Multi-authored Articles Research Articles

The power law relationship between citation impact and multi-authorship patterns in articles in Information Science & Library Science journals

The aim of this paper is to extend the conversation about the correlation between collaboration and citation impact in articles in Information Science & Library Science journals by analyzing this correlation’s behavior using a power scaling law approach. 28,131 articles that received 215,693 citations were analyzed. The number of these articles that were published through collaboration accounts for 69%. In general, the scaling exponent of multi-authored articles, both international and domestic, increases over time while the exponent of single-authored papers decreases. The citation impact and collaboration patterns exhibit a power law correlation with a scaling exponent of 1.34 ± 0.02. Citations to multi-authored articles increased $$2^{1.34}$$ or 2.53 times each time the number of multi-authored papers doubled. The Matthew Effect is stronger for multi-authored papers than for single-authored. The scaling exponent for the power law relationship of domestic multi-authored papers was 1.35 ± 0.02. The citations to domestic multi-authored articles increased $$2^{1.35}$$ or 2.55 times each time the number of domestic multi-authored articles doubled. Contrary to previous studies we found that the Matthew Effect is stronger for domestic multi-authored papers than for international multi-authored ones.

Gender equality in academic research on epilepsy-a study on scientific authorships.

The study aims to elucidate the state of gender equality in epilepsy research, analyzing the representation of female authorships from 2008 to 2016. Gendermetrics aided in analyzing 106,282 authorships from 22,180 epilepsy-related original research articles. The key methodology was the combined analysis of the relative frequency and the odds ratio of female authorships. The Prestige Index measures the distribution of prestigious authorships between the two genders. The following were held by women: 39.6% of all authorships and 44.1% of the first, 41.0% of the co-, and 29.0% of the last authorships. Female authors have an odds ratio of 1.25 (95% CI 1.21-1.29) for first, 1.17 (CI 1.14-1.20) for co-, and 0.57 (CI 0.55-0.59) for last authorships. The female authorship ratios showed substantial growth in recent years, with an annual growth rate of 1.7% overall, with 2.4% for first, 1.4% for co-, and 1.9% for last authorships. Women publish fewer articles compared to men (43.8% female authors hold 39.6% of the authorships). Women are also less likely to secure prestigious authorships in articles with many authors that attract the highest citation rates. Multi-author articles with male key authors are cited slightly more frequently than articles with female key authors. Distinct differences at the country level were revealed. The prognosis for the next decade forecasts significantly increasing female odds for first authorships and only slightly higher female odds for last authorships. A female authorship ratio of 49.2% is predicted for the year 2026. The integration of women in the scientific field of epilepsy is advanced. However, a dichotomy is present: Although the current system promotes early career steps, there is an apparent lack of female research leaders. This structural imbalance is expected to grow in the next decade due to the consistently high increase of female early career researchers.

Bibliometric analysis of Ceylon Medical Journal during the period from 2003 – 2012

Ceylon Medical Journal (CMJ) is the premier and oldest medical journal in Sri Lanka. Bibliometric studies on single journals are useful to find out the research trend in a discipline and publication trend of the journal. The objective of the study was to conduct a bibliometric study of CMJ. The study sought to identify co-authorship pattern, geographical distribution of authors, productive institutions, prolific authors, productive articles and the impact of the research work published in CMJ during the study period. The required data of all the selected articles published from 2003 to 2012, related to the analysis were collected from Scopus database. The collected data were analyzed in terms of bibliometric parameters by MS excel 2007 and Bibexcel. The study revealed multi authored articles occupy prominent position indicating cooperative research work. Three author contributions was the highest ranked authorship pattern. Majority (90%) of the authors publishing articles in CMJ were from Sri Lanka. The most prolific author contributed 18 articles during the study period. The most productive article received 57 citations recorded in SCOPUS data-base. University of Colombo and University of Kelaniya were leading institutions in publishing articles in CMJ during the study period. The study highlighted some research trends in health sciences and publishing trends of CMJ. The country distribution of authors showed that the journal reflects the research and views of health researchers mainly from Sri Lanka. The study provides suggestions to improve the impact of the research articles published in CMJ.

Trends in Authorship of Articles in Major Ophthalmology Journals by Gender, 2002–2014

To evaluate trends in the prevalence of women authors in ophthalmology in recent years. Cohort study. Authors listed in publications of 6 leading ophthalmology journals between January 2002 and December2014. Using the PubMed search engine, we conducted an observational study of trends in gender distribution of all authors in 6 leading ophthalmology journals between January 2002 and December 2014. In multiauthored articles, the first listed author often is the lead investigator and the last author is the senior author. Therefore, the full names and positions (first, middle, or last) of all authors in every article were collected. A Google-based name identifier was used to assign the gender of authors. Proportion of women authors throughout the study period in all journals, general ophthalmology versus subspecialty journals, and basic science versus clinical research journals. Furthermore, we assessed the proportion of women in different authorship positions (first, middle, and last). A total of 102 254 authors from 23 026 published articles were analyzed. There was a significant rise over time in the percentage of women authors, with a steeper slope for first authors than for last authors (P<0.001), although in 2014, women authors were less than the 50% mark in all categories of authorship. The rise in the percentage of women authors was similar in basic and clinical research, but was steeper for first authorship than for last authorship (P<0.001). In all 3 authorship positions (first, middle, or last), women's contributions consistently were higher in basic research publications. The rise in the percentage of women authors was significantly steeper for general journals than for subspecialty journals (P<0.001). There was no significant rise for last authorship in subspecialty journals. In all 3 authorship positions, the proportion of women was consistently higher in general ophthalmology journals than for subspecialty journals. Despite an overall increase in the contribution of women to the field of ophthalmology, contributions to articles published in subspecialty ophthalmology journals and the proportion of women listed as last authors on overall articles published in ophthalmology journals are still low.

Authorship and Content Analysis of Engineering Education Research: A Case Study

In this paper, Engineering Education as a discipline has been analyzed by taking IEEE Transactions on Education (IEEE T Educ) as a case; to examine the various trends that have been emerging over time. Based on various criteria of authorship and citation, an effort is made to highlight the main contributors or top authors of this engineering education community. It was found that authorship trends have been shifting more towards collaboration. It was also found that the authorship community is growing, both in terms of publications and publishing authors. Study of citation patterns during the last decade, reveals a high citation count per article, which indicates a high readership of this journal. Later, the study of authorship and citation patterns shed light on the trend that multi-author articles are cited more often than single-author articles. This study was compared with earlier studies in the field of Engineering Education Research (EER) using keyword analysis and temporal evolution and distribution of keywords. Additionally key-phrase and topic modeling was performed to identify leading and evolving research areas within the EER., Analysis of word co-occurrence was performed to discover the main context in which the keywords have been used. Lastly, topic modeling techniques were applied for probabilistic distributions of IEEE topics and the results were in line with earlier studies.

Sensitivity and integrity of authorship

Sensitivity and integrity of authorship

Authorship problems in scientific literature and in nuclear medicine: the point of view of the young researcher

In recent years, different ethical problems have emerged in the scientific literature [1, 2]. Disputes can occur when including or excluding authors’ names in scientific papers that, nowadays, are frequently multiauthor articles. These problems, called “authorship” problems, are prompted by the competitive scientific climate and by the increasing use of bibliometric indices to measure the academic performance of individual researchers [3]. In the last 30 years, many groups, editors and scientific committees have debated the authorship problem, including the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the EuropeanAssociation of Science Editors (EASE), the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI, in the USA). Our aim was to investigate the emerging importance of authorship problems in scientific literature, with particular regard to the role of young researchers and to the field of nuclear medicine.

Too Many Authors Spoil the Credit

Too Many Authors Spoil the Credit

Solo versus collaborative writing: Discrepancies in the use of tables and graphs in academic articles

The number of authors collaborating to write scientific articles has been increasing steadily, and with this collaboration, other factors have also changed, such as the length of articles and the number of citations. However, little is known about potential discrepancies in the use of tables and graphs between single and collaborating authors. In this article, we ask whether multiauthor articles contain more tables and graphs than single‐author articles, and we studied 5,180 recent articles published in six science and social sciences journals. We found that pairs and multiple authors used significantly more tables and graphs than single authors. Such findings indicate that there is a greater emphasis on the role of tables and graphs in collaborative writing, and we discuss some of the possible causes and implications of these findings.

Exploring the publications in three major orthodontic journals: A comparative analysis of two 5-year periods

To analyze the types of articles and authorship characteristics of three orthodontic journals--American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics (AJODO), The Angle Orthodontist (AO), and European Journal of Orthodontics (EJO)--published between 2008 and 2012 and to assess the differences in content within this period and an earlier period of 1998 to 2002. Each journal's content was accessed through the web edition. From each article, the following parameters were recorded: article type, number of authors, number of affiliations, source of article (referring to the first author's affiliation), and geographic origin. Descriptive statistics were performed and selected parameters were analyzed with the Pearson chi-square or Fisher exact test for independence at the .05 level of significance. Review of differences between the two periods showed that the number of publications was almost double. The percentages of multi-authored articles increased. Fewer studies derived from the United States/Canada and European Union countries. Increases for articles from non-European Union countries, Asia, and other countries were found. Characteristics of the second period showed that the EJO and AO published more research articles, whereas the AJODO regularly published case reports and other articles. Approximately 75% of all studies derived from orthodontic departments. The publications from 1998-2002 and 2008-2012 were significantly different both in terms of numbers and characteristics. Within 2008-2012 there were notable differences between the three journals concerning the type and origin of the publications.

Does the multi-authorship trend influence the quality of an article?

In the last few decades, multi-authored articles have increased in different disciplines with increasing instances of authorship abuse although multi-authorship is not always due to undeserving authorship (McDonald et al. in Mayo Clin Proc 85(10):920---927, 2010). It may be necessitated by interdisciplinary research, the evolution of a discipline, or the intention of quality improvement. This article studies the relationship between the authorship and the quality of articles (publications in better impact factor journals or core journals) in the field of Oceanography. The result shows ~75 % increase in the number of authors per article from 1990 to 2009 in the discipline. The increase in authorship correlates not only with the percentage of articles in core journals but also with the mean impact factor (IF) of journals (where the articles were published). The ANOVA study shows that though multi-authorship has no influence on the preference to publish in core journals during the 1990s or 2000s, it does have a significant influence on the preference to publish in high IF journals in both the decades. So these findings establish that in the field of Oceanography, the increase in collaboration would have resulted in more publications in core journals (without any influence of authorship increase) and in better impact factor journals (due to the influence of authorship increase).

Authorship Matrix: A Rational Approach to Quantify Individual Contributions and Responsibilities in Multi-Author Scientific Articles

We propose a rational method for addressing an important question—who deserves to be an author of a scientific article? We review various contentious issues associated with this question and recommend that the scientific community should view authorship in terms of contributions and responsibilities, rather than credits. We propose a new paradigm that conceptually divides a scientific article into four basic elements: ideas, work, writing, and stewardship. We employ these four fundamental elements to modify the well-known International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines. The modified ICMJE guidelines are then used as the basis to develop an approach to quantify individual contributions and responsibilities in multi-author articles. The outcome of the approach is an authorship matrix, which can be used to answer several nagging questions related to authorship.

Authorship and Contributorship in Scholarly Journals

Authorship and Contributorship in Scholarly Journals

Honorary authorship epidemic in scholarly publications? How the current use of citation-based evaluative metrics make (pseudo)honorary authors from honest contributors of every multi-author article

The current use of citation-based metrics to evaluate the research output of individual researchers is highly discriminatory because they are uniformly applied to authors of single-author articles as well as...

First-author conditions: evidence from finance journal coauthorship

We study the trend and the author name-ordering rule in finance publication using the publication records of 21 core finance journals during the period from 1990 to 2004. We empirically model the underlying factors that affect the alphabetical ordering rule among multi-authored finance articles. We find that the choice of alphabetical ordering is based on the quality of the article, institutional heterogeneity, team size and cultural factors. The central argument rests upon the need to signal and the importance of signalling within the context of bargaining behaviour among coauthors. The probability of choosing alphabetical name ordering rule is associated with high article quality, higher ranked institutions, smaller research team and the presence of European authors.

Patterns of Iranian co-authorship networks in social sciences: A comparative study

Collaboration in science is a process in which two or more authors share their ideas, resources and data to create a joint work. This research compares coauthorship networks of Iranian articles in library and information science (LIS), psychology (PSY), management (MNG), and economics (ECO) in the ISI Web of Knowledge database during 2000–2009, and uses network analysis for the visualization of coauthorship networks. Data include all articles with at least one Iranian author and indexed in ISI's Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for the fields of LIS, PSY, MNG, and ECO. Indicators such as the Collaborative Index (CI), Degree of Collaboration (DC) and Collaboration Coefficient (CC) were calculated for each discipline. Results show that two or three authors were the most common number of authors per paper, and authors of PSY tended to have more multi-authored articles, compared to the other disciplines. LIS had the lowest rank regarding CC. MNG had the densest coauthorship network, and PSY had the sparsest. Iranian authors in the field of PSY mostly collaborated with those in the U.S., while LIS and MNG authors tended to collaborate with U.K. authors, and ECO authors tended to collaborate with Canadians.

Authorship and Characteristics of Articles in Pharmacy Journals: Changes Over a 20-Year Interval

To our knowledge, no studies have evaluated authorship patterns and characteristics of articles in pharmacy journals. To investigate changes over a 20-year period in authorship and characteristics of articles in pharmacy journals. All articles published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, and Pharmacotherapy in 1989, 1999, and 2009 were reviewed. Data collected for each article included article type, number of authors, number of physician authors, whether any author was affiliated with a pharmaceutical company, and source of funding. The number of articles included was 574 in 1989, 659 in 1999, and 589 in 2009. The mean number of authors per article increased from 2.5 in 1989 to 2.8 in 1999 and 3.6 in 2009 (p<0.001). Conversely, the proportion of articles with a single author decreased from 35% in 1989 to 23% in 1999 and 11% in 2009 (p<0.001), while the proportion of multi-authored articles (>6 authors) increased from 2% in 1989 to 3% in 1999 and 9% in 2009 (p<0.001). A physician author was listed on 25% of papers in 1989, which increased to 38% in 1999 and 41% in 2009 (p<0.001). Among research articles with declared funding from industry, there was an increase over time in reported author affiliation with an industry sponsor (10% of articles in 1989, 17% in 1999, and 66% in 2009; p<0.001). Significant changes in authorship patterns and characteristics of articles were observed from 1989 to 2009. We found an increase in the number of authors per article over time, with fewer single-author papers now published. The explanations for the changes are likely multifactorial, including increased pressure to publish, increased research complexity, and inappropriate authorship. To prevent inappropriate author-number inflation and to preserve authorship's meaning and value, authors should adhere to the criteria for authorship from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Best Practices for Allocating Appropriate Credit and Responsibility to Authors of Multi-Authored Articles

Working in multidisciplinary teams has become a common feature of modern research processes. This situation inevitably leads to the question of how to decide on who to acknowledge as authors of a multi-authored publication. The question is gaining pertinence, since individual scientists’ publication records are playing an increasingly important role in their professional success. At worst, discussions about authorship allocation might lead to a serious conflict among coworkers that could even endanger the successful completion of a whole research project. Surprisingly, there does not seem to be any discussion on the issue of ethical standards for authorship is the field of Cognitive Science at the moment. In this short review I address the problem by characterizing modern challenges to a fair system for allocating authorship. I also offer a list of best practice principles and recommendations for determining authors in multi-authored publications on the basis of a review of existing standards.

Evaluation of impact factor using two different methods

Sir, Impact factor is one of the most important tools in evaluating the quality of science journals. Perhaps, it is the only factor known to most researchers today and it has been used by many individuals and institutions. For instance, authors prefer to publish in high impact journals, editors make effort to increase the journal’s impact factor and academic institutions take impact factors into consideration for hiring, promotion or financial incentives. In addition, granting agencies use it to evaluate the quality of applicant’s publications, and governments rank academic institutions based on impact factors. Thomson Reuters, the owner of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), a company specialized in producing various research analysis tools, produces impact factors of numerous journals. ISI generates Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a database containing information about journals including the number of articles and reviews, and impact factors. Impact factor is calculated using a predefined formula. For example, impact factor for the year 2000 is calculated based on the number of citations to 1998 articles in the year 2000 (A), the number of citations to 1999 articles in the year 2000 (B), the number of articles published in the year 1998 (C ) and the number of articles published in the year 1999 (D). Impact factor for 2000 is therefore (A þ B)/(C þ D). In recent years, more tools have been developed to allow researchers to analyze citation indices for various journals. Among those tools is Scopus (2009) citation database produced by Elsevier which is a large citations and publications database. It has various analytical tools including citation tracker and information about individual articles. Using the information provided by Scopus, one can calculate impact factor of any journal including Human Reproduction. In general, Human Reproduction publishes (or has published in the past) original articles, reviews, letters, editorials, notes, conference papers and short surveys. In JCR, impact factor is calculated based on citations to research articles and reviews. Using the same type of articles, we calculated impact factors of Human Reproduction for the years 2000–2006 with Scopus database, and we compared the results with those obtained from JCR. We found discrepancies in the number of articles and review articles produced by JCR and Scopus (data not shown). The impact factors reported by JCR are also consistently lower than those using Scopus database (Fig. 1). It is unclear which articles were used by JCR to calculate the impact factor. Indeed, a few authors have suggested that these articles should be listed on JCR website (Rossner et al., 2008). Similarly, Scopus could not disclose their exact method of data collection of the number of articles for any journal (personal communication). Identification of articles used for impact factors would be useful to evaluate whether journals with high impact factor are definitely better than those with lower impact factor. High quality articles lead to many citations increasing the impact factor. However, ordinary and yet highly controversial articles might also attract a good number of authors to reply or perform a similar study and cite the paper (Rossner et al., 2008). As a result, controversial articles may increase the impact factor of a journal. The number of authors per article and the number of review articles might influence the impact factor as well. It is possible that multi-author articles receive a higher number of self-citations (Sala and Brooks, 2008). Also, review articles tend to be quoted more often than original research papers. We should consider developing new tools to assess the real impact of scientific journals and differentiate between positive and negative impacts, both of them might lead to an increase in the impact factor of a journal.

International Business Research: Coauthorship Patterns and Quality

The authors investigate published international business research in four international business journals over a 10‐year period, 1995–2004: (a) patterns of coauthorship across regions, and (b) the relation between coauthorship patterns and the quality of international business (IB) articles. A cross‐region coauthorship enhances the quality of an article, suggesting that international collaboration creates synergy in IB research. The authors do not see any positive correlation between alphabetical ordering of coauthor names in multiauthored articles and article quality—a result that is contrary to some evidence in other disciplines. Finally, international management articles appear to be more frequently cited than articles in other IB research areas.