A comparative study on authorship trends in four Persian and English Journals in the field of Medical Education

Abstract

Context: The authorship issue is a major ethical challenge for professional researchers. Authorship trend is an indirect indicator of professional manner regarding the Medical Education researchers. Aims: This study is conducted to compare the trends of authorship in four high impact journals in the field of Medical Education. Materials and Methods: The authorship trends of two high impact English Journals in Medical Education: The Medical Teacher and the Medical Education versus the two high impact Persian Journals in Medical Education: The Strides in Development of Medical Education Journal and the Iranian Journal of Medical Education (IJME) are compared in this study. Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS version 19, Minitab version 17 and Excel add-in Megastat version 10.1 software. Results: The authorship trends of 6699 articles in the four journals of concern are analyzed. Over the past 12 years, the mean number of authors has increased in both the Persian and one of the English Journals. The trend lines of single authored articles in the English Journals and the IJME decreased in a significant manner. However, in the Persian Journals, the percentage of single-author articles is obviously lower than the English Journals. Conclusion: The increasing number of authors per article could be considered as a sign of increased collaborative research or authorship misconducts in this field. Further research is recommended to study the causes and contributing factors in the increasing trend of authorship in the Persian Journals.