Aims: Authorship pattern in medical papers, the roles of authors in performed research, and fairness in authorship order according to their contributions, have been more considered in international journals than Iranian journals. The aim of this study was to overview the appearance rate, and the order of author in publications extracted from medical theses (THS) and dissertations (DIS).

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 132 published papers extracted from 363 THS and DIS (2001-2010) in school of Health Management and Information Sciences (SHMIS) of Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS) was considered. The frequencies, order, and the appearance pattern of the first to forth author were considered according to their role in the research (student, supervisor, advisors and others). The data were analyzed using Chi-square test and odd ratios in SPSS 15 software.

Results: In 100% of 132 considered papers the names of the carry out students, in 90.1% of the papers the name of the supervisors and in 87.1% the names of the advisors were present. There was a significant relationship between the order of the authors and their role in the papers (P=0.0001). The positions of the first authors in most papers belong to supervisors or carry out students.

Conclusion: There is no stable pattern in the name and order of the authors in publications extracted from THS and DIS of SHMIS in IUMS. The names of the students are present in all the papers and the names of supervisors and advisors in the majority of them.