MedicReS Conference 2017 Istanbul - Integrity of Authorship in Research Publications - Adil E. Shamoo

5/3/2017
Integrity of Authorship in Research
Publications
Presentation to:
MedicReS Conference
May 4, 2017
Istanbul, Turkey
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D., CIP
University of Maryland School of Medicine
108 N. Greene Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Tel# 410-706-3327
Cell # 301-538-2599
E-mail: ashamoo@som.umaryland.edu

Authorship
 An International problem
 Importance
 Credit – achievement
5/3/2017

Plagiarism in China # 1
 In 1997, two cases of wholesale plagiarism
 NSFC investigated 542 allegations of
misconduct and found:
 40 % falsification
 34% plagiarism
 7% data fabrication or theft
 19 % other misconducts
(Zeng and Resnik, 2010, Developing World Bioethics, 10:1471-8847 online)
5/3/2017 Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D. 3

Plagiarism in China # 2
 In 2009, China Association for
Science and Technology (CAST)
reports from a survey of
30,000 Chinese researchers:
 43.4 say plagiarism is not
serious misconduct.

German defense minister resigns in
PhD plagiarism
March 1, 2011
 “[The] University of Bayreuth
stripped [Karl-Theodor zu]
Guttenberg of his doctorate after
he admitted substantially
copying (inadvertently, he said)
from other sources.”
( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/01/german-
defence-minister-resigns-plagiarism )

German Education minister Annette Schavan
quits over 'plagiarism‘
Feb 9, 2013
 German Education Minister Annette
Schavan has resigned after a university
stripped her of her doctorate for
plagiarism.
 Duesseldorf's Heinrich Heine University
voted last Tuesday to remove her
doctorate following a review.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21395102

Plagiarism Allegations for
Romanian Minister (May 16, 2012) and
Prime Minister (June 20, 2012)
 Ion Mang – Research Minister
 Prime Minister Victor Ponta –
Doctoral thesis
 Mang is a Computer scientist at the
University of Oradea in Romania.
 One paper is nearly identical copy of
a manuscript by Eli Biham.
 http://www.nature.com/news/plagiarism-charge-for-romanian-minister-1.10646
 http://www.nature.com/news/romanian-prime-minister-accused-of-plagiarism-1.10845

India: Plagiarism on the rise
(Neelakantan S. In India, plagiarism is on the rise – publish, perish, or pilfer? Global Post. 2009.
Oct 18, Accessed at www.globalpost.com/print/3695607.)
 Anecdotal evidence
 Resignation of a leading science-policy
expert due to plagiarism.
 7 out of 36 plagiarism and misconduct
cases investigated involved high-level
academics.
 Indian Institute found 80 cases of
plagiarism from their 2 year publications.

International Students and
Plagiarism (Bamford and Sergiou, 2005,
Investigations in university teaching and learning, 2(2):17-22)
In a survey of 35 students from 17
countries:
 51% intentional plagiarism (18/35)
 45.7% tempted to plagiarize (16/35)
 87.5% West Africans copied from books
(7/8)
 43% copied from books but majority
heard of plagiarism before (3/7)

Types of Misconduct in
Authorship
 Plagiarism
 Ghost authorship
 Ghost writing
 Honorary authorship
 Guest authorship
5/3/2017

5/3/2017
Qualifications for Authorship
____________________________
 Confusion
 University vs. Industry
 Role of Principle Investigator (PI)
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.

5/3/2017
Contributions to Authorship
____________________________
 Spectrum of Contributions
 Authenticity of Contribution

5/3/2017
Accountability and Authorship
 How much coupling
 Multiple authorship and accountability
 Dilution and vagueness

5/3/2017
Types of Plagiarism
(LaFollette, 1992)
_____________________________
 Copycat (verbatim) of large portions of another
publication without attribution
 Rephrasing of an original idea as one’s own
original idea without attribution
 Lack of acknowledgement of previous work,
Garfield, “citation amnesia”
 Honorary and undeserved authorship is a form of
plagiarism
 Inflating publication lists, dates, and type of
publications
 Using privileged information

5/3/2017
Student-Preceptor Authorship
_______________________
•Sensitive relationship
•Power balance
•APA Code of Ethics
•In Nursing, faculty may not be a
co-author
•Preceptor desired to be a co-
author

5/3/2017
Guidelines on
Authorship____________________
“All persons designated as authors
should qualify for authorship. The
order of authorship should be a
joint decision of the co-authors.
Each author should have
participated sufficiently in the
work to take public responsibility
for the content.”
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
published “Uniform Requirements for Manuscript’s submitted to
Biomedical Journals” published in major journals such as the New
England Journal of Medicine and British Medical Journal (ICMJE,
1962; Uniform Requirement…….., Revised (1991).

5/3/2017
Guidelines on Authorship
“Authorship credit should be based only on substantial
contributions to (a) conception and design, or analysis and
interpretation of data; and to (b) drafting the article or revising
it critically for important intellectual content; (and on (c) final
approval of the version to be published. Conditions (a), (b), and
(c) must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of
funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship.
General supervision of the research group is also not sufficient
for authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main
conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author.”
“A paper with corporate (collective) authorship must specify the
key persons responsible for the article; other contributing to the
work should be recognized separately (see Acknowledgements).
Editors may require authors to justify the assignment of
authorship.”
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) published
“Uniform Requirements for Manuscript’s submitted to Biomedical Journals”
published in major journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and
British Medical Journal (ICMJE, 1962; Uniform Requirement…….., Revised (1991).

5/3/2017
Adequacy of the ICMJE Guidelines
__________________________________
•Logic of contribution
•Too broad
•No mechanism of enforcement
•Best system – open discussion
prior-----.

5/3/2017
Our Proposal for Guidelines for
Authorship (Shamoo and Resnik, 2015)
________________________________
•To qualify to be the first author, the individual must have
participated in all of the following: a) conception or design, or
analysis and interpretation of data or both. b) Drafting the
article for critically important intellectual content. And c) final
approval of the version to be published. Participation solely in
the collection of data does not justify authorship.
•To qualify to be a co-author, the individual must have
participated in two or more of the following: a) Conception (in
part or whole) or design, or analysis and interpretation of data.
b) Contributing critically to the article either through drafting
portion(s) or revision(s) of the article. c) Providing the
intellectual proposals for funding agencies for the project.

5/3/2017
Our Proposal for Guidelines for
Authorship Cont’d
__________________________________
•All articles as a result of a thesis project should have the
student’s name as a first author.
•A Discussion of additional co-authors should be decided upon
in an open discussion among the parties.
•Serious considerations should be given to stating as clearly as
possible each authors contributions. We believe this approach
of stating in detail the contributions of each author will resolve
a great deal of confusion about authorship. It will also reduce
request for honorific authorship as well as protect co-authors
from false accusation of misconduct when only one co-author
deserves that label.

5/3/2017
Guidelines for Authorship (Shamoo & Resnik,
2002)
_____________________________________
 Accept accountability
 First author must participate in:
 Conception or design or analysis and interpretation
 Intellectual content, and
 Final approval of the published version

5/3/2017
A Professor’s campaign against
plagiarism
( Brien, K. M., 2014. The Baltimore Sun, May 4, p. 25.
Washington College in Chestertown, Md.)

A Professor’s campaign against
plagiarism
( Brien, K. M., 2014. The Baltimore Sun, May 4, p. 25.
Washington College in Chestertown, Md.)
 23 student papers.
 Discovered 2 blatant
plagiarism.
 Ultimatum to student to come
forward or else.
 12 students came forward.
 5 were blatant plagiarism + 2
technically plagiarism.5/3/2017

Outsourcing Writings
 Ghost-authorship?
 Hiring a professional writer for:
 Editing
 Re-writing
 Grammar
 Foreign-born
5/3/2017

Transparency in Using
professional writers
 Can be included as authors if the
authorship criteria is modified.
 Contributor model.
 Reduce poor written papers.
 Reduces plagiarism.
 Can be supportive of ethical behavior
(Hamilton et al, 2015, Accountability in Research)
5/3/2017

The Patent Model
 Discrepancy in authorship versus
inventorship.
 “Each person named on a patent must have
contributed to the conception step in the
invention (as defined by the claims) (Lissoni et al,
2013, p. 52).
 Dishonest inclusion or exclusion of a
contributor or any statement could jeopardize
the patent.
5/3/2017

5/3/2017
Co-author must participate in:
 Conception or design, or analysis and
interpretation
 Drafting or editing portion(s) or revision of the
article
 Intellectual input to the proposal for funding
 Order of authorship commensurate to
contributions
 Graduate student’s thesis should have the
student’s name as first author
 State clearly each contribution (if possible)

Original Sample from: Shamoo and Resnik, Responsible Conduct of Research, 2015, P. 127:
We recommend that an individual should be listed as an author on a paper only if he or she (a)
has made a significant intellectual contribution to the paper; (b) has read and reviewed the
paper; and (c) is prepared to publicly defend the paper (as a whole) and explain his or her role
in the research (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik 1997).
 Version # 1
 We recommend that an individual should be listed as an
author on a paper only if he or she (a) has made a
significant intellectual contribution to the paper; (b) has
read and reviewed the paper; and (c) is prepared to
publicly defend the paper (as a whole) and explain his or
her role in the research (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik 1997).
 References
 Rennie, D., et al., 1997. When Authorship Fails: A Proposal to Make Contributors
Accountable. JAMA 278: 579–85.
 Resnik, D., 1997. A Proposal for a New System of Credit Allocation in Science. Science
and Engineering Ethics 3: 237–43.
5/3/2017

Original Sample from: Shamoo and Resnik, Responsible Conduct of Research, 2015, P. 127.
 Version # 1
 We recommend that an individual should be listed as an
her role in the research (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik 1997).
 References
5/3/2017
Original Text: We recommend that an individual should be listed as an author on a paper only if
he or she (a) has made a significant intellectual contribution to the paper; (b) has read and
reviewed the paper; and (c) is prepared to publicly defend the paper (as a whole) and explain
his or her role in the research (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik 1997).

Original Sample from: Shamoo and Resnik, Responsible Conduct of Research, 2015, P. 127
Original Text: We recommend that an individual should be listed as an author on a paper only if
he or she (a) has made a significant intellectual contribution to the paper; (b) has read and
reviewed the paper; and (c) is prepared to publicly defend the paper (as a whole) and explain
his or her role in the research (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik 1997).
 Version # 2
 We advocate that a person can be listed as an author on
a paper if he or she contributed to (a) intellectual
contribution to the paper; (b) read the paper; and (c) is
defend the paper (as a whole) (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik
1997).
 References
5/3/2017

Original Sample from: Shamoo and Resnik, Responsible Conduct of Research, 2015,
P. 127
Original Text: We recommend that an individual should be listed as an author on a
paper only if he or she (a) has made a significant intellectual contribution to the
paper; (b) has read and reviewed the paper; and (c) is prepared to publicly defend
the paper (as a whole) and explain his or her role in the research (Rennie et al.
1997, Resnik 1997).
 Version # 3
 “We recommend that an individual should be listed as an
her role in the research (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik
1997).”
 References
 Rennie, D., et al., 1997. When Authorship Fails: A Proposal to Make Contributors Accountable. JAMA
278: 579–85.
 Resnik, D., 1997. A Proposal for a New System of Credit Allocation in Science. Science and
Engineering Ethics 3: 237–43.
5/3/2017

Original Sample from: Shamoo and Resnik, Responsible Conduct of Research, 2015, P. 127:
We recommend that an individual should be listed as an author on a paper only if he
or she (a) has made a significant intellectual contribution to the paper; (b) has read
and reviewed the paper; and (c) is prepared to publicly defend the paper (as a
whole) and explain his or her role in the research (Rennie et al. 1997, Resnik 1997).
 Version # 3
1997).”
 References
278: 579–85.
5/3/2017

Original Sample from: Shamoo and Resnik, Responsible Conduct of Research, 2015,
P. 127
Original Text: We recommend that an individual should be listed as an author on a
paper only if he or she (a) has made a significant intellectual contribution to the
paper; (b) has read and reviewed the paper; and (c) is prepared to publicly defend
the paper (as a whole) and explain his or her role in the research (Rennie et al.
1997, Resnik 1997).
 Version # 4
1997).” (Shamoo and Resnik, 2015)
 References
278: 579–85.
 Shamoo and Resnik, Responsible Conduct of Research, 2015, P. 127
5/3/2017

Conclusions
 Plagiarism is prevalent.
 Lack of specificity and clarity of
guidelines.
 Help in writing prevalent in industry.
 Patent model – difficult to do.
 Contributor model can help – just be
honest.

MedicReS Conference 2017 Istanbul - Integrity of Authorship in Research Publications - Adil E. Shamoo

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