Multicentre studies should be cited by study name

EDITOR,--At the outset of a large European multicentre study following up children born to mothers infected with HIV it was agreed that all publications would be submitted under the authorship of the European collaborative study. This has ensured that all those participating in the study are given credit for their contribution and has avoided potential problems over authorship of individual papers. Without this approach the study could not have survived.

Recently, the study published a paper in Pediatrics, which included a footnote on the title page indicating those responsible for the preparation of the manuscript (the “authors”) and the coordinating …