pressure to publish” has pushed researchers to take unethical steps to inflate their publication count. 

After all, every one of these issues is a way to get work published that shouldn’t have been. Behind every undeserved publication is an author or a group of authors getting credit for and a likely career boost from that publication.

When the system rewards quantity over quality, it’s inevitable that some will find ways to exploit it. That, in turn, is what these are: Exploits.

Without changing the rewards, there’s almost no hope of stopping the exploits. To that end, it’s the legitimate researchers, editors and peer reviewers that will suffer the most.

Simply put, every dishonest people are allowed to thrive, it’s the honest ones that pay the price. Research is no different from anywhere else in that regard.