Academic authorship means only those individuals should be recognized for their contributions to a scholarly project who conceived, initiated, researched, conducted, and reported the project. It is essential to list only qualifying authors who can prove they developed the ideas and methods, and have a significant contribution to an academic research work. However, there is an issue known as “gift authorship” which occurs when someone is listed as an author without really contributing to the research project. Although gift authorship might appear harmless, it negatively impacts the honesty and fairness of scientific work. It alters who receives credit and can damage the process of sharing and building knowledge. This article examines the issues caused by gift authorship, discussing the reasons behind it, its negative effects on scholarly work, and providing examples from around the world.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) sets important rules for deciding who should be listed as an author on a research paper. According to these guidelines, an author must have significantly contributed to the research. These contributions could include developing the main idea, designing the study, collecting or analyzing data, interpreting the results, or creating any necessary software. Authors are also expected to write or make important changes to the draft and approve the final version that is published. They need to be responsible for the entire work, especially if there are questions about whether the research is correct and honest. This responsibility ensures that any issues are properly looked into and resolved. “Gift authorship” is when someone is named as an author without meeting these essential criteria, which creates a mismatch between the named author and the actual work done in the research.

The Many Faces of Gift Authorship

Gift authorship frequently appears in academic work but can be hard to spot. A common instance is when senior staff, like department heads or lab directors, are listed as authors just because they are in charge. This can occur even if they have not contributed to the research. This practice is often done to gain approval, access resources, or speed up getting published. It can make senior individuals seem more involved than they really are, while junior researchers, who actually did most of the work, might not get the recognition they deserve.

A common practice among researchers is to list colleagues or collaborators as authors on their papers. This is often done as a favor to help each other boost their publication count. It is like saying, “I will support you if you support me (quid pro quo).” This practice can lead to many people being credited as authors even if they did not contribute significantly to the work. As a result, it becomes difficult to identify who actually did the essential work. This arrangement can undermine the value of being named as an author, which should ideally reflect the real intellectual contributions made by each person.

Gift authorship can also include people who helped only a little. This might be someone who let you use their equipment, gave some administrative support, or offered feedback on your paper. However, if they did not engage with the main ideas of the work, their efforts, while important, do not qualify them for authorship. We should still express our gratitude to them, usually in the acknowledgments section of the paper. It is important to differentiate between minor and major contributions to maintain the integrity of authorship.

Why is highlighting the curse of “gift authorship” important for me? I am also a victim. Let me share my story with my readers. When I extracted a research paper from my MS thesis and submitted it to a high-quality SSCI European journal, fortunately, I received favorable but hard-to-incorporate comments. I brought those comments and the good news of acceptance after “moderate revision” to my MS supervisor, who was an ex-officio co-author for that paper, and asked him to cooperate to answer the reviewers’ comments. Instead of appreciating my efforts and working on revision, he proposed to include Prof. Dr. [Famous Person from a Canadian University] as a co-author and get the paper accepted easily. I was shocked to see his unethical response. I was not in the position to confront him directly, so I left his office, revised the manuscript following the reviewers’ instructions, removed his name from authorship, and submitted it to the journal. The article was finally accepted!

Motivations Behind the Generosity

People give gift authorship for different reasons. This is often due to the pressures and rules in the academic world. Several reasons explain why this practice still happens:

Power Dynamics and Hierarchy: Junior researchers might think they have to include senior colleagues in their projects. This can be important for keeping good relationships and getting future opportunities. It can also help prevent any negative consequences. In academia, the structure is often very hierarchical, meaning people at the top have more power. This can make it seem risky for younger researchers to question decisions about who gets credit as an author, especially when it concerns senior figures.
The Pressure to Publish: Researchers face intense pressure from their institutions to publish significant research work. This is crucial for advancing their careers, securing funding, and boosting their institution’s standing. Due to these pressures, some may engage in “gift authorship,” where they include additional authors on a paper. This practice can make the paper appear more significant or prestigious by having more names attached to it.
Reciprocity and Networking: In academic collaborations, there is often a sense of give-and-take. Researchers might feel the need to include their collaborators as authors, even if the collaborators did not contribute much. This approach helps maintain good working relationships, which are important for future projects and continued cooperation. Researchers value these partnerships because they can lead to more opportunities and successful outcomes in their work. By ensuring everyone feels appreciated, they encourage a positive and productive work environment.
Strategic Considerations: Adding a well-known or influential person as an author to research can increase its visibility and make it seem more credible, even if that person did not contribute much. This approach can help the research get published more easily in high-impact journals that are widely respected in the academic field. This is because the inclusion of a recognized name can enhance the perceived quality and importance of the study, aligning it with the standards expected by prestigious publications.
Lack of Clear Guidelines and Enforcement: Different institutions and journals have rules about who should be an author of a paper. But these rules are sometimes not used the same way everywhere or gamed. This inconsistency creates gaps that let “gift authorship” happen.

The Pernicious Consequences of Gift Authorship

When you put someone’s name on a publication without their actual work, it might seem like no big deal. However, doing this actually causes several problems. It damages the trust and honesty that are essential in academic work.

Distortion of the Scientific Record: Gift authorship happens when someone is credited for research they did not significantly contribute to. This practice clouds the real achievements of the individuals who actually did the work and had the ideas. As a result, it becomes challenging to track how concepts evolve in a specific research area. Giving credit to the wrong people not only slows down scientific advances but also risks ignoring those who genuinely deserve recognition. This can lead to unfairness and potentially hinder future breakthroughs in the field.
Loss of Accountability: Being listed as an author means you must ensure your work is honest and correct. Sometimes, people are named as authors even if they did not actually help, and these people are called “gift authors.” Gift authors might not understand the details of the research well enough to explain the results or correct mistakes. When the responsibility is shared too much, it can weaken the important systems that make sure scientific work follows strict rules and is carefully done.
Unfair Advantage and Inequity: Gift authorship involves giving credit to someone in a publication without their meaningful contribution. This practice artificially boosts their list of publications, which can unfairly help them secure better jobs, promotions, or funding opportunities. Such a system is unfair to researchers who depend solely on their hard work and actual contributions for career growth, as it places them at a disadvantage. When people get credit, they have not earned, it disrupts the fairness and integrity of academic and professional advancement. This issue highlights the importance of recognizing only genuine efforts and achievements in research to maintain a just environment for everyone.
Compromised Research Integrity: When people feel they must give authorship as a gift, it can create a culture where shortcuts take priority over honesty. This may lead to other dishonest actions in research. If authorship loses its importance, there is less motivation to stick to strict and honest methods, potentially harming the quality and integrity of the research. When the true value of being an author is lessened by gift authorship, it can affect how seriously researchers approach their work, possibly leading to a decline in ethical standards and encouraging practices that cut corners for the sake of convenience.
Damage to Trust and Collaboration: When people learn about gift authorship, it can break trust and hurt the working relationships between researchers. This can lead to resentment and take away from the genuine teamwork that is so important for successful scientific projects. Such situations can negatively impact the motivation and dedication required for achieving significant discoveries and advances in their field. Maintaining honesty in authorship is key to ensuring strong partnerships and achieving shared goals in research.
Misleading Evaluation Metrics: Bibliometric indicators, such as the h-index, depend on counting publications and citations a researcher has received. These figures can be falsely increased through gift authorship. This can lead to misleading evaluations of a researcher’s productivity and influence. In turn, this skews the true understanding of the academic landscape, causing confusion about who genuinely contributes valuable work in their field.

Global Examples of the Curse in Action

The problem of gift authorship is not confined to a single country or discipline; it is a global phenomenon that manifests in various forms across diverse academic settings.

China: Research has revealed that gift authorship, where individuals are credited as authors without having contributed to the work, is quite prevalent in China. This issue is largely due to the hierarchical nature of academic institutions and the strong pressure to publish for career advancement (Rivera, 2024). Often, the aim is to gain favor and backing from senior faculty or institutional leaders, which can be crucial for one’s academic progress. This situation stems from a desire to secure positive relationships with those who have influence over career paths in the academic field.
South Korea: Research in South Korea has identified a common issue known as gift authorship. This is often linked to the country’s strong hierarchical academic culture. Junior researchers might feel pressured to include senior professors as co-authors on their research papers, even when these senior professors did not significantly contribute (Hong, 2019). This practice is seen as a strategy to advance in a highly competitive academic field. By adding well-known senior names to their work, junior researchers hope to improve their chances of career progression.
United States: Although the United States is often seen as having more strict ethical rules, gift authorship still happens there. This issue can be seen in fields such as medical research and social sciences. Sometimes senior researchers or department leaders are added as authors to make the publication look more important or to keep control over research activities within a lab or department. This practice can undermine the actual contributions of those who did the real work and can affect the integrity of the research (COPE, 2021).
Europe: Research in European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy has found that “gift authorship” is common. This often happens in group projects where it is unclear who contributed what, or when people trade authorship credits. The desire to secure funding and publish in top journals makes this issue more widespread. For example, a 2017 study by ALLEA on research practices in Europe identified authorship as a major concern.
India: The quick spread of universities and research work in India has devastatingly emerged “gift authorship.” This is when supervisors or institution leaders are listed as authors on papers by students or junior researchers, even if they did not truly contribute to the work. The problem often arises because of unequal power relationships and the absence of strong ethical guidelines in some universities (Bansal, 2022).

Combating the Curse: Towards a Culture of Ethical Authorship

Addressing the pervasive problem of gift authorship requires a multi-pronged approach involving individual responsibility, institutional reforms, and journal policies.

Education and Awareness: Helping researchers, especially those new to their careers, understand the ethics of gift authorship is critical. It is important to teach new researchers why it is vital to follow authorship rules and criteria. Education should stress the importance of making real contributions, being responsible for the published work, and being honest and clear about each person’s role in a research project. This ensures that everyone involved is fairly acknowledged for their contributions and that the research community maintains trust and integrity in their publications.
Clear Institutional Guidelines and Enforcement: Schools and universities must set up and strictly follow simple and clear rules about who gets credit for writing work. These rules need to match the international standards, such as those proposed by ICMJE. It is important to have systems in place to resolve arguments over who should be named as an author and to investigate claims of giving credit to people who did not contribute. These procedures should be fair and open, allowing everyone involved to understand how decisions are made.
Journal Policies and Oversight: Scholarly journals are crucial for ensuring that authors follow ethical guidelines. They must have clear rules about who qualifies as an author. Authors should specify exactly what they have contributed to the work. Journals should also investigate any suspicions of people being added as authors without proper justification. Utilizing tools like Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) can help clarify the specific contributions of each author in detail, but unfortunately, these unsupervised tools can easily be gamed.
Mentorship and Role Modeling: Experienced researchers and mentors have a key role in setting examples for fair authorship practices. Their responsibility is to help younger researchers decide who should be credited as authors. Open conversations about assigning authorship are very important. It is crucial to promote these discussions and discourage the practice of giving someone authorship as a gift when they did not contribute to the work. This way, fair and ethical handling of research credit can be maintained.
Promoting a Culture of Recognition: Institutions and research groups need clear methods to give credit to people who contribute to projects but are not considered authors. This could involve mentioning them in a special section or acknowledging them in the acknowledgement section of research report or article. By doing this, we can make sure everyone’s work is valued without need to do anything unethical in terms of authorship. Recognizing contributions fairly helps maintain honesty and trust in research environments, ensuring that all team members feel appreciated and motivated. These practices also help in building a positive and supportive community within the research field.
Shifting Evaluation Metrics: Instead of just citations count to measure employees’ research productivity and impact, it is better to also consider how valuable and important their work is. This change can help reduce the practice of adding authors who did not contribute much and were just included as authors to make their publication lists look longer.

Conclusion

Gift authorship poses a serious problem for academic publishing because it undermines trust and fairness in the system. It is a global concern, as examples from different countries indicate. To tackle this, we must work together. Education about the issue, setting clear rules, strongly enforcing them, and encouraging ethical practices are all crucial steps. By addressing these areas, the academic community can ensure the benefits of genuine authorship. This will lead to a more honest, transparent, and equitable scientific field, where recognition is based on real contributions.

References

ALLEA. (2017). European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity – Revised Edition. All European Academies.

Bansal, B. (2022). Exploring the knowledge and acceptance of reputed Authorship Criteria: A Pilot Study among medical researchers in India. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.10.22276195.

COPE (2021). Gift authorship. https://publicationethics.org/news-opinion/gift-authorship

Hong, S.T. (2019). Unjustified authorship should not be tolerated. Journal of Korean Medical Science, 34(45): e310. https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2019.34.e310

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). (2014). Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Retrieved from https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/

Rivera, H. (2024). Coercion Authorship: Ubiquitous and Preventable. Journal of Korean Medical Science, 39(30): e215. doi: https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2024.39.e215

About the Author:

Ch. Mahmood Anwar (PhD) is a research consultant, editor, author, entrepreneur, and HR and project manager. His research interests include critical analysis of published business research, research methods, new constructs development and validation, theory development, business statistics, business ethics, and technology for business. For more details, please visit: https://driveinmalaysia.com/about-us/

The Curse of Gift Authorship in Academic Publishing