Limiting authorship in Indian Pediatrics: an initiative to curb gift authorship.
Indian Pediatrics limited the number of authorship to 5, 4 and 2 for Brief Reports (BR), Case Reports (CR), and Letters to the Editor (LE), respectively from January 2003, to curb gift authorship. To analyze the impact of this policy, a comparative analysis was conducted for years 2002-2004. Mean (SD) number of authors was comparable for the three categories over 2002-2004 [BR: 4.2(1.7), 3.8(1.4), 3.9(1.5); CR: 3.3(0.8), 3.3(0.8), 3.2(0.8); LE: 2.1(1.3), 1.9(0.9), 1.8(0.5); P > 0.05]. There was a significant reduction in the number of Senior authors during 2003-2004, as compared to 2002 (P > 0.05). The policy resulted in fewer authorship credits for Senior authors.
Gupta
Piyush
P
Department of Pediatrics, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi 110 095, India. drpiyush@satyam.net.in
Sharma
Bhawna
B
Choudhury
Panna
P
D001319:Authorship; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*