The objectives of this work were to (i) identify the prevalence of articles reporting on human studies using uncontrolled intervention or observational research designs published in peer-reviewed dental journals and (ii) determine the nature of recommendations made by these articles.
However if we take prevalence of articles in major newspapers as an indicator of public awareness,c the general public in New Zealand knew little of the policy until 2006.
And with the rise of click-bait journalism, print outlets with a digital presence are under pressure to achieve viewer engagement; this explains the current prevalence of articles with a Trump angle.
Under these assumptions and based on a denominator of 896 corresponding authors, the prevalence of articles with honorary authorship or ghost authorship would be 14.7% (132/896), the prevalence of articles with honorary authorship would be 10.7% (96/896), and the prevalence of articles with ghost authorship would be 5.6% (49/896).
In the full sample (n=630) the prevalence of articles with honorary authorship, ghost authorship, or both was 21.0%95%5% confidence interval 18.0% to 24.3%).
The prevalence of articles with honorary authorship or ghost authorship, or both, was 21.0% (95% CI 18.0% to 24.3%), a decrease from 29.2% reported in 1996 P=0.0044).
In this study, we surveyed corresponding authors of articles published in 2008 in six general medical journals to determine the prevalence of articles with honorary authors and ghost authors and to compare this with the prevalence reported in 1996.
We hypothesised a 10% reduction in the prevalence of articles with honorary or ghost authors from the 29% prevalence reported in the previous study of six journals in 1996.
Compared with the prevalence of inappropriate authorship reported in the 1996 study (29.2% (26.1% to 32.4%)), 14 there was a significant decline in the overall prevalence of articles with honorary or ghost authors in 2008 (P=0.0004).
14 We hypothesised that the prevalence of articles with honorary and ghost authorship would decline, that the prevalence of honorary and ghost authors would vary by article type, and that inappropriate authorship would be more prevalent in the two journals in our study that do not publicly require and report author contributions than in the four journals that do.
