On authorship, mentorship and responsibility for data accuracy.

In an editorial in the first issue of Science in 2010, Editorin-Chief, Bruce Alberts, writes: ‘The scientific enterprise is built on a foundation of trust’. The author emphasizes the importance of maintaining high ethical standards in any scientific publishing. He points to a previous publication in Science, where he and colleague Kenneth Shine pushed for a ‘research environment that, through its adherence to high ethical standards and creative productivity, will attract and retain individuals of outstanding intellect and charactery’. In the recent editorial, Alberts discusses two main topics. The first is discouraging ‘honorary authorships’, and the second is that the senior author for each group should take personal responsibility for what is published. Alberts also points to the publication On Being a Scientist: Third Edition from 2009, freely downloadable from the National Academies Press.