Honorific authorship and approval of the ICMJE criteria: A survey with a convenience sample

A 10‐question survey was distributed by email to 382 academic professionals involved in biomedical research in order to evaluate their experience with honorific authorship, author displacement, and the perceived validity of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) requirements. 104 (27%) responded to the survey collected without identifiers. 92% (95/104) were physicians, and 75% (78/104) reported ≥11 publications as co‐authors. 68% (69/101) thought honorific authorship was commonly (>20% of the publications) practiced in their workplace and/or research environment. Honorific authorship was perceived as commonly awarded to superiors by 63% (65/104) and to peers by 50% (51/103). Only 36% (37/104) reported rarely (≤5 of the publications) or never being a co‐author in a manuscript in which honorific authorship was awarded. 33% (34/103) reported that they commonly experienced co‐authors being displaced from their appropriate rank in the sequence of authors due to honorific authorship. Only 31% (32/104) condemned honorific authorship and only 36% (37/104) agreed all four authorship criteria set by the ICMJE should be complied with. Those who condemned honorific authorship more commonly accepted complying with all four ICMJE criteria (18/32 vs . 19/72; p = 0.004). Increasing experience with author displacement was not associated with the condemnation of honorific authorship ( p = 0.35).