Authorship problems in scientific literature and in nuclear medicine: the point of view of the young researcher

In recent years, different ethical problems have emerged in the scientific literature [1, 2]. Disputes can occur when including or excluding authors’ names in scientific papers that, nowadays, are frequently multiauthor articles. These problems, called “authorship” problems, are prompted by the competitive scientific climate and by the increasing use of bibliometric indices to measure the academic performance of individual researchers [3]. In the last 30 years, many groups, editors and scientific committees have debated the authorship problem, including the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI, in the USA). Our aim was to investigate the emerging importance of authorship problems in scientific literature, with particular regard to the role of young researchers and to the field of nuclear medicine.