A Systematic Review of Research on the Meaning, Ethics and Practices of Authorship across Scholarly Disciplines

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this systematic review was to evaluate evidence about authorship issues and provide synthesis of research on authorship across all research fields. METHODS: We searched bibliographical databases to identify articles describing empirical quantitive or qualitative research from all scholarly fields on different aspects of authorship. Search was limited to original articles and reviews. RESULTS: The final sample consisted of 123 articles reporting results from 118 studies. Most studies came for biomedical and health research fields and social sciences. Study design was usually a survey (53%) or descriptive study (27%); only 2 studies used randomized design. We identified four 4 general themes common to all research disciplines: authorship perceptions, definitions and practices, defining order of authors on the…