{"id":3080,"date":"2016-12-13T10:18:15","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T10:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/?p=3080"},"modified":"2016-12-14T09:06:02","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T09:06:02","slug":"new-investigation-reveals-the-number-of-authors-named-on-research-papers-is-increasing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/2016\/12\/13\/new-investigation-reveals-the-number-of-authors-named-on-research-papers-is-increasing\/","title":{"rendered":"New investigation reveals the number of authors named on research papers is increasing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Data from more than 34 million research articles drawn from Scopus<\/a> have been reviewed to determine how the number of authors on scientific papers has changed over the past two decades. The investigation<\/a> by The Economist<\/a> <\/em>revealed that from 1996\u20132015 the average number of authors per paper grew from 3.2 to 4.4, with the average number of papers being published by a researcher increasing from 2.1 to 2.3. However, an author\u2019s overall paper-writing contribution (calculated as the number of papers\/number of authors who published in a given year) fell from 0.64 to 0.51 during the same time.<\/p>\n

The authors suggest that one reason behind this trend may be an increase in guest authorship, in which high-profile individuals are named on a paper having contributed little to the work reported. They provide examples of impressive yet improbably prolific publication lists achieved by some authors.<\/p>\n

The investigation also highlighted the trend in exceptionally long author lists for papers from large collaborative projects. For example, a paper <\/a>reporting work on the Higgs boson named over 5,000 co-authors. The Economist<\/em> question whether it can be said that each individual made a substantial contribution to the work, which is one of the four criteria required for authorship as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors<\/a>, and suggest the meaning of authorship in these circumstances is still unclear.<\/p>\n

\"the-economist\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n

Summary by Alice Wareham, PhD<\/a> from Aspire Scientific<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data from more than 34 million research articles drawn from Scopus have been reviewed to determine how the number of authors on scientific papers has changed over the past two … Continue Reading New investigation reveals the number of authors named on research papers is increasing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_publicize_connection_overrides":[],"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[164971,131850],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authorship","category-medical-writing","post-has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Yk5l-NG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3080"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3090,"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions\/3090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}