Is AI my co-author? The ethics of using artificial intelligence in scientific publishing.

The recent emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and other forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has led people to wonder whether they could act as an author on a scientific paper. This paper argues that AI systems should not be included on the author by-line. We agree with current commentators that LLMs are incapable of taking responsibility for their work and thus do not meet current authorship guidelines.

More on plurality and authorship in science: A reply to Tang.

Understanding the "political economy" of the research environment is at the core of getting clear on the ethical aspects of authorship. Questions about who should be an author on a scientific paper are complicated by the fact that authorship is used to determine credit inside science and by outside institutions whose interests and standards often differ dramatically. Much of the research ethics community seeks to impose an elite ethical consensus on scientific fields.

Scientific authorship, pluralism, and practice.

In this article, I argue that understanding authorship requires that we grapple with the plurality of distinct accounts of scientific authorship. As a result, we should be careful in how we identify and quantify unethical practices such as ghostwriting. Judgements about who should be able to decide who is an author raise interesting questions about the autonomy of scientific practices.

Neutralising fair credit: factors that influence unethical authorship practices.

This study experimentally tests whether the techniques of neutralisation as identified in the criminal justice literature influence graduate student willingness to engage in questionable research practices (QRPs). Our results indicate that US-born graduate students are more willing to add an undeserved coauthor if the person who requests it is a faculty member in the student's department as opposed to a fellow student. Students are most likely to add an undeserving author if a faculty member is also their advisor.

Research funding and authorship: does grant winning count towards authorship credit?

It is unclear whether or not grant winning should count towards authorship credit in the sciences. In this paper, I argue that under certain circumstances grant winning can count for credit as an author on subsequent works. It is a mistake to think that grant winning is always irrelevant to the correct attribution of authorship.

Orphan papers and ghostwriting: the case against the ICMJE criterion of authorship.

Although popular, I argue that the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) account of authorship is flawed. It inadvertently allows for practices that it was designed to prevent. In addition, it creates a new category of authorless papers--orphan papers.

Responsible authorship: why researchers must forgo honorary authorship.

Although widespread throughout the biomedical sciences, the practice of honorary authorship-the listing of authors who fail to merit inclusion as authors by authorship criteria-has received relatively little sustained attention. Is there something wrong with honorary authorship, or is it only a problem when used in conjunction with other unethical authorship practices like ghostwriting? Numerous sets of authorship guidelines discourage the practice, but its ubiquity throughout biomedicine suggests that there is a need to say more about honorary authorship. Despite its general acceptance among many scientists, honorary authorship is unethical.

Ghost marketing: pharmaceutical companies and ghostwritten journal articles.

The use of ghostwriters by industry is subject to increasing public attention and scrutiny. This article addresses the practice and ethics of scientific ghostwriting. We focus on the type of ghostwriting that involves a pharmaceutical company hiring a medical education and communications company to write a paper favorable of their product, who then hires a well-known academic to publish it under his or her name without disclosing the paper's true origins.