Ghost Authorship

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In this article, we extend our previous discussion of the ethics of manuscript authorship to an issue that haunts both academia and industry: ghost authorship. Ghost authorship is essentially the opposite of honorary authorship, entailing a significant contribution to a manuscript without acknowledgment of that contribution. The most well-known scenario involves a professional medical writer or an industry researcher who drafts an article on behalf of a pharmaceutical company but is not credited for this work. These ghostwriters may be concealed to obscure industry backing for research, improving the apparent objectivity of a paper while maintaining the company’s control over its content. This concealment is often coupled with guest authorship, the practice of adding a reputable academic researcher’s name to a manuscript to increase its credibility, despite little to no actual involvement. In other cases, a scientist may employ, but not acknowledge, a ghostwriter to overcome an obstacle to publication, such as poor writing skills, limited time, or a lack of familiarity with journal requirements. Additional unattributed contributions may entail data collection or analysis or other potentially critical facets of the research process. One BMJ survey found that such ghost authorship was present in approximately one-tenth of papers published in six medical journals in 2008.

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How does ghost authorship relate to the authorship guidelines established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)? Based on the previously discussed criteria, solely writing or editing a manuscript, for example, does not merit author status; involvement in the study design or data collection/analysis, approval of the final draft of the paper, and accountability for the entire work are also required. Similarly, industry researchers who conduct a study and draft a report based on its results but do not approve the final version are technically not eligible for authorship, whereas a guest author who makes minor contributions to these steps and performs the approval is qualified. As a result, so-called “ghost authorship” may not truly constitute authorship, although in extreme cases, a ghost author may have met all four ICMJE criteria.