Hoe komt auteurschap tot stand? Een onderzoek onder auteurs van het Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde

To assess what criteria are used by authors of original articles in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (Dutch Journal of Medicine; NTvG) to define authorship and the authors' order in relation to the authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Design

Questionnaire.

Setting

Editorial office of the NTvG.

Method

All authors of original articles published in 1995 with three or more authors (450 authors of 115 articles) were sent a questionnaire, containing questions on every author's contribution: study design, material, collection of data, statistics and writing. There were 23 questions of which 7 were related with the ICMJE-criteria.

Results

362 forms were returned; 352 could be analyzed (78). These forms were returned by 92 first, 83 last and 177 authors in between. The 5 most frequently positively answered questions were all ICMJE-criteria: critical reading was done by 86 of the authors, approval of the version to be published by 85, design of the study by 75, conception of the study by 64 and revision by 63; no contribution at all was made by 1. On average respondents claimed only 2 points more for themselves than their co-authors. 64 of the respondents met the ICMJE-criteria (93 met 2 of the 3) whereas 60 of the respondents did not actually know these. Many authors complained that clinical work was not rewarded by authorship.

Conclusion

The guidelines for authorship are insufficiently known. They are met by authors, but are of no help for authors’ listing.