Research integrity corner Scientific author names: errors, corrections, and identity profiles Armen Yuri Gasparyan*1, Marlen Yessirkepov2, Alexey N. Gerasimov3, Elena I. Kostyukova4, George D. Kitas1,5 1Departments of Rheumatology and Research and Development, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley, West Midlands, UK 2Department of Biochemistry, Biology and Microbiology, South Kazakhstan State Pharmaceutical Academy, Shymkent, Kazakhstan 3Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Stavropol State Agrarian University, Stavropol, Russian Federation 4Department of Accounting Management, Faculty of Accounting and Finance, Stavropol State Agrarian University, Stavropol, Russian Federation 5Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK *Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract Authorship problems are deep-rooted in the field of science communication. Some of these relate to lack of specific journal instructions. For de- cades, experts in journal editing and publishing have been exploring the authorship criteria and contributions deserving either co-authorship or acknowledgment. The issue of inconsistencies of listing and abbreviating author names has come to the fore lately. There are reports on the diffi- culties of figuring out Chinese surnames and given names of South Indians in scholarly articles. However, it seems that problems with correct listing and abbreviating author names are global. This article presents an example of swapping second (father’s) name with surname in a ‘predatory’ journal, where numerous instances of incorrectly identifying and crediting authors passed unnoticed for the journal editors, and no correction has been published. Possible solutions are discussed in relation to identifying author profiles and adjusting editorial policies to the emerging problems. Correcting mistakes with author names post-publication and integrating with the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) platform are among them. Key words: authorship; author names; science communication; identity; editorial policies Received: March 30, 2016 Accepted: May 07, 2016 Scale of the problem with author names identifying and crediting appropriate authors has Authorship problems are not new to the publish- been viewed as a daunting task for publishers and ing industry, and probably existed in the classical distributors of information. With the fast-growing writings long before the launch of the first schol- number of periodicals and ever-increasing num- arly journal, the Philosophical Transactions of the ber of co-authors in the current scholarly articles, Royal Society (1665). The notorious case of an Eng- authorship problems are becoming more complex lish poet and playwright William Shakespeare with and not easily discernible (3). ambiguous authenticity of his portraits, spellings The scale of the problem is reflected in the expo- of surname, and writing styles, which were record- nential increase of scholarly items tagged with the ed in the annals of history, teaches us a lesson. The term “authorship” in PubMed with the first record centuries-long uncertainties over his identity and appearing in 1895 and reaching a peak level of 372 debates over the authorship of his poems, claimed articles in 2014 (as of March 20, 2016). Overall, there by some to be ghost-written by noble people with are 5899 tagged items in PubMed, including 1891 exquisite language close to the royal court, contin- (32%) on the authorship criteria and only 129 ue well into the 21st century (1,2). For centuries, (2.2%) on author names. http://dx.doi.org/10.11613/BM.2016.017 Biochemia Medica 2016;26(2):169–73 ©Copyright by Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 169 Gasparyan AY. et al. Scientific author names In fact, authorship criteria and contributorship are evaluating previous publications of prolific au- still widely discussed and are predominant topics thors, and particularly principal investigators. Fi- in the field. Recommendations are offered to all nally, authors’ names and their profiles are careful- those engaged in science communication to raise ly evaluated by editors, publishers, and represent- awareness of what constitutes ethical authorship atives of related academic institutions when dis- (4). Pointers on upgrading journal instructions putes arise over the authors’ contributions and in- have also been developed, though listing and ab- appropriate authorship, which may eventually breviating author names has been overlooked en- lead to retractions (10). tirely (5). In the era of digitization, the availability of various Properly listing scientific authors in an article is the platforms for archiving scholarly articles and build- first step toward ethical and successful writing (6). ing up individual profiles makes it easier to identi- Strict adherence to the journal authorship policy fy and evaluate academic records. Examples of and format of author names make the initial im- such platforms are the Scopus Author Identifier pression on the reviewers, editors, and other read- (Elsevier), ResearcherID (Thomson Reuters), Pub- ers of the article. Editors and publishers overlook- Med, Google Scholar Citations, ResearchGate, and ing the accuracy of adhering to the authorship LinkedIn. Eminent scientists with life-long achieve- regulations expose their journals to misconduct ments may also have Wikipedia profiles. Authors and limit their chances of post-publication com- who publish articles indexed by Scopus, Web of munication. Science, PubMed, and visible in Google Scholar Authors of scholarly articles deserve to be proper- have their records, which are visible to the data- ly identified with their real names and credited to base users. The database indexers process author continuously contribute to science communica- names in the first place and link to their articles. tion (7). The issue of identification often arises The authors who correctly spell and list their own when research fellows search for highly skilled in- names in the author by-lines from their very first ternational mentors for their under- and post- publication contribute to the expedient recording graduate studies and research. Journal editors also of academic output and build-up of the individual encounter the same issue when they process sub- platforms. The Scopus Author Identifier incorpo- missions and pick potential reviewers by evaluat- rates different name formats of the same author ing the corresponding authors’ profiles. They may within a single digital identifier, which partly re- also need photographs of the authors to credit solves the issue of author name disambiguation. In and preserve profiles of the most influential schol- case of different, automatically created author pro- ars for the future (8). On the positive side, by re- files in Scopus, the scholars, representatives of cording authors’ correct names and linking to their their institutions, and other interested persons affiliations, editors simultaneously credit academic may request merges. institutions and other organizations where schol- To correctly identify authors, indexers refer to the ars conduct research. On the negative side, track- submissions from current and previous primary ing the most prolific authors’ records and analysing sources (journals), linked affiliations, and geo- their conflicting relationships with pharmaceutical graphical locations, to name just a few identifying companies enabled questioning the trustworthi- options. Affiliations and geographic origin may ness of some ‘evidence-based’ publications influ- change throughout an academic career, which is encing diagnostic and curative standards (9). Here why many other factors should be considered to we are reminded of numerous practice guidelines maintain profile of an individual scientific author where authors are “big” names with extensive re- in a database. lationships with pharmaceutical companies. For research purposes, and particularly for distin- Funding agencies processing grant applications guishing the gender of the main contributors, the pay due attention to the names of the listed inves- authors’ scholarly profiles may be evaluated along- tigators and predict potential academic output by side their records on the institutional websites and Biochemia Medica 2016;26(2):169–73 http://dx.doi.org/10.11613/BM.2016.017 170 Gasparyan AY. et al. Scientific author names social networking platforms to find photographs There have been numerous instances of journal and biographical notes (11). However, even such a editors’ unawareness of their international authors’ detailed processing of author records fails to identi- traditions and carelessness of both editors and au- fy gender in 3% of cases, which points to the need thors throughout the manuscript processing, for more advanced and complex author identifiers. proofreading and publishing that perpetuated er- rors with abbreviation and placement of names. Confusion with author names One of the striking incidents of swapping surnames and middle (fathers’) names took place in the For decades, the issue of incorrectly abbreviated, ‘predatory’ journals. Predatory journals are known misspelled,