Scientific journals should adopt new guidelines to more strictly identify the contributions of their authors, according to Alastair Matheson, a professional medical writer. He was quoted in an article, Universities Get Advice on How to Avoid Ghostwriting Scandals in Research Articles, in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Ghostwriting is apparently a big problem for medical journals, as "researchers let industry-financed ghostwriters draft biased summaries of their work for publication". One suggestion for improvement involves providing writing support for researchers on campus, though many US universiites would struggle to support this. But with the threat of holding researchers legally liable if they falsely name themselves as authors on the horizon, something obviously needs to be done.