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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2007;133:1122
© 2007 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Letter to the Editor

Reply to the Editor

Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Thanks to Dr Mistiaen for well-focused questions and comments. They will help move the guidelines in the consensus statement closer to implementation in practice. I will try to answer them in practical terms.

1 How will the statement be implemented? By absorption into customary best practice, like the general compliance with our other Instructions to Authors about manuscript preparation, graphics, and references. Despite variations, compliance will steadily and iteratively improve.

2 Can one rely on honesty of the coauthors? Generally, yes. Honesty is a dominant value, and trust is the basis for most discourse in society and in science. Untrustworthy behavior is eventually exposed by peers, damaging reputations and reducing the level of respect in the community of scientists and surgeons.

3 Is a simple statement of the authors’ contributions to the paper sufficient? Yes; explanations can be simple and clear, that is, as described in a recent editorial: "[Dr Author] was the primary author and was responsible for the design of the study and the analysis and interpretation of the data. [Dr Data] supervised the development of the database, provided input on the study design, and reviewed and approved the final manuscript. [Dr Investigator] was the principal investigator of the study, supervised the acquisition and interpretation of the data, and provided critical input to the manuscript."¹

4 Isn’t the grim reality that many universities require us to "publish or perish" an obstacle to honesty? Promotion policies based on publication quantity have resulted in dilute resumes and an unsustainable multiplication of specialized journals.² Best practices for assessing scholarship are emerging and displacing unreflective quantitative measurement of published work, though progress is slow. In a recent issue of Nature Medicine largely devoted to exposition and extension of her seminal work, Karen Ashe,³ a world leader in Alzheimer research, recounts how she was promoted and supported by the University of Minnesota through three unpublished years as she developed her transgenic mouse model of the disease. The promotions committee of the University of Toronto Department of Surgery assigns little weight to publications that reflect ancillary authorship. Careers in departments that rely on publication volume alone for promotion are impoverished academic opportunities. The chair who insists on authorship in exchange for resources, support, or letters of reference will become an anachronism if accurate description of the role of authors becomes part of the culture of surgical publication.

The ethics of authorship¹ is a guide to what we should do on the basis of principles and values. Journal policy is a statement of what a reasonable group of representatives of the Association decide to adopt as standard practice for the organization’s publications. Such decisions should be made with criteria of reasonableness, transparency, appealability, and enforceability.⁴ I think the Journal’s decision to adopt the consensus statement meets this standard, but the last criterion is where Dr Mistiaen’s challenge finds the weakest point in the consensus statement as policy. The Journal can only encourage, and reinforce by occasional challenges or commentary, an authorship policy that depends primarily on the authors for implementation.

Dr Mistiaen, I am in favor of adopting the consensus statement as policy because it helps strengthen the authenticity and integrity of medical publication. Rather than an absolute limit on the number of authors, I favor your suggestion of deep and thoughtful inquiry by the editor to clarify or justify the number of authors. Inquiries from respected colleagues in our specialty have a salutary effect on practice and behavior. To implement your suggestion, I will enjoy passing this responsibility along to Editor Wechsler in his leadership role on the Journal.

Thank you for your insights and thoughtful suggestions.

References

1. McKneally M. Put my name on that paper: reflections on the ethics of authorship. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2006;131:517-519.[Free Full Text]
   
2. Ashe KH. The author’s perspective. Nature Med 2006;12:761.[Medline]
   
3. Association of Research Libraries, Association of American Universities, Pew Higher Education Roundtable. Publish and perish. Policy perspectives, March 1998. www.arl.org/scomm/pew/pewrept.html [accessed October 30, 2006].
   
4. Daniels N, Sabin J. Accountability for reasonableness. Setting limits fairly: can we learn to share scarce resources?. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2002.
   

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Personal Folders Download to citation manager Author home page(s): Martin McKneally Permission Requests Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by McKneally, M. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by McKneally, M. Related Collections Related Article