How Industry Uses the ICMJE Guidelines to Manipulate Authorship—And How They Should Be Revised

Scientists and clinicians need to know the authorship, author interests, and origination of the articles they read to judge them appropriately. Since 1985, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has provided evolving guidance on how authorship should be managed in the complex setting of modern biomedical science [1,2], to the benefit of the published literature. Issues such as accountability, fraud, conflicts of interest, trial registration, and access to data have been considered by this voluntary, selffunded, closed-membership group of select general medical journal editors (http:// www.icmje.org/) [3–5]. However, certain industry practices, including publications planning, ghostwriting, and guest authorship, have yet to be adequately addressed. On the basis of industry publications and documents, textual analysis, and direct working experience in the ‘‘medical communications’’ sector, I show here how pharma has succeeded not merely in outmaneuvering the ICMJE guidelines, but is able to use them as the basis for inappropriate attributions of authorship.