A controlled analysis of authorship trends over two decades

Khan, Khalid S.; Nwosu, Chika R.; Khan, Shahla Zafar; Dwarakanath, Linga S.; Chien, Patrick

doi:10.1016/s0002-9378(99)70585-5

Cited by 38 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…We agree with previously reported claims that the high author count may instead reflect other factors such as increased collaborations, reports from networks of investigators, funding for research, complexity of research, and pressure on academic faculty to publish. (23, 24) Furthermore, our research has limited power to detect more modest differences between groups of journals and individual journals, given the relatively small number of articles abstracted per journal. Other important issues that remain unanswered include: (1) are the discrepancies in the quality of reporting between individual journals functions of the quality of the initial manuscript submitted or the strict editing criteria of individual journals; (2) do author's have a tendency/preference to submit higher-level studies (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Methodology and Analytic Techniques Used in Clinical Research

Kuroki

Allsworth

Peipert

2009

Obstetrics &Amp; Gynecology

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Objective To describe research methodology and statistical reporting of published articles in high impact factor, general medical journals compared to moderate impact factor obstetric and gynecology journals. Methods A cross-sectional analysis was performed on 371 articles published from January to June 2006, in 6 journals (high impact factor group—Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine; moderate impact factor group—American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Obstetrics & Gynecology). Articles were classified by level of evidence. Data abstracted from each article included: number of authors, clearly stated hypothesis, sample size/power calculations, statistical measures, and use of regression analysis. Univariable analyses were performed to evaluate differences between the high and moderate impact factor groups. Results The majority of published reports were observational studies (50%), followed by randomized controlled trials ([RCTs] 24%), case reports (14%), systematic reviews (6%), case series (1%), and other study types (4%). Within the high factor impact group, 35% were RCTs compared to 12% in the moderate impact group (RR 2.9, 95% CI 1.9-4.4). Recommended statistical reporting (eg point estimates with measures of precision) was more common in the high impact group (P<0.005). Conclusions The proportion of RCTs published among the high impact factor group was 3 times that of the moderate group. Efforts to provide the highest level of evidence and statistical reporting have potential to improve the quality of reports in the medical literature available for clinical decision making.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Methodology and Analytic Techniques Used in Clinical Research

Kuroki

Allsworth

Peipert

2009

Obstetrics &Amp; Gynecology

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“…Regression models of coauthorship historically belong to three families: classical linear regression, using author count [18, 21, 22, 47] or average author count by discipline or journal [32]; logistic regression, using an indicator that the number of authors exceeds some cutoff [8, 25]; and Poisson regression, using coauthor count [18, 45, 46]. In order to take advantage of within-journal variation, we opted not to aggregate our data into within-journal averages; in order to detect the changing shape of the author count distribution, we opted to treat it as a count variable.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Borry et al [6], in an analysis of coauthorship growth in bioethics, included an indicator for whether each published study used an empirical design, and found that the rise of empirical research could account for most of the concurrent rise in coauthorship rates. In contrast, although Pintér [20] observed a rise in multi-center trials concurrent with rising coauthorship in the European Journal of Pediatric Surgery , when Khan et al [25] and Tilak et al [21] included an indicator for this study type in their analyses of obstetrics and gynecology and in top general medicine journals, respectively, they found little evidence that coauthorship growth could be accounted for by changes in the distribution of articles by study type. Topical scope, by which we mean the range of distinct topics a study bears upon, is not trivial to measure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, previous analyses of multiple explanatory factors predominantly focused on coauthorship incidence [22, 25], while some compared coauthorship growth in different literatures using separate models [7, 35]. In order to measure the effects of our intervening variables on both incidence and growth, we included both main effects and date-of-publication interaction effects in a multiple regression model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of research complexity and competition on the incidence and growth of coauthorship in biomedicine

2017

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BackgroundInvestigations into the factors behind coauthorship growth in biomedical research have mostly focused on specific disciplines or journals, and have rarely controlled for factors in combination or considered changes in their effects over time. Observers often attribute the growth to the increasing complexity or competition (or both) of research practices, but few attempts have been made to parse the contributions of these two likely causes.ObjectivesWe aimed to assess the effects of complexity and competition on the incidence and growth of coauthorship, using a sample of the biomedical literature spanning multiple journals and disciplines.MethodsArticle-level bibliographic data from PubMed were combined with publicly available bibliometric data from Web of Science and SCImago over the years 1999–2007. We selected four predictors of coauthorship were selected, two (study type, topical scope of the study) associated with complexity and two (financial support for the project, popularity of the publishing journal) associated with competition. A negative binomial regression model was used to estimate the effects of each predictor on coauthorship incidence and growth. A second, mixed-effect model included the journal as a random effect.ResultsCoauthorship increased at about one author per article per decade. Clinical trials, supported research, and research of broader scope produced articles with more authors, while review articles credited fewer; and more popular journals published higher-authorship articles. Incidence and growth rates varied widely across journals and were themselves uncorrelated. Most effects remained statistically discernible after controlling for the publishing journal. The effects of complexity-associated factors held constant or diminished over time, while competition-related effects strengthened. These trends were similar in size but not discernible from subject-specific subdata.ConclusionsCoauthorship incidence rates are multifactorial and vary with factors associated with both complexity and competition. Coauthorship growth is likewise multifactorial and increasingly associated with research competition.

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“…While this is certainly true for interdisciplinary research linking scientists from distant disciplines (Bennett and Taylor, 2003), it is not so obvious within a given discipline. In that sense, such increase can also be observed in highly specialized journals (for example the mean number of authors per article increased from 1.5 to 3.8 in the Journal of Fish Biology from 1970 to 2010), and the number of collaborating centers has proved to be insufficient to explain the inflationary trend of authorship in medical science (Epstein, 1993;Khan et al, 1999). Furthermore, evaluations of research groups and their members are partly based on the amount of collaborative work they have achieved, without any concern as to whether the complexity of the topic actually needed the contribution of any additional collaborator or institution.…”

Section: Science As a Productive Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

The race to publish in the age of ever-increasing productivity

Tedesco

2011

Nat. Sci. Soc.

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A controlled analysis of authorship trends over two decades

Cited by 38 publications

References 18 publications

Methodology and Analytic Techniques Used in Clinical Research

Methodology and Analytic Techniques Used in Clinical Research

Effects of research complexity and competition on the incidence and growth of coauthorship in biomedicine

The race to publish in the age of ever-increasing productivity

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