Context.—Authorship in biomedical publications establishes accountability, responsibility,
and credit. Misappropriation of authorship undermines the integrity of the authorship system,
but accurate data on its prevalence are limited. Objectives.—To determine the prevalence of
articles with honorary authors (named authors who have not met authorship criteria) and
ghost authors (individuals not named as authors but who contributed substantially to the
work) in peer-reviewed medical journals and to identify journal characteristics and article …