Authorship from the Reader's Side

Excerpt

The word author comes from a Latin verb meaning to "increase, promote, or originate" (1). Indeed any reader should expect to find in a scholarly article something added to the sum of knowledge. But in recent years, the "increase" in each medical paper is beginning to look less like an increase in knowledge and more like an increase in the number of authors. Evidence for such a trend is pointed out in this issue by Burman in his "Perspective" article on authorship (2), and he discusses reasons for this apparent increase.

The growing complexity of medical research is responsible in