Ethics in Publications: Part II The Determination of the Authors in the Articles

Authorship is key to science and careers. It provides scientists with recognition and respect. In recent years, as a result of researches getting ın ore complicated, the proliferation of authors was inevitable and thus the concept of author and authorship criteria has become the subject of great debate. The general rule concerning authorship in a science is that a person should be listed as an author if she ınakes a s ignificant contribution to research and publication. However, since the definition of significant contribution varies across different scientific fields there are no uniform standards for authorship criteria. In order to answer the question when should a person be listed as an author various ideas were suggested by scientific authorities and guidelines were prepared. Even though author and authorship criteria considering medical articles differ from discipline to discipline, important international medical journals use the statements on authorship issued by the International Commitlee of Medical Journal Editors. In this article, author, authorship criteria and the principles of listing authors in a publication of will be reviewed.