Authorship and Ethical Considerations in the Conduct of Observational Studies

Surgeons who participate in research studies frequently struggle with a number of challenges when determining authorship of the publications that arise from their research. Furthermore, new concerns relating to who receives credit and who takes responsibility have emerged with the increase in multicenter research collaborations. This paper provides a discussion of the importance of authorship and outlines a number of ethical issues that commonly arise when determining the author byline. We also present some strategies, such as publishing under group authorship, listing individual author contributions, and revising the mechanism for acknowledging nonauthor contributions, that have the potential to improve authorship and publication practices.