We address the growing concern of requests for post-submission and post-acceptance changes in authorship which our editorial team has observed in recent years. We emphasise that authorship order should be agreed upon by all contributors before submission, as all authors are expected to approve the final version of their manuscript and agree on their respective authorship positions. This editorial identifies seven categories of authorship change requests, ranging from adding or removing ordinary authors to modifying first or last authorship positions, or introducing group authorship. We consider some of these requests legitimate, such as adding author(s) who performed additional analyses based on reviewers' feedback or removing author(s) disagreeing with such revisions. We consider some others indicative of potentially concerning practices, particularly those involving changes to first or last authorship positions. We place this trend within a broader context of questionable research practices, including 'honorary' or 'gift' authorships driven by institutional power dynamics and the more recent emergence of 'paper mills'. These practices seem to be increasing in frequency with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and large publicly available data sets, which have lowered the barriers to producing large volumes of research of questionable value. Existing safeguards developed by organisations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) are helpful, but limited in their ability to prevent such practices. To address these challenges, the Journal of Global Health introduces the GUidelines for Authors on Requesting and DIsclosing changes in Authorship Nominations (GUARDIAN), which mandate full transparency whenever authorship changes occur after submission. Specifically, in the part of the standard 'acknowledgements' section at the end of each paper, where the mandatory 'authorship contributions' statement is typically detailed, the authors will be required to: (i) declare that the authorship byline has been changed since submission; (ii) disclose precisely what changes to the byline occurred between these two versions; (iii) provide an explanation for this change; and (iv) provide the final authorship contributions accordingly. Supporting documentation will also be archived by our editors and may be shared upon legitimate requests. The GUARDIAN aim to deter misconduct through transparency, protect early-career researchers from authorship pressure, and improve accountability in academic publishing. Together with our previously introduced Guidelines for Reporting Analyses of Big Data Repositories Open to the Public (GRABDROP) and other integrity initiatives, the GUARDIAN represent a proactive effort to safeguard credibility of authorships, while allowing legitimate adjustments whenever they are properly justified.
Ursić et al. (Tue,) studied this question.