I agree that there exists widespread malpractice in the way academics become co-authors of papers; I have recently discussed with you. Here, I would like to iterate some of the points. The underlying reasons behind the issue must not be associated only with reputed and senior academics.

The idea of branding a car with an attractive woman works - it is established - many other products' marking strategy picked up that trend. Similarly, the highly cited and pioneer authors of a field draw attention to every paper they publish and the networks around would just be happy if they can use the name. Everyone wants to utilise the network effect - very common diffusion approach. The question in the case of academic competition is about ethics and dignity. 

A junior academic is given a higher score if they have published with senior authors in the network, preferably the most reputed in the community. When the norm of assessment is such problematic, would you still blame either of them - the senior or the junior?

There was a discussion that there exists such practice that a manuscript will get published easily if one of the co-authors are known to the editors. Are we questioning all reputed scholars and every editor that knows a co-author of the papers they accepted?

One of the core questions I have in this regard, how do we even raise the suspicion? I am not claiming that it is not possible. This is just to focus on the question.

I know a case that a professor was warned for having an unrealistic number of publications in a year and that there had been rumours about his/her publication strategy. 

It is not such that research institutions and academics are not aware or not vocal about these issues. These are being addressed but the issue is possibly not as simple as tracking plagiarism.

A good friend of mine has shared by email the following:

There is no denying of the fact that there is prevalent misconduct in case of co-authorship. An important aspect is that it differs from field to field. Though giving guest and gift co-authorship credit in science and technology discipline is normal practice but in case of humanities case, it might not be the same. I would like to emphasize in perspective of science and engineering graduate students (funded by projects). In the particular case of a graduate student specially in science and technology discipline, there is an expectation that supervisor/advisor will appear as an author on all the student´s papers. It is because of providing funding, resources, and he/she may be the primary investigator (for instance funded project responsible). The practice is that improving the writing is considered as a part of the job of supervisor, and if the result is the main graduate student. In case of exclusion the grieved author can get the paper retracted. Besides, I know several cases, the graduate students have to put external peoples name as a coauthor without any major contribution to show it is a result of successful collaboration.

 Though there may be some other situations that it is possible to bypass but it is an undocumented practice that the supervisor is in the coauthor position. Nevertheless, there may be situations where the student can be the sole author of a paper published during the graduate career, but those will be unusual circumstances. You can check VBN or similar indexing service to ensure the authenticity of the statement. Though it is unethical to list someone as a co-author who has not made a novel and significant intellectual contribution to the paper, you can see many exceptions in the science and technology field.

In these circumstances, I believe there should be a highest level of communication for developing a shared vision and clear expectations, sharing recognition and credit for handling conflict consequently building a good team by having highest level of engagement.

@Md. Saifuddin Khalid

Thank you for elaborating the scope of the question . I feel that writing a paper with a top-notch scholar helps, to a great extent, increasing the publication chance and citation. It is absolutely OK as long as all the authors bring value to the table. 

It is difficult to draw the line of authorship. However, I argue that research institutes are not that active to disseminate knowledge in this regards adequately. For example, we rarely hear from the experienced scholars about the authorship criteria at the research group/department level.

1. An option would be to have a set of questions that authors need to answer about the contribution of each author in the submitted manuscript so that guest, ghost, and gift authors will fall in an awkward position and victims (less experienced authors) can understand the game.

2. Obviously having a dedicated course/workshop on authorship especially for the PhD students help scholars to be aware of the authorship issue.

3. Having description regarding authorship in academic conference booklets will force the scholars to read and retrospect.

Thus, many inexperienced scholars, especially who are doing unwittingly, may stop the malpractice.

There are several other ways to mitigate the malpractice as long as we have the intention. 

Here is a link to a video by Academy of Management on authorship

https://youtu.be/I3wEmi1rMeQ

A video by the Academy of Management on authorship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3wEmi1rMeQ&t=42s

Check an authorship eligibility test below

https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/authorandreviewertutorials/biomed-central-editor-tutorials/publication-and-research-ethics-and-misconduct/authorship-issues-guest-gift-or-ghost

Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors

http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

Authorship abuse is the dark side of collaboration

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/authorship-abuse-is-the-dark-side-of-collaboration

Authorship guidelines in computer science

IEEE Publishing Policy and Ethics

https://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/author_ethics.html

ACM Policy on Authorship

https://www.acm.org/publications/policy-on-authorship

Authorship and Publication

http://rcr.gatech.edu/authorship

Journal of Computer Science

http://thescipub.com/journals/jcs/ethics

Ethics

http://www.csc.kth.se/utbildning/kth/kurser/DD3001/drtmp15/Lectures/Lecture5.pdf

Ethics of scientific publications - Education Technology Computer ...

https://books.google.dk/books?id=LWCYBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA262&lpg=PA262&dq=authorship+ethics+in+computer+science&source=bl&ots=DhiDiAO_x7&sig=bR0w3pV88ygDeFhUkwnxNfI3Li4&hl=da&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv8vX1y_LUAhUlMZoKHbtWCYA4HhDoAQhXMAc#v=onepage&q=authorship%20ethics%20in%20computer%20science&f=false

Washington university policy for authorship on scientific and scholarly publications

https://research.wustl.edu/PoliciesGuidelines/Pages/AuthorshipPolicy.aspx

Ethics and Etiquette in Scientific Research

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Ethics/ethics07.pdf

Authorship and Co-authorship in science and research

http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/year/2014/course/DAT147/mtrl/DAT147-Authorship%20ethics.pdf

Publication Etiquette and Ethics: Things You Should Know Before Submitting Your Next paper

https://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/publication_etiquette.pdf