Objectives: To determine knowledge and acceptance of authorship criteria among residents, PhD scholars and faculty involved in medical research in India. Design: A cross sectional survey was performed via Google forms (a web based platform). Results:A total of 117 participants responded to the survey, of whom 66 (56%) were faculty/professors, 23 (20%) residents and 28 (24%) PhD scholars. 33% respondents had faced conflicts with their guide, 58% responders have offered honorary authorship sometime in their careers. Only half of the respondents were aware of the ICMJE guidelines for authorship. Conclusions: Gift Authorship and pressure to publish are largely prevalent in biomedical research in India. Journals requiring author-contribution declarations, overlooking the number of publications as the sole source of offering academic promotions among others are possible solutions to curb this problem.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

The study was done under the Short Term Studendship (STS) - 2019-20 program by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

Institute Ethics Committee for Post Graduate Research of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi gave ethica, approval for this work.

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Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

Yes

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.

Yes

All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors.