"I Published a Paper..Did I?" Part 2 | Master Journey #8

Assalamualaikum

and Good evening 

Writing again after sipping a glass of iced Milo

So, I rambled a lot in the previous post, questioning authorship privilege in an article. In one paragraph I reminisced about a PhD student at University X who was cited as a co-author, unnotified.......Guess what, yesterday, It happened to me too!

Starting my morning with this email notification

I got an email notification from IFRJ - International Food Research Journal. No, I wasn't shocked because I'm currently on this "unfinished business" with the Journal until I read the first line. It was an email notifying a manuscript submission with my name as a co-author! In my mind "Apehal, salah type email ke?", since I don't have any other project currently on the process of submission. 

Reading the manuscript title and then it hit me really hard. It was a project I slightly involved during my internship at University X. That was in 2016, 2 and half years ago! I don't know why it suddenly emerged, but hey! Thank you for remembering me Dr! 

Take back to my previous authorship issue post, I guess this problem is still lurking at the University, maybe in Malaysia or even in the world. I don't know the extent, I don't know the conscience among local researchers but I hope we all take this matter seriously. 

For me, there are two types of problematic authors in scientific area. I call them ghost. First one is called Ghost author; 

Ghost authors are those who participate in research, data analysis, and/or writing of a manuscript but are not named or disclosed in the author byline or acknowledgments 

(Bavdekar, 2012)

I sympathized with these people. And the second one is simply a "Ghost" - because they have been acknowledged as the author without fulfilling the criteria especially the first criteria - significant contribution.... in turn, their existence itself is insignificant for the research. 


I don't want to continue rambling. Just a reminder to myself and future authors, to be ethical in writing and publishing a paper. One more thing,  I hope this paper has a happy ending (hahahaha). Thirsty for another glass of Milo..nite nite.