Honorary Authorship and the Ethics of Scientific Publishing

Honorary authorship exists when underserving people are included as authors on research papers. In this chapter, I define the concept, briefly review some of the evidence of its incidence, and argue that it is an unethical practice. In addition, I differentiate between different forms of it and discuss its relation to biomedical ghostwriting. I conclude by considering the complications that arise from different understandings of authorship in research fields and how this complicates the identification of honorary authorship. Despite these difficulties, scholars have a moral obligation to avoid honorary authorship.