Authorship and Medical Ghostwriting: Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Policy

Authorship of biomedical articles serves to acknowledge and credit individuals who contributed substantially to the development, writing, and editing of articles. In addition, authorship indicates who is responsible for ideas and experiments, and can be used to hold people accountable if something is disproven or shown false. Types of authorship can be divided into four primary categories: ghost authorship, guest authorship, gift authorship, and legitimate authorship. Of these four categories, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (along with other journals, the World Association of Medical Editors, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Council of Science Editors, and the Committee on Publication Ethics) affirms that only authors who meet the criteria of "legitimate authorship" as authors should be listed on an article. This article discusses what constitutes legitimate article authorship and sets forth the Journal's policy on authorship.