Attribution of credit in acknowledgements: The case of systematic reviews in medicine.

ABSTRACT: Scientific research increasingly benefits from the work of non-author contributors, who engage in valuable activities but do not meet authorship criteria. The support of these contributors remains invisible unless it is recorded in acknowledgement texts, which has implications for research transparency and fair attribution of credit. While much research has examined authorship, acknowledgements have been largely neglected. We explore whether acknowledgements omit deserving contributors and the heterogeneity of omissions by gender and race. We focus on the medical field, which is often a forerunner in terms of attribution of credit, and consider acknowledgements in Cochrane systematic reviews. These reviews are governed by unique guidance that allows us to determine whether a contributor re

SUBMITTER: Salandra R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12773806 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature