In Reply to Ross and Bibler Zaidi

We thank the authors for their comments on our article and share their hope that our work will ignite a broader discussion on what constitutes authorship in our field. We agree that a shared understanding of current authorship criteria is critical and that we can acknowledge individuals who contributed to the research but fail to meet these criteria. We argue, however, that the status quo may not be adequate. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria, if strictly applied, may shortchange individuals who deserve more credit than a mention in the acknowledgments.

Our study suggests that scholars often err on the side of being overinclusive (more than half of our respondents acknowledged that authors on recent papers did not meet ICMJE criteria). We posit that this does not necessarily represent unethical research practice but, in many cases, may be reasonable and justifiable authorship decisions despite the fact that they may not be consistent with ICMJE criteria.