Unethical Authorship Deals: Concepts, Challenges and Guidelines

Abstract

This chapter examines the lesser vilified issue of “unethical authorship deals”. Unethical authorship should be afforded the same status as other forms of research misconduct such as plagiarism, as it is a form of deception and it often involves the exploitation of lesser acclaimed authors. Unethical authorship deals occur when authors collude to misrepresent the true authorship of a paper and this form of misrepresentation makes it difficult to assess the credibility and validity of a work against possible bias. The true authorship of a paper may be misrepresented in several ways. Authors may bestow authorship upon an individual who has not substantially contributed to the work or an author may take full credit for a paper that was co-written by a ghost author. While honorary authorships or ghost authorships are clear infractions, the authorship order issue is an underrated contravention. The aim of this chapter will be to draw attention to the concept of ethical authorship deals and explore the prevalence of unethical authorship practice. While there is a dearth of studies with respect to unethical authorship in Africa, these limited studies indicate that the problem is of significance within the African continent.