By Christina Frangou

First Look: The American Surgical Association

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The American Surgical Association held its 141st annual meeting virtually this year. Here, General Surgery News presents one of the most important papers from the meeting.
The complete manuscript of this study and its presentation at the ASA meeting are anticipated to be published in the Annals of Surgery pending editorial review.

Two-thirds of surgeon researchers surveyed continue to engage in courtesy authorship, despite editorial policies from journals that specifically prohibit the practice.

Courtesy authors—individuals who are included in a scientific paper even though they have not made a contribution that meets the criteria as defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)—are more likely to be older, higher in academic rank and male compared with participatory authors, according to the survey.

“Courtesy authorship preferentially favors late-career males, concentrating academic currency within those who have already achieved academic success,” said lead author Mary Condron, MD, a trauma surgeon at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Ore.

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“Stopping this practice will require changing the culture that perpetuates it,” she said.

The survey follows on a study published in JAMA Surgery in 2019, which found 17% of first and senior authors added courtesy authorship was a common practice (2019;154[12]:1110-1116).

Dr. Condron and her colleagues examined the motivations that drive this practice in academic surgery. They sent an anonymous survey to first and last authors of studies published in eight high-impact surgical journals. Of 2,076 authors approached, 341 completed the survey for a response rate of 16%.

Ninety-two percent of respondents said they understood the ICMJE authorship criteria. Even so, 14% added courtesy authors five or more times in the last year.

When asked why, respondents said they wanted to avoid awkwardness or feared retaliation. In about 25% of cases, surgeons added courtesy authors because they hoped for reciprocal offers or career advancement.

In cases where the courtesy author was not in a position of power relative to the first or senior author, they were twice as likely to be female and nearly twice as likely to be non-white.

Most of the suggestions for courtesy authors came from the principal investigator or senior author.

The majority of respondents were male (70%), white (74%) and between the ages of 40 and 59 years. Three-fourths were in academic practice.

This article is from the July 2021 print issue.