‘… not being sure of things, he knew, was a charmless corner of purgatory reserved for writers who were driving fast with no idea at all where they were going.’

In the old days scientists would write monographs, and travel by train, carriage or tow boat to their science academy, and read their work to their fellow researchers. Mendel, Virchow, and Rokitansky wrote their articles and books as sole author. And, even 50 years ago, one or two authors for an article was the norm.

Science has changed, and often publications are the work of several individuals or collaborating groups. This we see reflected in an increasing number of authors. The average number of authors varies greatly by discipline: in law, one or two authors is still the norm, while in physics many articles have more authors than words. Even within the biomedical field there are differences: articles on genetics, which often combine data from many centers, may easily have more than 100 authors.

But not only science has changed. Due to the increasing tendency of institutions and research grant organizations to judge researchers on their quantitative output, rather than on the originality of ideas, authorship has become a valuable asset. And valuable assets can be sold and bought. Authorship has become barter.

This has led to discussions on what constitutes authorship. Organizations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) define authorship as: substantial contributions to the conception, design or execution of the study; and drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and giving final approval of the manuscript; and being accountable for all aspects of the work.

We may question if all authors of published articles indeed fulfill all four criteria. Often, some authors have designed the study, analyzed the results and written the manuscript, while others mainly contribute with a technique, or with study participants. In studies initiated by pharmaceutical companies, this may go as far as the company writing the protocol, a hired company performing and monitoring the study, a company's statistician performing the analyses, and a scientific writer, either from the company or again hired from a scientific writing organization, writing the manuscript. Incidentally, the company will also provide the slides for presentations.

Now, fulfilling all the regulations for licensing studies is so complex that academic institutions are not capable of doing this, and it is understandable that pharmaceutical companies who finance costly studies aim to comply with all regulations. However, it does raise the question what an author of such studies truly has contributed. This question is not at all limited to sponsored research, but also applies, for instance, to large genetic studies where many studies are meta‐analyzed in a genome wide association study (GWAS). One might argue that in all these cases the authors still fulfill the ICMJE criteria as long as there is some, albeit minimal, intellectual contribution, but it is obvious that there are major differences between authors.

Some authors try to provide some clarity by the order of the authors heading a publication, where specific value is placed on first, second and last author, and some attempt to emphasize this by joint authorship positions. This is again fueled by institutions placing inordinate weight on such positions in their review process, and some even attach internal funding to it. Here, Goodhart's words become true, ‘Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes’, which has been paraphrased as that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In the absence of any clear description of what defines a first or last author, the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis has banned joint authorships.

So, another solution may be in order. PubMed now distinguishes between authors and contributors who are listed separately in their database. While a good first step, we may wish to go further. Maybe we should abandon classical authorship altogether, and include closing credits at the end, as in a movie. This would exactly include everyone's contribution, which in a movie ranges from director to actors to second gaffer and dedicated hairdresser to the main star, and in research articles would specify who had the idea, who wrote the protocol, who did the analyses and who the laboratory work.