Quid Pro Quo Authorship: Characteristics and Implications

Quid pro quo authorship (QPQ) is a type of gift authorship in which authorship credit is exchanged in a mutually beneficial agreement. Such practices are considered to be unethical, but incentives to publish can nonetheless make QPQ appealing. Terminology to describe the QPQ phenomenon can differ across scholarly communities, making a thorough analysis of the attention to QPQ difficult. This article uses content analysis to conduct an in-depth examination of a corpus of scholarly literature on QPQ. This research seeks to ascertain information about the nature of QPQ and how it is perceived relative to other types of unethical authorship practices. Results support three defining characteristics of QPQ: mutual awareness, mutual agreement, and mutual benefit. Content analysis reveals two forms of QPQ: authorship-for-goods and authorship-for-authorship. Findings reinforce the notion that QPQ is a distinct form of gift authorship that is related to coercion authorship and honorary authorship. Implications for the scientific enterprise, academia, and society are presented, since as with other forms of gift authorship, QPQ falsifies the scholarly record. Finally, suggestions for future directions such as education for researchers are presented.