Authorship represents a contentious issue for modern academics, researchers and journal editors. While individuals should clearly be recognised for the work they do, agreement on who should be included as an author and at what rank, remains difficult to achieve. In recent years there has been an alarming rise in publications with significant numbers of authors, although encouragingly, ergonomics journals appear to have so far resisted this trend. Various methods have now been proposed for establishing author credit, although no Uniform Requirements have yet been agreed upon. Regardless of the method which is ultimately chosen to address this issue, openness, transparency and fairness in authorship clearly need to return to the forefront of publishing and scientific ethics.