Contributions Of Co-authors Research Articles

Clarifying middle authorship contributions to reduce abuses in science publishing and assessment of top-ranked SJR biochemistry and pharmacology journals' authorship criteria.

So-called "middle authors," being neither the first, last, nor corresponding author of an academic paper, have made increasing relative contributions to academic scholarship over recent decades. No work has specifically and explicitly addressed the roles, rights, and responsibilities of middle authors, an authorship position which we believe is particularly vulnerable to abuse via growing phenomena such as paper mills. Responsible middle authorship requires transparent declarations of intellectual and other scientific contributions that journals can and should require of co-authors and established guidelines and criteria to achieve this already exist (ICMJE/CRediT). Although publishers, editors, and authors need to collectively uphold a situation of shared responsibility for appropriate co-authorship, current models have failed science since verification of authorship is impossible, except through blind trust in authors' statements. During the retraction of a paper, while the opinion of individual co-authors might be noted in a retraction notice, the retraction itself practically erases the relevance of co-author contributions and position/status (first, leading, senior, last, co-corresponding, etc.). Paper mills may have successfully proliferated because individual authors' roles and responsibilities are not tangibly verifiable and are thus indiscernible. We draw on a historical example of manipulated research to argue that authors and editors should publish publicly available, traceable contributions to the intellectual content of an article-both classical authorship or technical contributions-to maximize both visibility of individual contributions and accountability. To make our article practically more relevant to this journal's readership, we reviewed the top 50 Q1 journals in the fields of biochemistry and pharmacology, as ranked by the SJR, to appreciate which journals adopted the ICMJE or CRediT schools of authorship contribution, finding significant variation in adhesion to ICMJE guidelines nor the CRediT criteria and wording of author guidelines.

Palestinian Football and the Struggle for Identity

Although it is customary to end an article with an acknowledgment, I would like instead to begin by recognizing the contribution of my close friend and coauthor, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was known to both Arab and international audiences as “the face of the Second Intifada,” reported on Palestinian suffering and resistance with the utmost professionalism and courage, and was shot dead by an Israeli sniper on May 11, 2022 while reporting from a Jenin refugee camp. This article is a personal and political commemoration of a dear and much-missed friend, and is intended to fulfill her personal wish to publish an academic article that related to her journalistic work.

Honorary authorship is highly prevalent in health sciences: systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey research was conducted to estimate honorary authorship prevalence in health sciences. We searched PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. until January 5 2023. Methodological quality was assessed and quantitative syntheses were conducted. Nineteen surveys were included and rated as having low methodological quality. We found a pooled prevalence of 26% [95% CI 21-31] (6 surveys, 2758 respondents) of researchers that perceived co-author(s) as honorary on the publication at issue (when they were not referred to any authorship criteria). That prevalence was 18% [95% CI 15-21] (11 surveys, 4272 respondents) when researchers were referred to Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, and 51% [95% CI 47-56] (15 surveys, 5111 respondents) when researchers were asked to declare their co-author(s) contributions on the publication at issue (and these were then compared to ICMJE criteria). 10% of researchers [95% CI 9-12] (11 surveys, 3,663 respondents) reported being approached by others to include honorary author(s) on the publication at issue and 16% [95% CI 13-18] (2 surveys, 823 respondents) admitted adding (an) honorary author(s). Survey research consistently indicates that honorary authorship in the health sciences is highly prevalent, however the quality of the surveys' methods and reporting needs improvement.

The 10 top-cited authors who published papers in journal medicine since 2000 using the betweenness centrality to identify unique names: Bibliometric analysis.

Numerous studies have explored the most productive and influential authors in a specific field. However, 2 challenges arise when conducting such research. First, some authors may have identical names in the study data, and second, the contributions of coauthors may vary in the article by line, requiring consideration. Failure to address these issues may result in biased research findings. Our objective was to illustrate how the author-weighted scheme (AWS) and betweenness centrality (BC) can be employed to identify the 10 most frequently cited authors in a particular journal and analyze their research themes. We collected 24,058 abstracts from the PubMed library between 2000 and 2020 using the keyword "Medicine [Journal]." Author names, countries/regions, and medical subject headings (MeSH terms) were collected. The AWS to identify the top 10 authors with a higher x-index was applied. To address the issue of authors with identical names affiliated with different research institutes, we utilized the BC method. Social network analysis (SNA) was conducted, and 10 major clusters were identified to highlight authors with a higher x-index within the corresponding clusters. We utilized SNA to analyze the MeSH terms from articles of the 10 top-cited authors to identify their research themes. Our findings revealed the following: within the top 10 cited authors, 2 authors from China shared identical names with Jing Li and Tao-Wang; JA Winkelstein from Maryland (US) had the highest x-index (15.58); Chia-Hung Kao from Taiwan was the most prolific author, having published 115 articles in Medicine since 2003; and the 3 primary research themes, namely, complications, etiology, and epidemiology, were identified using MeSH terms from the 10 most frequently cited authors. Using AWS and BC, we identified the top 10 most cited authors. The research methods we utilized in this study (BC and AWS) have the potential to be applied to other bibliometric analyses in the future.

On the Implementation of the Principle of Dualism of Intellectual Law in Co-authorship

The relevance of the conducted research is conditioned by the absence of legislative stipulation of the procedure and criteria of evaluation of the creative contribution of co-authors in the single result of their creative activity, as well as by the inconsistency of some cited court arguments, including the impossibility to create a photograph by several authors. In fact, the legislative definition of the notion of co-authorship, given in art. 1258 of the Civil Code of Russian Federation, is not substantial and functional: it lacks the essential and distinctive features and does not reflect the essence of this phenomenon, which makes it difficult to determine the contribution of each author and to evaluate it. In this paper we explore the notion of co-authorship, both in terms of its semantic meaning and in terms of the creative process. Co-authorship is examined using the example of the creation of a photograph as an object of copyright. In fact, the subject of the study is the relationship of established co-creation in photography and exclusive rights to it. The methods of analysis, inductive and comparison with the legislation of foreign countries were used. The main attention is paid to the analysis of judicial practice in the settlement of disputes on the violation of exclusive rights to photographic images, judicial explanation concerning the co-authorship and other similar in nature relationships arising in the process of creating an intellectual creative product (photography). Conclusions are drawn on the relationship between court-established infringement of exclusive rights and the recognition of copyright, legal dualism as the relationship between exclusive and copyright in the court's recognition of co-authorship or lack thereof.

Co-Authorship in Russia and Germany: General and Special

The paper analyzes the provisions of Russian and German legislation on the regulation of co-authorship relations. The study revealed the following features. By virtue of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the joint work of several persons can be carried out in the mode of both separate and inseparable co-authorship, including intermediate modes allocated doctrinally. The German legislator names only inseparable co-authorship as a basis for the appearance of co-authors, all other cases are covered by the regime of linked works. Co-authorship can only arise if there is a joint creative work, which implies the understanding of the co-authors that they work together (subjective criterion), as well as a single period of time, being at the same «stage of production», the existence of an agreement between the co-authors, etc. (objective criterion). German jurisprudence clarifies: co-authorship is not excluded in the case of incremental contributions, but it assumes that each participant has made his own creative contribution, subject to a common idea. It is not required that the co-authors simultaneously participate in all stages of the development of the work. Accordingly, the so-called vertical division of labor is possible, in which the co-authors rely on already created preliminary versions of the work, as well as the horizontal division of labor, when the co-authors simultaneously create separate parts of the work, which then merge into a single work. The presumption in Russia of equal contribution of co-authors to the creation of a common work is applied in Germany on a subsidiary basis, if it is objectively impossible to determine this contribution. The main regulators of the rights of co-authors (authors) in Russia and Germany are the law and the contract, sometimes a court decision. The use of a work created by co-authors is carried out jointly, taking into account the principle of good faith, which is explicitly present in German law and follows from a systemic interpretation of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

Does the quality of the presentation influence the outcome of a submitted manuscript? A plea for including "How to submit" in medical education.

Our goal was to study the influence of the author's compliance with the Instructions for Authors for a submitted manuscript to a journal, on the final outcome of the submission. 1200 consecutive submissions to the journal Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy have been evaluated and divided into four groups: A: Accepted, R: Rejected, I + : Instructions for Authors followed, I - : Instructions for Authors not followed. The quantity of manuscripts in the groups was measured and compared through statistical tests. We tried to determine if a specific category of authors was more likely to incorrectly follow the Instructions for Authors by verifying the lists of authors and the tables of contributions of co-authors. 322 (26.83%) manuscripts were accepted, 248 were I + , 74 were I - ; 878 (73.16%) were rejected, 526 were I + ; 352 were I - . The comparisons of the observed values and percentages showed significant differences between the groups. We could not identify a specific type of author associated with non-compliance with the Instructions for Authors. Most of the guidelines that have been published concern the preparation of the scientific contents of the manuscript (How to write), but the submission process (How to submit) has rarely been explained. We suggest including the rules of submitting a manuscript in graduate and post-graduate medical education.

Considering author sequence in all-author co-citation analysis

Author co-citation analysis (ACA) is a commonly used method to map knowledge domains and depict scientific intellectual structures. Although all authors’ information has been considered in previous studies, ACA does not distinguish credits of different collaborators within a team. Authors’ sequence in a publication illustrates their contributions and specialty of research, which offers more information as inputs of ACA. This paper considers author sequence in ACA and proposes a sequence-based ACA method. By assigning various weight values to authors with different sequences, this proposed method considers distinct contributions of co-authors influencing the effect of ACA. Extra weight is given to corresponding authors, beyond their sequence, to acknowledge their additional contributions. Results of the empirical study based on the data from the field of Library and Information Science show many details on the visualization maps of the proposed methods, such as the number of sub-fields, the position of sub-fields, the position of authors, and clarity and interpretability of visualization maps. Meanwhile, the current paper proposes a novel framework of evaluating knowledge domain maps with both quantitative and qualitative facets.

A validation of coauthorship credit models with empirical data from the contributions of PhD candidates

A perennial problem in bibliometrics is the appropriate distribution of authorship credit for coauthored publications. Several credit allocation methods and formulas have been introduced, but there has been little empirical validation as to which method best reflects the typical contributions of coauthors. This paper presents a validation of credit allocation methods using a new data set of author-provided percentage contribution figures obtained from the coauthored publications in cumulative PhD theses by authors from three countries that contain contribution statements. The comparison of allocation schemes shows that harmonic counting performs best and arithmetic and geometric counting also perform well, while fractional counting and first author counting perform relatively poorly.

Predicting future influence of papers, researchers, and venues in a dynamic academic network

• Dynamic academic networks are introduced for predicting future influence of entities. • Every researcher or venue per year is treated as a separate entity. • Seven types of relations among papers, authors, and venues are extracted and used for prediction. • Both publication age and recent citations are considered for a balanced treatment of old and new papers. Performance evaluation and prediction of academic achievements is an essential task for scientists, research organizations, research funding bodies, and government agencies alike. Recently, heterogeneous networks have been used to evaluate or predict performance of multi-entities including papers, researchers, and venues with some success. However, only a minimum of effort has been made to predict the future influence of papers, researchers and venues. In this paper, we propose a new framework WMR-Rank for this purpose. Based on the dynamic and heterogeneous network of multiple entities, we extract seven types of relations among them. The framework supports useful features including the refined granularity of relevant entities such as authors and venues, time awareness for published papers and their citations, differentiating the contribution of multiple coauthors to the same paper, amongst others. By leveraging all seven types of relations and fusing the rich information in a mutually reinforcing style, we are able to predict future influence of papers, authors and venues more precisely. Using the ACL dataset, our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach considerably outperforms state-of-the art competitors.

Large publishing consortia produce higher citation impact research but coauthor contributions are hard to evaluate

This paper introduces a simple agglomerative clustering method to identify large publishing consortia with at least 20 authors and 80% shared authorship between articles. Based on Scopus journal articles from 1996–2018, under these criteria, nearly all (88%) of the large consortia published research with citation impact above the world average, with the exceptions being mainly the newer consortia, for which average citation counts are unreliable. On average, consortium research had almost double (1.95) the world average citation impact on the log scale used (Mean Normalised Log Citation Score). At least partial alphabetical author ordering was the norm in most consortia. The 250 largest consortia were for nuclear physics and astronomy, involving expensive equipment, and for predominantly health-related issues in genomics, medicine, public health, microbiology and neuropsychology. For the health-related issues, except for the first and last few authors, authorship seem to primarily indicate contributions to the shared project infrastructure necessary to gather the raw data. It is impossible for research evaluators to identify the contributions of individual authors in the huge alphabetical consortia of physics and astronomy and problematic for the middle and end authors of health-related consortia. For small-scale evaluations, authorship contribution statements could be used when available.

Using the Kano model to display the most cited authors and affiliated countries in schizophrenia research

In order to improve individual research achievements (IRA), this study investigates which affiliated countries and authors earn the most cited IRAs and whether those types of articles are associated with the number of cited papers on schizophrenia from a leading journal in the field. The Kano model was used for displaying the IRAs. Clusters of medical subject headings (MeSH) were applied to explore the core concepts of a given journal. This study aimed to apply social network analysis (SNA) and an authorship-weighted scheme (AWS) to inspect the association between MeSH terms and IRA. About 2,008 abstracts published between 2012 and 2016 in the journal Schizophrenia Research were downloaded from Pubmed Central using the keyword (Schizophr Res)[Journal] on September 20, 2018. The MeSH terms were clustered by using SNA to separate the core concepts and compare the differences in bibliometric indices (i.e., h, Ag, x and author impact factor or AIF). Visual dashboards were shown on Google Maps. Results indicate that (1) the US, the UK, and Canada earn the highest x-index; (2) the top one author from the US has the highest x-index (= 5.73 with x-core at cited = 16.44 and citable = 2); (3) the article type of schizophrenic psychology shows distinctly higher frequencies than others; and (4) article types are associated with the number of cited papers. Four approaches of the Kano model, SNA, MeSH terms, and AWS can be accommodated to display IRAs, classify article types, and quantify coauthor contributions in the article byline, respectively, and applied to other scientific disciplines in the future, not just in this specific journal.

Whether article types of a scholarly journal are different in cited metrics using cluster analysis of MeSH terms to display: A bibliometric analysis.

Many authors are concerned which types of peer-review articles can be cited most in academics and who were the highest-cited authors in a scientific discipline. The prerequisites are determined by: (1) classifying article types; and (2) quantifying co-author contributions. We aimed to apply Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) with social network analysis (SNA) and an authorship-weighted scheme (AWS) to meet the prerequisites above and then demonstrate the applications for scholars. By searching the PubMed database (pubmed.com), we used the keyword "Medicine" [journal] and downloaded 5,636 articles published from 2012 to 2016. A total number of 9,758 were cited in Pubmed Central (PMC). Ten MeSH terms were separated to represent the journal types of clusters using SNA to compare the difference in bibliometric indices, that is, h, g, and x as well as author impact factor(AIF). The methods of Kendall coefficient of concordance (W) and one-way ANOVA were performed to verify the internal consistency of indices and the difference across MeSH clusters. Visual representations with dashboards were shown on Google Maps. We found that Kendall W is 0.97 (χ = 26.22, df = 9, P < .001) congruent with internal consistency on metrics across MeSH clusters. Both article types of methods and therapeutic use show higher frequencies than other 8 counterparts. The author Klaus Lechner (Austria) earns the highest research achievement(the mean of core articles on g = Ag = 15.35, AIF = 21, x = 3.92, h = 1) with one paper (PMID: 22732949, 2012), which was cited 23 times in 2017 and the preceding 5 years. Publishing article type with study methodology and design might lead to a higher IF. Both classifying article types and quantifying co-author contributions can be accommodated to other scientific disciplines. As such, which type of articles and who contributes most to a specific journal can be evaluated in the future.

Freeloading in biomedical research

The surge in the number of authors per article in the biomedical field makes it difficult to quantify the contribution of individual authors. Conventional citation metrics are typically based on the number of publications and the number of citations generated by a scientist, thereby disregarding the contribution of co-authors. Previously we developed the p-index that estimates the dependency of a scientist on co-authors during their career. In this study we aimed to evaluate the ability of the p-index to identify researchers with a relatively high degree of scientific dependence on co-authors. For this purpose, we retrieved articles, which were rejected for publication in Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis and subsequently published elsewhere. Assuming that authors who were added to a later version of these articles would not fulfill the full authorship criteria, we tested whether these authors showed a larger dependency on co-authors during their scientific career as would be evident from a higher p-index. In accordance with this hypothesis, authors who were added on later versions of articles showed a higher p-index than their peers, indicating an enduring pattern of dependency on other co-authors for publishing their work. This study underscores that questionable authorship practices are endemic to the biomedical research, which calls for alternative methods to evaluate a scientist’s qualities.

Discrete algorithms and methods for security of statistical databases related to the work of Mirka Miller

This article gives a survey of discrete and combinatorial algorithms and methods for database security related to the work of Mirka Miller. The main contributions of Mirka Miller and coauthors to the security of statistical databases include the introduction of Static Audit Expert and theorems determining time complexity of its combinatorial algorithms, a polynomial time algorithm for deciding whether the maximum possible usability can be achieved in a statistical database with a special class of answerable statistics, NP-completeness of similar problems concerning several other types of statistical databases, sharp upper bounds on the number of compromise-free queries in certain categories of statistical databases, and analogous results on applications of Static Audit Expert for the prevention of relative compromise.

Artificial Human Optimization – An Overview

The main idea to author this article is to “Popularize Artificial Human Optimization Field like never before by showing an Overview of this new field”. This idea can be divided into following sub-ideas: 1) To show the definition of “Artificial Human Optimization Field (AHO Field)” 2) To show difficulty level of creating new algorithms under AHO field 3) To show 30+ titles of papers published under AHO field 4) To show names of 65+ authors who worked under AHO Field 5) To show best negative reviews obtained for work under AHO Field 6) To show best positive reviews obtained for work under AHO Field 7) To show feedback given by an expert for work under AHO Field 8) To show “Hassan Satish Particle Swarm Optimization (HSPSO)”. This is latest work under AHO Field 9) To show contribution of Satish Gajawada and co-authors to this new Field 10) To show surprising results obtained after implementing AHO algorithms 11) To show you “Future of Artificial Human Optimization Field”

An Experimental Scattering Matrix for Lunar Regolith Simulant JSC-1A at Visible Wavelengths

The contributions of co-authors J.D. Goguen and R.A. West were carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We are indebted to Rocio Marquez from the Scientific Instrumentation center of the University of Granada for providing part of the SEM images. This work has been supported by the Plan Nacional de Astronomia y Astrofisica contracts AYA2015-67152-R and AYA2015-71975-REDT.

Preface: Franz-Josef Kaup and the development of the Pathology Unit at the German Primate Center.

This special issue about selected diseases of nonhuman primates was created in honor of Franz-Josef Kaup, who worked as a primate pathologist at the German Primate Center (DPZ) for 25 years. In 1992, Franz-Josef Kaup started his career at the DPZ as head of the working group Experimental Pathology. Prior to that he worked as a research assistant in the division Electron Microscopy at the Institute of Pathology of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover. He was very experienced in the field of electron microscopy and used this expertise to establish a central electron microscopy laboratory at the DPZ. In the beginning, research of the working group Experimental Pathology was focused on gastrointestinal and respiratory infections and was closely related to projects of the Department of Virology. At that time, experimental infections of rhesus macaques with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and associated opportunistic infections became the main subject of his research. The contribution of Christiane Stahl-Hennig and coauthors about SIV-induced cardiovascular diseases reflects the still ongoing collaboration in this research field. After merging the Experimental Pathology and Primate Husbandry in 1996, Franz-Josef Kaup headed the newly created Department of Veterinary Medicine and Primate Husbandry. This department became the central service unit of the DPZ in 1999 and offered a broad spectrum of services in veterinary diagnostics, primate husbandry, and animal welfare, which was intensively used by many internal and external scientists. In 2001, Walter Bodemer joined the group and the scientific contents expanded with a new focus on the pathogenesis of prion diseases. Some important aspects of this era are summarized in the work of Walter Bodemer.

Author contributions to ecological publications: What does it mean to be an author in modern ecological research?

Authorship is a central element of scientific research carrying a variety of rewards and responsibilities, and while various guidelines exist, actual author contributions are often ambiguous. Inconsistent or limited contributions threaten to devalue authorship as intellectual currency and diminish authors’ responsibility for published content. Researchers have assessed author contributions in the medical literature and other research fields, but similar data for the field of ecological research are lacking. Authorship practices in ecological research are broadly representative of a variety of fields due to the cross-disciplinary nature of collaborations in ecological studies. To better understand author contributions to current research, we distributed a survey regarding co-author contributions to a random selection of 996 lead authors of manuscripts published in ecological journals in 2010. We obtained useable responses from 45% of surveyed authors. Reported lead author contributions in ecological research studies consistently included conception of the project idea, data collection, analysis, and writing. Middle and last author contributions instead showed a high level of individual variability. Lead authorship in ecology is well defined while secondary authorship is more ambiguous. Nearly half (48%) of all studies included in our survey had some level of non-compliance with Ecological Society of America (ESA) authorship guidelines and the majority of studies (78%) contained at least one co-author that did not meet International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) requirements. Incidence of non-compliance varied with lead author occupation and author position. The probability of a study including an author that was non-compliant with ESA guidelines was lowest for professor-led studies and highest for graduate student and post doctoral researcher-led studies. Among studies with > two co-authors, all lead authors met ESA guidelines and only 2% failed to meet ICMJE requirements. Middle (24% ESA, 63% ICMJE) and last (37% ESA, 60% ICMJE) authors had higher rates of non-compliance. The probability of a study containing a co-author that did not meet ESA or ICMJE requirements increased significantly with the number of co-authors per study although even studies with only two co-authors had a high probability of non-compliance of approximately 60% (ICMJE) and 15 to 40% (ESA). Given the variable and often limited contributions of authors in our survey and past studies of other research disciplines, institutions, journals, and scientific societies need to implement new approaches to instill meaning in authorship status. A byline approach may not alter author contributions but would better define individual contributions and reduce existing ambiguity regarding the meaning of authorship in modern ecological research.

First and Others credit-assignment schema for evaluating the academic contribution of coauthors

Credit-assignment schemas are widely applied by providing fixed or flexible credit distribution formulas to evaluate the contributions of coauthors of a scientific publication. In this paper, we propose an approach named First and Others (F&O) counting. By introducing a tuning parameter α and a weight β, two new properties are obtained: (1) flexible assignment of credits by modifying the formula (with the change of α) and applying preference to the individual author by adjusting the weights (with the change of β), and (2) calculation of the credits by separating the formula for the first author from others. With formula separation, the credit of the second author shows an inflection point according to the change of α. The developed theorems and proofs concerning the modification of α and β reveal new properties and complement the base theory for informetrics. The F&O schema is also adapted when considering the policy of ‘first-corresponding-author-emphasis’. Through a comparative analysis using a set of empirical data from the fields of chemistry, medicine, psychology, and the Harvard survey data, the performance of the F&O approach is compared with those of other methods to demonstrate its benefits by the criteria of lack of fit and coefficient of determination.