Gift authorship: Frequency in a Peruvian journal

Abstract

Introduction: Gift authorship is a dishonest practice which involves naming as authors those who do not meet the criteria to be considered as one. Objectives: to determine the frequency of gift authorship in original articles published in an indexed Peruvian journal. Materials and methods: We performed a cross-sectional study, in which we assessed the contributions reported by the authors of all the original articles published between 2013 and the first trimester of 2017. Gift authorship was defined as not meeting at least one of the criteria established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Results: Of the 209 original articles published, eleven were excluded because they did not detailed authors contributions. Thus, 198 original articles were included, and 56% had at least one gift authorship. Regarding the ICMJE criteria those will less adherence were; final approval of the version to be published (23,2%), and drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content (16,8%). Conclusions: It is necessary that educational institutions train researchers to discriminate between authorship and contribution. In addition, it is necessary that journals request and corroborate the reported contributions.