Researchers commonly use the phrase “publish or perish” to describe the pressure associated with scientific publishing. In recent years, scientists have spoken out about the sometimes-toxic culture that demands researchers have more citations and more publications, especially in “high-impact” journals.
A new study published in PLoS One adds another negative wrinkle to the publish or perish culture—PhD students say powerful researchers are using their position to gain co-authorships on papers they have not made any significant contributions to.
In Spring 2022—under the hashtag #pleasedontstealmywork—dozens of Danish PhD students shared their experiences with “guest authorship.” Unfortunately, this new international study, led by the University of Copenhagen, has revealed those stories are only the tip of the iceberg.
“There are major differences across faculties, but our study shows that around a third of all PhD students working in five different European countries have granted a co-authorship to a more powerful researcher, even though the person had not made a significant contribution to the study,” said first author Mads Paludan Goddiksen, postdoc at the University of Copenhagen.
For the study, the international research team surveyed 1,336 PhD participants from five European countries—Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland—representing all major disciplines. Focusing on the 1,096 participants with published research (opposed to those who have only unpublished papers thus far), around a third (34%) indicated they had granted a guest authorship to a person in power at least once during their PhD. One in five (21%) said had done it more than once, and 7% reported having done it “so many times.”
According to the study, guest authorships is the biggest issue in the medical sciences, where 49% of the PhD students said they had granted a guest authorship to a person in power. The percentage was also very high in STEM, with 42% of PhD students answering in the affirmative. The social sciences (28%), humanities (17%) and law (10%) were much lower.
“Guest authorships are problematic,” the authors write in their paper. “Among other things, they provide guest authors with an undeserved share of the credit for the study and reduce transparency about who contributed what to the study. Additionally, guest authorships may be a result of unethical ways of collaborating, including coercion of junior researchers.”
That can be seen in the reasons the PhD researchers gave for granting authorship. Forty-nine percent of participants told Goddiksen and his colleagues they granted guest authorship, at least partly, because “the person in power told me to.” In fact, 14% gave this as the only reason. Another 8% of participants said they feared their degrees would not be awarded if they didn’t issue guest authorship to those above them.
PhD researchers also issue unwarranted guest authorship to avoid conflict—48% of study participants said they granted the authorship to “maintain a good relationship with the person.” Lastly 39% said they do it because “everyone else in my field does.” (Percentages do not total 100% as multiple options could be selected.)
Demographic-wise, PhD students working in Portugal had the highest probability of granting guest authorship (44%), followed by those working in Switzerland (33%), Ireland (33%), Denmark (30%) and Hungary (19%).
Study author Peter Sandøe says the results show an ethically questionable culture that goes against good scientific practice.
“It is the result of a problematic culture of authorship attribution that is deeply engrained. This may also mean that the problem is hard to get rid of,” he says.
Because of this, Sandøe believes a culture change is required. One way to change the culture is to change how researchers are assessed. Sandøe, for example, is involved in assessing applications to the Swedish foundation Riksbankens Jubilæumsfond. The foundation has introduced the rule that applicants are not allowed to give their H-index, full publication lists or other quantitative measures of their research in the application. Now, applicants may only provide their project application and their five most relevant publications.
“In this way, we focus on assessing researchers on their best publications, not the number of publications,” said Sandøe. “This can hopefully create a culture without the incentives that push researchers into always needing more citations and publications. As it is now, these incentives create imbalances. This also means that in the current system, people who behave in an ethically problematic way get a head start. This needs to change.”