The importance of acknowledging statisticians as named authors.

Editorial: Many papers published in the field of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology use statistical methods, hence the importance of statisticians on the editorial board of our journal Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology. Our responsibility is focused on ensuring that methods are reproducible, the analysis is appropriate, and the results are useful (e.g., reporting standard deviations for use with planning future studies). Advanced statistical methods are rarely applied, and perhaps one reason for this is the suggestion that statisticians cannot be named authors or a restriction upon the number of statisticians that may be included as co-authors. In the editorial published in 2011, it was noted: “In Graefe’s, a statistician can be a named author.” We would now wish to go further than this and encourage authors to engage statisticians where possible.What would happen if statisticians were acknowledged as named authors?