Authorship misconduct.

We read the publication by Liu (2016) on authorship misconduct with a great interest. In fact, the authorship misconduct is no uncommon and has to be managed. Liu (2016) noted that “Proper authorship embodies honesty, integrity, fairness and transparency, which surely are the very essence of any scientific pursuit.” Due to the present requirement on academic publication to support academic rank, several forms of authorship misconduct can be seen. Of interest, some publications might have more than twenty authors which is an extremely high number. To give the authorship as a gift to the senior staff or professor is not uncommon practice in many developing countries. Sometimes, a worse situation, senior staff might force the junior to put his/her name in the author’s list. How to manage these situations is the big question in medical ethics. Some senior one(s) might tell that the work has already been thought by him/her/them and the junior has to give the authorship to him/her/them. To avoid dispute, the junior usually allow and permit as the senior(s) desire(s) (Rajasekaran et al., 2015). In addition, the more serious situation can also be seen. Sometimes, the submitted article contains plagiarisms or frauds, many authors in the author list try to deny and present his/her/their innocence. Many senior staffs might point to the junior author and claim that the junior author use his/her/their names without permission. So the system to support the good authorship clarification practice is needed (Rajasekaran et al., 2015; Mandal et al., 2015).