Reply by the Authors of the Original Article

“Re: “Two Minds with but a Single Thought …””

Thank you very much, indeed, for sending us this Letter-to-the-Editor.[1] It is comforting to know that editorials are being read.

The point you are making about substituting classical authorships with an alphabetical list of contributors has been debated among publishers and editors for a long time. The point the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors is making favors fairness and objectivity which, of course, should be encouraged. The reality, however, shows that even legendary and progressive editors have eventually shied away from such a profound change. Richard Smith (formerly of the British Medical Journal) wrote: “Despite my enthusiasm for the concept of contributorship it has not been widely adopted…Academic medicine is stultifyingly conservative. It's something to do with fear….”[2] In the end, he concludes that “Moves away from authorship towards contributorship … help to move us beyond the illusion of a scientific paper as an objective artefact to a living, human and therefore imperfect document.”[2]

With the explanation we demand and publish for equal authorships we are distinctly moving along these lines and exploring future possibilities. In fact, we are currently analyzing what actually happens with authorships of articles submitted to the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon for which such additional information is required. Your letter confirmed that this is a topic of interest. We'll let you know the results as soon as we have them.

• Reference

• 1 Christof Stamm, Jörg Kempfert, Volkmar Falk. Re: Two minds but a single thought…. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2016; 49: 1543-1544
• 2 Smith R. The trouble with medical journals. London, United Kingdom: The Royal Society of Medicine Press; 2006: 117-118