ArticleBMC medicine2014
Five-step authorship framework to improve transparency in disclosing contributors to industry-sponsored clinical trial publications.
Article in BMC medicine, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Authorship Policies at U.S. Doctoral Universities: A Review and Recommendations for Future Policies.Science and engineering ethics · 2020Pooled it
- Time trends in the reporting of conflicts of interest, funding and affiliation with industry in intensive care research: a systematic review.Intensive care medicine · 2018Pooled it
- Creating a responsible authorship culture in science: Anchoring authorship practices in principles of transparency, credit, and accountability.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Dragon Kill Points: applying a transparent working template to relieve authorship stress.BMC biology · 2026Review
- Research on policy mechanisms to address funding bias and conflicts of interest in biomedical research: a scoping review.Research integrity and peer review · 2025Article
- Call for a fairer approach to authorship in publishing biomedical research.Communications medicine · 2025Review
- Authorship transparency and equity in otolaryngology and maxillofacial surgery: current practices and the potential impact of large language models.European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology : official journal of the European Federation of Oto-Rhino-Laryngological Societies (EUFOS) : affiliated with the German Society for Oto-Rhino-Laryngology - Head and Neck Surgery · 2025Article
- Ethical and academic dilemmas in authorship of clinical research publications: a medical oncologist's perspective.Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2025Review
- The CalculAuthor: determining authorship using a simple-to-use, fair, objective, and transparent process.BMC research notes · 2023Article
- Article
- No room for ambiguity: The concepts of appropriate and inappropriate authorship in scientific publications.Indian journal of ophthalmology · 2021Article
- Transparency in authors' contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- The Malversations of Authorship - Current Status in Academic Community and How to Prevent It.Acta informatica medica : AIM : journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia & Herzegovina : casopis Drustva za medicinsku informatiku BiH · 2018Article
- Percentage-based Author Contribution Index: a universal measure of author contribution to scientific articles.Research integrity and peer review · 2017Article
- Authors and Contributors in Scientific and Medical Publications.Indian journal of clinical biochemistry : IJCB · 2016Article
- Along with the privilege of authorship come important responsibilities.BMC medicine · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Authorship guidelines have established criteria to guide author selection based on significance of contribution and helped to define associated responsibilities and accountabilities for the published findings. However, low awareness, variable interpretation, and inconsistent application of these guidelines can lead to confusion and a lack of transparency when recognizing those who merit authorship. This article describes a research project led by the Medical Publishing Insights and Practices (MPIP) Initiative to identify current challenges when determining authorship for industry-sponsored clinical trials and develop an improved approach to facilitate decision-making when recognizing authors from related publications. A total of 498 clinical investigators, journal editors, publication professionals and medical writers were surveyed to understand better how they would adjudicate challenging, real-world authorship case scenarios, determine the perceived frequency of each scenario and rate their confidence in the responses provided. Multiple rounds of discussions about these results with journal editors, clinical investigators and industry representatives led to the development of key recommendations intended to enhance transparency when determining authorship. These included forming a representative group to establish authorship criteria early in a trial, having all trial contributors agree to these criteria and documenting trial contributions to objectively determine who warrants an invitation to participate in the manuscript development process. The resulting Five-step Authorship Framework is designed to create a more standardized approach when determining authorship for clinical trial publications. Overall, these recommendations aim to facilitate more transparent authorship decisions and help readers better assess the credibility of results and perspectives of the authors for medical research more broadly. Please see related article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/12/214.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.