Using bibliometrics to detect questionable authorship and affiliation practices and their impact on global research metrics: A case study of 14 universities

Authors : Lokman I. Meho, Elie A. Akl

From 2019 to 2023, a subset of 80 highly published universities demonstrated research output increases exceeding 100%, compared to the global average of 20%. Among these, 14 institutions showed significant declines in first authorship rates, raising questions about their authorship and affiliation practices.

This study employed bibliometric analysis to examine shifts in authorship and affiliation dynamics at these universities. Key findings include a 234% rise in total publications, a 23 percentage point drop in first authorship rates, and an increase in hyper-prolific authors from 23 to 177. International collaborations surged, and several universities exhibited sharp rises in multiaffiliated publications. Additionally, the proportion of articles published in top 10% journals increased by 11 percentage points, and the proportion of articles ranked among the world’s top 10% most cited grew by 12 percentage points.

These trends raise concerns about the integrity of authorship and affiliation practices as they deviate from normative behavior, far exceeding those observed nationally and at top-ranked universities—Caltech, MIT, Princeton, and UC Berkeley.

The study emphasizes the need for collaborative reforms by universities, ranking agencies, publishers, and other entities, highlighting the importance of each entity’s role in preserving academic integrity and ensuring the reliability of global research metrics.

URL : Using bibliometrics to detect questionable authorship and affiliation practices and their impact on global research metrics: A case study of 14 universities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00339

Publication Trends in Artificial Intelligence Conferences: The Rise of Super Prolific Authors

Authors : Ariful Azad, Afeefa Banu

Papers published in top conferences contribute influential discoveries that are reshaping the landscape of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI). We analyzed 87,137 papers from 11 AI conferences to examine publication trends over the past decade. Our findings reveal a consistent increase in both the number of papers and authors, reflecting the growing interest in AI research.

We also observed a rise in prolific researchers who publish dozens of papers at the same conference each year. In light of this analysis, the AI research community should consider revisiting authorship policies, addressing equity concerns, and evaluating the workload of junior researchers to foster a more sustainable and inclusive research environment.

Arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.07793

Authorship conflicts in academia: an international cross‑discipline survey

Authors : Elizaveta Savchenko, Ariel Rosenfeld

Collaboration among scholars has emerged as a significant characteristic of contemporary science. As a result, the number of authors listed in publications continues to rise steadily. Unfortunately, determining the authors to be included in the byline and their respective order entails multiple difficulties which often lead to conflicts. Despite the large volume of literature about conflicts in academia, it remains unclear how exactly these are distributed over the main socio-demographic properties, as well as the different types of interactions academics experience.

To address this gap, we conducted an international and cross-disciplinary survey answered by 752 academics from 41 fields of research and 93 countries that statistically well-represent the overall academic workforce. Our findings are concerning and suggest that conflicts over authorship credit arise very early in one’s academic career, even at the level of Master and Ph.D., and become increasingly common over time.

URL : Authorship conflicts in academia: an international cross‑discipline survey

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04972-x

Group authorship, an excellent opportunity laced with ethical, legal and technical challenges

Authors : Mohammad Hosseini, Alex O. Holcombe, Marton Kovacs, Hub Zwart, Daniel S. Katz, Kristi Holmes

Group authorship (also known as corporate authorship, team authorship, consortium authorship) refers to attribution practices that use the name of a collective (be it team, group, project, corporation, or consortium) in the authorship byline. Data shows that group authorships are on the rise but thus far, in scholarly discussions about authorship, they have not gained much specific attention.

Group authorship can minimize tensions within the group about authorship order and the criteria used for inclusion/exclusion of individual authors. However, current use of group authorships has drawbacks, such as ethical challenges associated with the attribution of credit and responsibilities, legal challenges regarding how copyrights are handled, and technical challenges related to the lack of persistent identifiers (PIDs), such as ORCID, for groups.

We offer two recommendations: 1) Journals should develop and share context-specific and unambiguous guidelines for group authorship, for which they can use the four baseline requirements offered in this paper; 2) Using persistent identifiers for groups and consistent reporting of members’ contributions should be facilitated through devising PIDs for groups and linking these to the ORCIDs of their individual contributors and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the published item.

URL : Group authorship, an excellent opportunity laced with ethical, legal and technical challenges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2024.2322557

Mega-authorship implications: How many scientists can fit into one cell?

Author : Daniel S. Dotson

The past 20 years has seen a significant increase in articles with 500 or more authors. This increase has presented problems in terms of determining true authorship versus other types of contribution, issues with database metadata and data output, and publication length. Using items with 500+ authors deemed as mega-author titles, a total of 5,533 mega-author items were identified using InCites. Metadata about the items was then gathered from Web of Science and Scopus.

Close examination of these items found that the vast majority of these covered physics topics, with medicine a far distant second place and only minor representation from other science fields. This mega-authorship saw significant events that appear to correspond to similar events in the Large Hadron Collider’s timeline, indicating that the projects for the collider are driving this heavy output. Some solutions are offered for the problems resulting from this phenomenon, partially driven by recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

URL : Mega-authorship implications: How many scientists can fit into one cell?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2024.2318790

How many authors are (too) many? A retrospective, descriptive analysis of authorship in biomedical publications

Authors : Martin Jakab, Eva Kittl, Tobias Kiesslich

Publishing in academic journals is primary to disseminate research findings, with authorship reflecting a scientist’s contribution, yielding academic recognition, and carrying significant financial implications. Author numbers per article have consistently risen in recent decades, as demonstrated in various journals and fields.

This study is a comprehensive analysis of authorship trends in biomedical papers from the NCBI PubMed database between 2000 and 2020, utilizing the Entrez Direct (EDirect) E-utilities to retrieve bibliometric data from a dataset of 17,015,001 articles. For all publication types, the mean author number per publication significantly increased over the last two decades from 3.99 to 6.25 (+ 57%, p < 0.0001) following a linear trend (r2 = 0.99) with an average relative increase of 2.28% per year.

This increase was highest for clinical trials (+ 5.67 authors per publication, + 97%), the smallest for case reports (+ 1.01 authors, + 24%). The proportion of single/solo authorships dropped by a factor of about 3 from 17.03% in 2000 to 5.69% in 2020. The percentage of eleven or more authors per publication increased ~ sevenfold, ~ 11-fold and ~ 12-fold for reviews, editorials, and systematic reviews, respectively. Confirming prior findings, this study highlights the escalating authorship in biomedical publications.

Given potential unethical practices, preserving authorship as a trustable indicator of scientific performance is critical. Understanding and curbing questionable authorship practices and inflation are imperative, as discussed through relevant literature to tackle this issue.

URL : How many authors are (too) many? A retrospective, descriptive analysis of authorship in biomedical publications

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04928-1

La fonction de l’éditeur-auteur dans les éditions critiques numériques

Autrice/Author : Joana Casenave

Cet article propose une étude des caractères d’auctorialité propres à l’édition critique et de l’évolution que cette auctorialité connaît dans l’édition critique numérique. Le développement des éditions numériques induit en effet la mise en place d’un corps auctorial collectif, dont nous analysons ici les modes de fonctionnement.

L’évolution de la fonction auctoriale amène également un profond renouvellement de la mise en discours de l’information, dans sa forme comme dans le choix et la hiérarchisation des contenus proposés.

Dans le même temps, cela modifie le processus de reconnaissance de l’autorité de l’édition ainsi que les modes d’évaluation scientifique. Cet article propose ainsi une étude exploratoire de ces évolutions que connaît l’édition critique dans le champ numérique.

URL : La fonction de l’éditeur-auteur dans les éditions critiques numériques

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/revuehn.3241