Alberts B. Editorial. Promoting scientific standards. Science 2010;327(5961):12
Journals such as Science occupy a special place in the maintenance of scientific standards to help make science as productive as possible in serving both scientists and the greater society. As a start, two critical authorship issued were considered. First, to discourage "honorary authorship", according to Science policy, each author is required, before acceptance, to identify his/her contribution to the research. Second, Science will require that the senior author for each laboratory or group confirm that he or she has personally reviewed the original data generated by that unit, ascertaining that the data selected for publication in specific figures and tables have been appropriately presented. In this way, Science aims to identify few senior authors - instead of a single author - who take responsibility for the data presented in each publication.