What are the factors determining authorship and the order of the authors' names? A study among authors of the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (Dutch Journal of Medicine).
BACKGROUND
Although criteria justifying authorship of scientific medical articles have been formulated, it is not well known how authorship is established in practice.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the criteria for authorship used by authors of original articles in Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (NTVG, the Dutch Journal of Medicine), and to determine whether the criteria for authorship of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are known and applied.


METHODS
Survey questionnaire.


METHODS
Editorial office of the NTVG.


METHODS
All 450 authors of 115 original articles published in 1995.


METHODS
Author's contribution to study design, material, collection of data, statistics, and writing.


RESULTS
Of 362 forms returned, 352 could be analyzed (78.2% response rate). The 5 questions most frequently answered affirmatively were ICMJE criteria: critical reading (86.1 % of the authors), approval of the final version (84.7%), study design (74.7%), study conception (64.2%), and revision (63.4%). Authors rated their contribution 2 points higher than did their coauthors. Interestingly, 64% of the respondents met the ICMJE criteria, although 60% of the respondents did not know them.


CONCLUSIONS
Authorship was mostly in accordance with ICMJE criteria although many authors were not familiar with them.
Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
W P
WP
Hoen
H C
HC
Walvoort
A J
AJ
Overbeke
D001319:Authorship; D011643:Publishing