Abstract
Academic degrees following author names are often included in medical research papers. However, it remains unclear how many journals choose to include academic degrees and whether this is more common in certain types of journals. We examined the 100 highest impact medical journals and found that only 24 medical journals reported academic degrees. Moreover, this was substantially more common in journals based in North America compared with Europe. Further research is required to explore the implications of listing academic degrees on the readers’ attitude towards research quality.
Highlights
Academic degrees following author names are often included in medical research papers
Among the most influential medical journals, we examined journal factors associated with the inclusion of academic degrees on the title page
We found that 52% of journals were published in Europe and 48% were published in North America
Summary
Academic degrees following author names are often included in medical research papers. It remains unclear how many journals choose to include academic degrees and whether this is more common in certain types of journals. We examined the 100 highest impact medical journals and found that only 24 medical journals reported academic degrees. This was substantially more common in journals based in North America compared with Europe. We included a clarification on the definition of academic degrees in the methods section of the manuscript. The journals within the dataset have been reassessed according to Scopus’ definition of open access
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