Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A pharmaceutical-company employee drafts a clinical-trial manuscript that is then submitted under the names of three academic investigators without acknowledgement of the writer.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A clinical-trial manuscript that names the medical writer in the acknowledgements with disclosure of their employer and the nature of their contribution.
Editorial commentary
Ghost authorship most often involves industry-funded medical writers who draft manuscripts later signed by named academic authors who contributed less substantively. It is distinct from declared professional medical-writing assistance, which is permitted under ICMJE and EMWA guidelines when fully disclosed. The Good Publication Practice (GPP3, now GPP 2022) framework provides industry-academia disclosure standards.
References
- ICMJE Recommendations on authorship (current edition)
- Good Publication Practice 2022 (GPP 2022)
- COPE Discussion Document: Ghost Authorship (2014)
Also known as
ghostwriting · undisclosed authorship · phantom authorship
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Ghost authorship"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ghost-authorship" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"name": "Ghost authorship",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ghost-authorship",
"description": "The undisclosed substantial contribution to a manuscript by a person not listed as an author or named in the acknowledgements. A contribution is ghost-written when, by ICMJE criteria, it would have warranted authorship had it been disclosed.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity-and-misconduct/",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ghost-authorship",
"sameAs": [
"ghostwriting",
"undisclosed authorship",
"phantom authorship"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
