Undeserved authorship in surgical research: an underestimated bias with potential side effects on academic careers

The incidence of courtesy authorship in research over time has probably increased due to the enormous pressure to publish to increase the bibliometric indexes necessary to achieve an academic role. The aim of this survey was to quantify and characterize this research malpractice among a very selected group of surgeons from different surgical specialties belonging to the European Association of Surgery (ESA). E-mail addresses for the invitation to take part to the survey were collected by the Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting final program. Five-item were designed and developed by the authors using an online platform. Eighty-six members from 21 countries completed the survey (female/male ratio: 0.09). In the last 10 years, almost half of the responders (41, 47.7%, 37 academics) have included colleagues for courtesy authorship. The most common reason of courtesy authorships was to support the academic career of another researcher (62.5%). Other reasons were fear of retaliation (12.5%), reciprocal authorship (12.5%) or support for a partner (10%). This survey showed that undeserved authorship is sadly confirmed to be a common research misconduct across any countries and medical specialties, even among a very selected group of surgeons with international reputation irrespective of the academic position.