Honorary authorship in biomedical journals: how common is it and why does it exist?

Background: The number of coauthors in the medical literature has increased over the past 50 years as authorship continues to have important academic, social and financial implications.

Aim And Method: The study aim was to determine the prevalence of honorary authorship in biomedical publications and identify the factors that lead to its existence. An email with a survey link was sent anonymously to 9283 corresponding authors of PubMed articles published within 1 year of contact.