Factors affecting surname manipulation techniques

Abstract

The main focus of our analysis was to understand the factors affecting the use of surname manipulation strategies and we conducted a regression analysis accordingly. This analysis offers an important perspective to understand the surname manipulation strategies of researchers publishing in the academic world. It shows that being at the beginning of the author list in multi-author studies provides a significant advantage for the author in terms of academic visibility. On the other hand, researchers whose surnames’ initials are at the end of the alphabet are in a disadvantaged position. Researchers who want to overcome this situation can use strategies such as avoiding multi-author studies, publishing in journals that do not follow alphabetical order, or manipulating the initial of the surname. The extent to which these strategies were implemented by the authors was evaluated, and it was determined that there was no strong tendency for the first two strategies. In this context, regression was established on the factors affecting the First Alphabetic Surname and Two Last Names strategies. The findings obtained in this regression concluded that variables such as the number of authors, female gender, and being a citizen of countries with many names and surnames, such as Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, increased the use of the mentioned strategies, and that these strategies did not hurt the author's reputation. Keywords: alphabetization, citation analysis, surname initial techniques