ORI Newsletter: Volume 11, No. 2, March 2003 

All authors of manuscripts submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) will be verified by e-mail after acceptance and before publication to prevent authors from claiming bogus coauthors by falsifying signatures on letters of transmission.

The new policy was announced by NEJM editors on March 6, 2003, in an editorial announcing the retraction of an article by several authors based on "incomplete manuscript review by the authors and false signatures on submitted documents."

"It is never acceptable for one author to sign on behalf of another, even with that coauthor's permission. In the matter of authorship, all signatures must be genuine," the editorial asserts.

"Of the eight persons named as authors of the article, some claimed that they had never reviewed the original data and most claimed that they had not seen or approved either the original version or one or more of the three revised versions of the manuscript. Thus, there was an egregious disregard of the principles of authorship, as specified by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors," the editorial reported.

"To their credit," the editorial continues, "when the offense became apparent, several of the authors of the article promptly communicated the facts to us and concurred with the need for retraction."

A coauthor acknowledged to the editors that he had falsified signatures on the letters of transmission accompanying the original and revised versions of the manuscript. "Although we never proceed with our review of a manuscript until we have the signature of each of the authors," the editors said, "we cannot verify the authenticity of the signatures sent to us. We believe this to be a matter of basic trust between authors and editors."

"...this unfortunate incident serves as a reminder to the medical community that with the privilege of authorship comes a mandate for personal and professional responsibility that must be taken seriously," the editorial stated.