Authorship in a Scientific Document

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Multi-authored articles on scientific research are nowadays the norms rather than the exceptions. This is due to the increasing complexity of modern research, both basic and clinical, that involves different competencies and often in a different location either locally or internationally.1 Often citation impact is greater in these papers with international co-operation. Co-operative research also introduces new ideas and centre advancement. However, this necessarily leads to problems such as relative author contribution, first and last authors issues, co-author self-citation and document accountability. In some situations, 'ghost' authors (e.g. an industrial sponsor) and 'guest' authors (e.g. a well known investigator in the field) may post further issues.