  Scientists of many countries in which English is not the primary language
routinely use a variety of manuscript preparation, correction or editing
services, a practice that is openly endorsed by many journals and scientific
institutions. These services vary tremendously in their scope; at one end there
is simple proof-reading, and at the other extreme there is in-depth and
extensive peer-reviewing, proposal preparation, statistical analyses,
re-writing and co-writing. In this paper, the various types of service are
reviewed, along with authorship guidelines, and the question is raised of
whether the high-end services surpass most guidelines' criteria for authorship.
Three other factors are considered. First, the ease of collaboration possible
in the internet era allows multiple iterations between authors and the editing
service, so essentially, papers can be co-written. Second, 'editing services'
often offer subject-specific experts who comment not only on the language, but
interpret and improve scientific content. Third, the trend towards heavily
multi-authored papers implies that the threshold necessary to earn authorship
is declining. The inevitable conclusion is that at some point the contributions
by 'editing services' should be deemed sufficient to warrant authorship. Trying
to enforce any guidelines would likely be futile, but nevertheless, it might be
time to revisit the ethics of using some of the high-end 'editing services'. In
an increasingly international job market, recognizing this problem might prove
progressively more important in authorship disputes, the allocation of research
grants, and hiring decisions
