[SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS: ON HONORS AND GHOSTS]

The ethics committee at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University deals with complaints which are not necessarily related to teaching or to issues in the realm of the Institutional Review Board (Helsinki Commission). Virtually all complaints reaching the committee are based on disputed authorship of scientific publications. Researchers and clinicians are interested in publishing their research in order to share knowledge but also in order to comply with the dictum "Publish or Perish". They are publishing to enhance their reputation, to improve chances for funding and to increase the likelihood for clinical and academic promotion. Yet, lack of appropriate planning and agreements on authorship ahead of time may lead to frictions, misunderstandings and outright belligerence between authors. The issue of authorship is being addressed by scientific journals, academic institutions and committees of editors. All of them have published appropriate guidelines which form the basis for the work of the ethics committee. We deal with "honorary authorship", that is individuals who are listed as authors, although they have not contributed sufficiently to the research in order to merit authorship and we deal with "Ghost Authorship" that is when contributing researchers are not listed, as they should be among authors of a scientific publication. Specific case studies are presented.