Honorary authorship: frequency and associated factors in physical medicine and rehabilitation research articles.
OBJECTIVE
To estimate the prevalences of perceived honorary authorship and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)-defined honorary authorship, and identify factors affecting each rate in the physical medicine and rehabilitation literature.


METHODS
Internet-based survey.


METHODS
Not applicable.


METHODS
First authors of articles published in 3 major physical medicine and rehabilitation journals between January 2009 and December 2011 were surveyed in June and July 2012 (N=1182).


METHODS
Not applicable.


METHODS
The reported prevalences of perceived and ICMJE-defined honorary authorship were the primary outcome measures, and multiple factors were analyzed to determine whether they were associated with these measures.


RESULTS
The response rate was 27.3% (248/908). The prevalences of perceived and ICMJE-defined honorary authorship were 18.0% (44/244) and 55.2% (137/248), respectively. Factors associated with perceived honorary authorship in the multivariate analysis included the suggestion that an honorary author should be included (P<.0001), being a medical resident or fellow (P=.0019), listing "reviewed manuscript" as 1 of the nonauthorship tasks (P=.0013), and the most senior author deciding the authorship order (P=.0469). Living outside North America was independently associated with ICMJE-defined honorary authorship (P=.0079) in the multivariate analysis. In the univariate analysis, indicating that the most senior author decided authorship order was significantly associated with ICMJE-defined honorary authorship (P=<.001).


CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that honorary authorship does occur in a significant proportion of the physical medicine and rehabilitation literature. Additionally, we found several factors associated with perceived and ICMJE-defined honorary authorship and a discrepancy between the 2 rates. Further studies with larger response rates are recommended to further explore this topic.
HealthPointe-Pain, Spine & Sport Medicine, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Electronic address: sathish.k.rajasekaran@gmail.com.
Sathish
S
Rajasekaran
Division of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Rodney Li Pi
RL
Shan
Tahoe Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, South Lake Tahoe, CA; Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of California Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA.
Jonathan T
JT
Finnoff
D001319:Authorship / Q000592:standards*; D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D035081:Editorial Policies; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D026761:Physical Therapy Specialty / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D012046:Rehabilitation
Ethics; Medical ethics; Publishing; Rehabilitation; Research