Multiple authorship on research publications is common in many disciplines. Is the order in which authors appear in the byline determined by consistent criteria? This study investigated co-authored papers published in the
La autoría múltiple en publicaciones de investigación es común en muchas disciplinas. ¿El orden en el que aparecen los autores en la mención de autoría está determinado por criterios consistentes? Este estudio investiga los artículos en coautoría publicados en
The transition to Big Science, characterized by
In this context, in the analysis of the behavior and development of a scientific field, many important aspects of the construction of knowledge are neglected by not understanding the roles that researchers, research groups or institutions adopt in the development of a cooperative scientific project. This impacts on the rankings of both scientific production and citations (
Related to this theme, some studies have suggested to analyze the performance of researchers by proposing: specific algorithms and relative values to calculate the fractional contribution of the authors, according to the position they occupy in the byline (
Parallel to this challenge, there is growing attention to ethical issues related to co-authorship and the order of co-authors in scientific publications. This interest has led research institutions and organizations, journal editors, and researchers interested on the topics to propose guidelines and recommendations related to ethical behavior in the process of attributing authorship in different disciplines, as an attempt to minimize the negative effects of hyper-authorship in science.
Several studies on policies and conduct guidelines for co-authorship in specific areas have emerged in recent years aiming to increase the transparency and equity of the process of attribution. However, aside from the medical sciences, in other fields such as in the social sciences, mathematics, technologies, and engineering, the discussions on ethical issues and necessary guidelines to achieve good scientific practices and resolve misconduct in collaborative research have not been so prolific. Furthermore, by ignoring these issues, problems tend to be overlooked and deviations in ethical conduct that often turn into departmental traditions arise (
In this sense, we emphasize the possibilities and importance of the byline - the section where the names of the authors is listed (
Although some fields and scientific journals have established different rules to determine who can be considered an author of a work, the order of the byline commonly represents the relative contribution of the authors, based on the (often unspoken) conventions that govern the scientific practices of a field or journal. Some institutions or groups of researchers might also present different behaviors, for instance choosing to list the authors by alphabetical order or distinguishing the main author as the first one or the last one in the list (
Recently, some journals have included the list of authors’ contributions as a way of minimizing the negative effects of hyper-authorships and undeserved credit, offering readers the possibility to identify the real participation of each author in the development of the article.
In this sense, we understand that an analysis of scientific productivity at the micro (author) level should take into account the relative contribution of each author in articles in co-authorship, since dedication, involvement, activities, and the time spent on conducting research can vary greatly among the co-authors of the paper. For instance, as noted in the scientific literature (
Is there any relationship between the assignment of the order of authors in the byline, the type of activity performed by the authors, and their ongoing and comprehensive participation in the fundamental stages of the development of an article?
In this sense, our paper aims to evaluate the plausibility of establishing the order of the authors in articles in co-authorship as an indicator of their relative productivity in the field of the metric studies of information. Working with co-authored articles published in the
Identify and describe the level of participation of co-authors in the different activities of the development of the article;
Describe the understanding of the co-authors of the articles regarding the role of each author position in the byline in the development of the research (main author, conceptual contributor, technical participant, and supervisor or advisor).
The
We believe that by identifying the breadth of the contribution of each author according to their position in the byline, represented in the form of an indicator of relative productivity resulting from the report of their effective participation in the development of the research, the results of our paper can contribute to improve the analysis and understanding of the scientific dynamics in general and more specifically in this area of information science. We also consider that the characterization of the authors’ understanding of the role and contribution of each co-author to develop their articles in co-authorship may offer an overview of the role of authorship in science, in addition to offering grounds for a reflection on scientific policies and whether they support the discussions on the process of attribution of authorship by researchers, guidelines for good scientific practices, and editorial committees.
Initially, we identified the 41 “regular papers” co-authored articles that contained the list of contributions by each author published in the four issues of the
For each co-author of the 41 articles analyzed, we identified their participation in the 5 fundamental activities of the development of research and publication process listed by Elsevier and assigned a value of 20% for each activity in which they participated. Thus, each author was assigned a percentage between 0 (when the author did not participate in any activity) and 100% (when they participated in the development of all five activities), that corresponds to the sum of the percentages.
We consider that the proportional contribution of the merit of each co-author according to their involvement in each stage contributes to a more accurate estimation of the real participation of the co-authors in the development of a publication. We should note that, according to this criterion, the sum of the percentages of participation of all authors is not necessarily equal to 100%, as it could be higher as the co-authors’ participation in an activity is not mutually exclusive. We should also clarify that the choice of assigning equal credit for each of the five activities reflects the equal relevance of all stages and activities for achieving the final scientific result, since the absence of any of them would make the publication of the article impossible. The investigation of the perception of the importance of, and contribution to, each activity among the authors in different areas might be the focus of future research.
To identify the authors’ understanding of the role of each author/position in the development of the article, we created a questionnaire that was sent to the 125 authors of the 41 analyzed articles. The survey (see Appendix 1) included 6 questions:
Do you believe that the authorship order reflects different roles and functions in the development of a paper? (Q1);
Do you believe that the order in which the authors are listed in the article’s byline reflects their contribution (either quantitatively or qualitatively) in the development of the article? (Q2);
Do you believe that the first author listed in an article performs the function of…? (Q3);
Do you believe that the intermediary author(s) listed in an article perform(s) the function of…? (Q4);
Do you believe that the last author listed in an article performs the function of…? (Q5); and
Do you believe that the corresponding author listed in an article performs the function of…? (Q6).
The authors that answered the questionnaire included affiliations in Finland, China, Greece, United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, United States, Italy, Israel, Germany, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, France, Portugal, and Hungary. We obtained more than 30 responses from the total of 125 authors. 8 email addresses were invalid, as we were notified that they did not receive the questionnaire, 3 were not found, 2 authors replied that they were not interested in participating in the research, and 1 had passed away. Thus, out of a total of 125 authors, and the possibility to obtain 113 responses, with the feedback of 30 authors there was a participation of 26.5% of the authors of the accessible universe.
The results from the questionnaires were summarized in tables and associated according to the following aspects: the different roles played by the authors in a scientific work, by order in the byline (first author, middle author, last author, and corresponding author); the order of the authors associated to the quantitative and qualitative contribution related to the order in which the authors are listed; and whether there is an association between the role of the authors and the type of contribution made in the development of the article.
The methodology that is proposed in this paper can be applied in any area of knowledge, especially for studies that aim to analyze research productivity and collaborative behavior in science from a micro perspective (at the level of researchers and research groups). In order to analyze this, it is necessary to have the lists of the authors’ contributions, something that has been disclosed by an increasing number of scientific journals in recent years from the most varied areas of knowledge, a fact also analyzed by
Mean percentages of the contributions | ||||||
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# co-authors | Alphabetical | No alphabetical | Total | |||
# articles | % | # articles | % | # articles | % | |
Two | 7 | 54 | 6 | 46 | 13 | 100 |
Three | 6 | 43 | 8 | 57 | 14 | 100 |
Four | - | - | 10 | 100 | 10 | 100 |
Five | - | - | 2 | 100 | 2 | 100 |
Seven | - | - | 1 | 100 | 1 | 100 |
Ten | - | - | 1 | 100 | 1 | 100 |
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We can observe that only articles with 2 and 3 co-authors were ordered alphabetically. In this sense, an alphabetical order was used in the majority (54%) of articles with 2 co-authors and in 43% of the articles with 3 co-authors. Of the 7 articles with 2 co-authors listed in alphabetical order, 2 were published by authors with different levels of education (ordered from the author with the lowest education degree to the author with the highest degree) and 5 were published by authors with the same level. Of the 6 articles whose byline did not follow an alphabetical order, 5 were published with authors listed increasing levels of education (from the lowest degree to the highest degree), and 1 with authors ordered by decreasing levels of education (from highest degree to the lowest degree).
Of the 6 articles with 3 co-authors listed in alphabetical order, 3 were published by authors with the same level of education, 2 with authors listed by increasing levels of education (from the lowest degree to the highest degree), and 1 published by authors with decreasing levels of education (from the highest degree to the lowest degree). Of the 8 articles with 3 co-authors and no alphabetical ordering, 5 were published by authors with the same level of education, 2 with authors ordered by increasing levels of education listed increasingly (from the lowest degree to the highest degree), and 1 with authors ordered by decreasing levels of education (from the highest degree to the lowest degree).
We believe the results related to articles with 2 and 3 co-authors listed in alphabetical order can be explained by the adoption of the criterion of “equilibrated contribution” (
On the other hand, we can observe in
Furthermore, the results in
It is important to note that alphabetical order has also been the object of several criticisms, for being considered unfair and alien to the scientific policies that exist around the world (
In this context, we consider that alphabetical order can be an option for small groups of researchers who contributed equally to the development of a publication.
Activity | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Conception and design | Collection of data | Contribution of data or analysis tools | Analysis | Writing of the paper | Others* | |||
Level of co-authorship | Alphabetical order? (# of articles) | Position of the author | % of authors who contributed | % of authors who contributed | % of authors who contributed | % of authors who contributed | % of authors who contributed | % of authors who contributed |
Two co-authors | Yes (n=7) | 1st author | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | - |
2nd author | 71% | 43% | 43% | 71% | 86% | 14% | ||
No (n=6) | 1st author | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | - | |
2nd author | 100% | 83% | 100% | 83% | 100% | - | ||
Three co-authors | Yes (n=6) | 1st author | 100% | 67% | 80% | 67% | 83% | 17% |
2nd author | 100% | 67% | 67% | 84% | 100 | - | ||
3rd author | 100% | 67% | 40% | 67% | 67% | - | ||
No (n=8) | 1st author | 100% | 88% | 75% | 100 | 100% | - | |
2nd author | 75% | 38% | 75% | 75% | 50% | 13% | ||
3rd author | 38% | 13% | 13% | 63% | 50% | 25% | ||
Four co-authors | No (n=10) | 1st author | 100% | 80% | 80% | 90% | 90% | 10% |
2nd author | 90% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 10% | ||
3rd author | 40% | 60% | 60% | 50% | 50% | 20% | ||
4th author | 60% | 30% | 50% | 40% | 80% | 10% | ||
Five co-authors | No (n=2) | 1st author | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 50% |
2nd author | 100% | 100% | 100% | 50% | 50% | - | ||
3rd author | 50% | 50% | 100% | 10% | 100% | 50% | ||
4th author | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | - | 50% | ||
5th author | 50% | - | - | 50% | 100% | 50% | ||
Seven co-authors | No (n=1) | 1st author | 100% | - | 100% | 100% | 100% | - |
2nd author | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | - | ||
3rd author | 100% | - | - | 100% | 100% | - | ||
4th author | 100% | - | - | - | 100% | - | ||
5th author | 100% | - | - | - | 100% | |||
6th author | 100% | - | - | - | 100% | - | ||
7th author | 100% | - | - | - | 100% | - | ||
Ten co-authors | No (n=1) | 1st author | - | - | - | 100% | 100% | - |
2nd author | - | - | - | 100% | 100% | - | ||
3rd author | 100% | - | - | - | - | - | ||
4th author | - | - | - | 100% | - | - | ||
5th author | - | - | - | - | 100% | - | ||
6th author | - | - | - | 100% | - | - | ||
7th author | - | - | - | 100% | - | - | ||
8th author | 100% | - | - | - | - | - | ||
9th author | - | - | - | - | 100% | 100% | ||
10th author | 100% | - | - | - | 100% | - |
As for the other fundamental activities (data collection, contribution of data or tools, analysis, and writing of the paper), first authors participated in these activities in most of the articles (with percentages varying between 67% and 80%). On the other hand, the contribution of the first author was more substantial in articles with 3 co-authors not listed alphabetically, corresponded to a greater level of participation in the activities of conception and design of the research, analysis of the results, and writing for 100% of the articles. In addition, the percentage of participation of the first author in the activities of data collection and tools was higher in articles with 3 co-authors listed non-alphabetically order than in articles with the co-authors listed in alphabetical order.
In articles with 4 or more co-authors, the first author tended not to participate in all five fundamental activities. With the exception of the articles with 5 co-authors (2 articles), the first author did not participate in 100% of the articles for all activities. It is also worth noting that in the only article published with ten co-authors, the participation of the first author was lacking in comparison.
These results are in line with the consideration of the first position of the byline for the co-author who contributed most to the development of the work (
It is also important to highlight that, with the exception of the article with ten co-authors, for the other 40 articles, regardless of whether they followed an alphabetical order or not, the first author always participated in the conception and design of the research. This suggests that the size of the teams could dilute the contribution of the co-authors in an article and question the adopted criteria to differentiate scientific collaboration from co-authorship (
It is also noteworthy that, with the exception of 1 article with 4 co-authors and another one with 3 co-authors, both listed in alphabetical order, in all other 39 articles, the first author always participated in the writing of the paper.
Regarding the participation of the last author (and here it should be noted that in the case of articles with 2 co-authors, the second author was considered as the last author in the analysis), the writing of the paper was the activity performed in the highest percentage of articles, 100% of the articles with 2 co-authors listed in no alphabetical order, articles with 5 co-authors, 7 co-authors, and ten co-authors, and in 86% of articles with 2 co-authors listed in alphabetical order. In articles with 3 and 4 co-authors, the participation of the last author in the writing varied between 50% and 80% of the articles.
We can also observe that the activities of data collection and contribution of tools presented the lowest frequency of participation for the last author, showing in general low percentages or absence. Furthermore, only in articles with 2, 3, and 4 co-authors, did the last author participate in the collection of data and contribution of data or analysis tools, which means that the smaller the number of researchers who share a research objective, the greater their involvement in the construction of the study, as also pointed out by
In addition, the last author was the position with the highest percentage of participation in the “other contributions” category, that included, according to the authors, coordination and supervision activities. This reinforces the idea that the last author is usually the coordinator or supervisor of the study, as highlighted by
In general, the area of the metric studies of information presented similar results to those identified in the literature for the order of authors and their relative contribution, spotting the first author as the one with the most active participation (
However, our research showed that in the field of information science, or more specifically in informetrics, these dynamics did not follow the trend observed by
Mean percentage of the total contribution of the author | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Level of authorship | ||||||
Two co-authors | Three co-authors | Four co-authors | Five co-authors or more | |||
Order | Alphabetical (7 articles) | Non-alphabetical (6 articles) | Alphabetical (6 articles) | Non-alphabetical (8 articles) | Non-alphabetical (10 articles) | Non-alphabetical (4 articles) |
1st author | 100% | 96% | 78% | 93% | 84% | 80% |
2nd author | 69% | 85% | 83% | 65% | 70% | 75% |
3rd author | 65% | 43% | 54% | 60% | ||
4th author | 54% | 40% | ||||
5th author | 40% | |||||
6th author | 30% | |||||
7th author | 30% | |||||
8th author | 20% | |||||
9th author | 20% | |||||
10th author | 40% |
These results are similar to those identified by
The results in
# co-authors | Alphabetical. order? | Author position in by-line | Mean | Std. Dev. | Min. | Max. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Two | No (n=6) | First | 85% | 17% | 60% | 100% |
Last | 96% | 10% | 75% | 100% | ||
Yes (n=7) | First | 100%** | 0% | 100% | 100% | |
Last | 69% | 30% | 40% | 100% | ||
Three | No (n=8) | First | 93%** | 15% | 60% | 100% |
Middle | 65% | 28% | 20% | 100% | ||
Last | 43% | 27% | 0% | 80% | ||
Yes (n=6) | First | 78% | 35% | 25% | 100% | |
Middle | 83% | 15% | 60% | 100% | ||
Last | 65% | 31% | 20% | 100% | ||
Four or more | No (n1=14) | First | 83%** | 23% | 40% | 100% |
Middle | 54% | 30% | 20% | 100% | ||
Last | 51% | 32% | 20% | 100% |
1 For Middle authors, n=39
**Statistically significant mean difference of total contribution of the first author and the last author with the significance level of 0.01
*Statistically significant mean difference of total contribution of the first author and the last author with the significance level of 0.05
From
However, the differences between the means of the total contribution of the first author and the last author were only statistically proven for articles with 2 co-authors listed in alphabetical order (p=0.033), articles with 3 co-authors with no order (p=0.01), and articles with 4 or more co-authors (p=0.009). The impossibility of proving statistically the differences between the means of the total contribution of the first and the last author for the other levels of co-authorship (2 unordered co-authors and 3 ordered co-authors) might be linked to the fact that these categories included the smallest groups of articles (6 articles each). In this sense, future studies with larger samples would be necessary to evaluate this aspect.
Function of the first author | Q1: Do you believe that the authorship order reflects different roles and functions in the development of a paper? | |||||||
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Yes1 | No3 | Other5 | Total | |||||
# respond. | %2 | # respond. | %4 | # respond. | %6 | # respond. | %7 | |
The main author | 21 | 100 | - | - | 2 | 29 | 23 | 77 |
A conceptual contributor | 6 | 29 | - | - | 1 | 14 | 7 | 23 |
A technical contributor | 5 | 24 | - | - | - | - | 5 | 17 |
A supervisor or advisor | - | - | - | - | - | - | 0 | 0 |
The function is not related8 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 0 | 0 |
The order is not related9 | - | - | 1 | 33 | - | - | 1 | 3 |
No opinion | - | - | 1 | 33 | 1 | - | 2 | 7 |
Other | 1 | 5 | - | - | 5 | 71 | 6 | 20 |
Note: The data in this table refers to questions 1 and 3 of the questionnaire.
1. Total of participants that answered Yes to Q1=21
2. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered Yes to Q1 (21)
3. Total of participants that answered No to Q1 = 3
4. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered No to Q1 (3)
5. Total of participants that answered something else to Q1= 7
6. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered something else to Q1 (7)
7. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants (30)
8. I believe this author’s role or function is not associated with their order on the paper’s byline.
9. I believe the order of the authors (all of them) is not associated with their order on the paper’s byline.
In
Among the “other” answers, some respondents also indicated the need to contextualize the issue of the author’s position in the byline by field of knowledge, since, according to them, there is a preference for alphabetical ordering in some areas (this criterion was also considered by
Function of the middle author(s) | Q1: Do you believe that the authorship order reflects different roles and functions in the development of a paper? | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Yes1 | No3 | Other5 | Total | |||||
# respond. | %2 | # respond. | %4 | # respond. | %6 | # respond. | %7 | |
The main author | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
A conceptual contributor | 9 | 43 | - | - | 2 | 29 | 11 | 37 |
A technical contributor | 12 | 57 | - | - | 2 | 29 | 14 | 47 |
A supervisor or advisor | 1 | 5 | - | - | 1 | 14 | 2 | 7 |
The function is not related8 | 4 | 19 | - | - | - | - | 4 | 13 |
The order is not related9 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 100 | 1 | 14 | 5 | 17 |
No opinion | 1 | 5 | - | - | - | - | 1 | 3 |
Other | 3 | 14 | - | - | 4 | 57 | 7 | 23 |
Note: The data in this table refers to questions 1 and 4 of the questionnaire.
1. Total of participants that answered Yes to Q1=21
2. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered Yes to Q1 (21)
3. Total of participants that answered No to Q1=3
4. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered No to Q1 (3)
5. Total of participants that answered something else to Q1=7
6. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered something else to Q1 (7)
7. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants (30)
8. I believe this author’s role or function is not associated with their order on the paper’s byline.
9. I believe the order of the authors (all of them) is not associated with their order on the paper’s byline.
It is important to emphasize that this result is consistent with those in
From
In relation to question 4 (concerning the function of the middle author), some respondents preferred to develop their answers rather than select one of the options: while 4 respondents reported that none of the authors has a specific function in the development of the article, 3 respondents preferred to develop their answers. They mentioned that the middle author is probably the least important, although it depends on the research team and the area of knowledge (a result that is aligned with the percentage of participation in the stages of development of research from
Respondents also emphasize that they may have different roles and levels of contribution to the development of the article. One of the respondents suggested the ordering by decreasing level of education degree, that is, going from the one with the highest degree to the one with the lowest degree, leaving the position of middle author to those who played a minor role in the research. This criterion was considered by
We would like to highlight the importance of some of the respondents’ comments related to the necessity to consider the context and the area. Although here it is possible to identify a widely accepted behavior, as some authors considered that they had experiences in which the listing order followed other criteria, we do not believe this practice could be generalized.
Function of the last author | Q1: Do you believe that the authorship order reflects different roles and functions in the development of a paper? | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Yes1 | No3 | Other5 | Total | |||||
# respond. | %2 | # respond. | %4 | # respond. | %6 | # respond. | %7 | |
The main author | 1 | 5 | - | - | - | - | 1 | 3 |
A conceptual contributor | 8 | 38 | - | - | 1 | 14 | 9 | 30 |
A technical contributor | 5 | 24 | - | - | 1 | 14 | 6 | 20 |
A supervisor or advisor | 18 | 86 | - | - | 3 | 43 | 21 | 70 |
The function is not related8 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 33 | - | - | 2 | 7 |
The order is not related9 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 14 | 4 | 13 |
Other | 4 | 19 | - | - | 6 | 86 | 10 | 33 |
Note: The data in this table refers to questions 1 and 5 of the questionnaire.
1. Total of participants that answered Yes to Q1=21
2. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered Yes to Q1 (21)
3. Total of participants that answered No to Q1=3
4. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered No to Q1 (3)
5. Total of participants that answered something else to Q1=7
6. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants that answered something else to Q1 (7)
7. % calculated in relation to the total number of participants (30)
8. I believe this author’s role or function is not associated with their order on the paper’s byline.
9. I believe the order of the authors (all of them) is not associated with their order on the paper’s byline.
Going back to the question of the difference between authorship and scientific collaboration, we believe that being a co-author requires an active involvement in the development of research, so the mere supervision of the work should not be considered co-authorship. Notwithstanding, on the other hand, only 1 respondent answered that the position of the last author in the byline corresponds to the function of the main author. Still, in relation to the results from
The results presented in this study show that, in general, the author’s contributions to the fundamental activities of the development of research are not manifested equally, especially in studies with larger numbers of co-authors. In relation to our first objective, we have shown that in the field of the metric studies of information, the list of co-authors followed a decreasing order (from the most participative to the least participative) of the total contributions to the fundamental activities, presenting a special significance for the contribution of the first listed author. This result answers the research question we posited, by revealing that there is an association between the order of authors in the byline, the type of activity performed by the author, and the regularity of their participation in the fundamental stages of the development of the paper, with special significance for the stages of conceptualization and design of the study and the analysis of the results for the main position - first author - with a percentage higher than 67% in all activities, even for those cases in which the co-authors were listed in alphabetical order.
By presenting the perception of the authors of the JOI articles regarding the role of the authors and the ordering of authorship, the second specific objective was fulfilled. We identified that, in fact, co-authors perceive different functions in the article according to their position in the byline (or, in other words, the perception of the position in the byline is conditioned by the different functions performed by the co-authors). For the majority of respondents, the co-author listed first tends to be the main author of the study. Middle authors tend to be considered technical and conceptual contributors, being this position the one with the least visibility and preference for the respondents. Finally, the co-author listed last is perceived to occupy a supervisory or advisor role, being this position generally reserved for senior researchers, coordinators of research groups, and department heads.
Perhaps due to the diversity of education levels of the authors who were invited to answer the questionnaire, the main perception of the role of the corresponding author was split between the main author (the function that the majority of respondents selected) and the supervisor of the study (selected by 25% of the respondents). Thus, the perception of the researchers here can be noted although it is not unanimous.
We also observed that the greater the number of co-authors listed, the more difficult it is to guarantee that all co-authors would be able to undoubtedly defend all the content present in the article, nor would they be responsible for it. In this context, it is noteworthy that the attribution of authorship and ordering already represent an indicator of relative productivity, given that the regularity in the participation of the fundamental activities of the development of the article and the perception of the authors in relation to their function seem to be associated with the order in which they are listed. However, for the proposal of an indicator to be consolidated, the following aspects are necessary: the validation of the authors’ contributions in practical terms and the authors’ agreement on whether the listed order represents the relative contribution of each study.
Finally, we acknowledge some limitations of our research are related to the relatively limited dataset size and focus on a single discipline and one year in one journal. The nature and role of co-authorship and author order may also change over time, particularly as research team sizes continue to grow, which would need to be studied with longitudinal data. We believe, however, that this study still sheds light on this important issue and helps to inform future, larger-scale research on the topic. The present study also provides a framework for how this may be studied. Future research should investigate if there are disciplinary differences in the rationale used for determining author order, if the reasons have changed over time as research team sizes have grown, the possible influence of the national evaluation agencies’ policies and the country of affiliation of the authors, and the influence of the field of the authors that publish on bibliometrics considering that authors from different fields might present different patterns of co-authorship and perceptions about the concept of authorship (see for instance Silva et al., 2017). Although these aspects should be developed in future research, we believe that the methodology and discussions presented in our present paper can be of great help and interest to develop those ideas.
This study was supported by CAPES-PrInt (Project 23745992806-2019-Print-Rpi) and UC3M (Mobility Program for Researchers 2019).
Este trabajo ha sido financiado por la Agencia Financiadora CAPES-PrInt (Proyecto 23745992806 -2019-Print-Rpi) y el Programa de Movilidad de Investigadores 2019 de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Q1 - Do you believe that the authorship order reflects different roles and functions in the development of a paper?
Yes, I do.
No, I do not.
I have no opinion on this matter.
I do not wish to comment on this matter.
Use this space to clarify your answer if necessary.
Q2 - Do you believe that the order in which the authors are listed in the article’s byline reflects their contribution (either quantitatively or qualitatively) in the development of the article?
Yes, I do, but only quantitatively.
Yes, I do, but only qualitatively.
Yes, I do, in both ways.
No, I do not.
I have no opinion on this matter.
I do not wish to comment on this matter.
Use this space to clarify your answer if necessary.
Q3 - Do you believe that the first author listed in an article performs the function of:
The main author;
A conceptual contributor;
A technical contributor;
A supervisor or advisor;
I believe the role or function of the first author is not related to his/her order in the article’s byline.
I believe the order of the authors (all authors) is not related to their order in the article’s byline.
I have no opinion on this matter.
I do not wish to comment on this matter.
Use this space to clarify your answer if necessary.
Q4 - Do you believe that the intermediary author(s) listed in an article perform(s) the function of:
The main author(s);
Conceptual contributor(s);
Technical contributor(s);
Supervisor(s) or advisor(s);
I believe the role or function of the intermediary author(s) not related to their order in the article’s byline.
I believe the order of the authors (all authors) is not related to their order in the article’s byline.
I have no opinion on this matter.
I do not wish to comment on this matter.
Use this space to clarify your answer if necessary.
Q5 - Do you believe that the last author listed in an article performs the function of:
The main author;
A conceptual contributor;
A technical contributor;
A supervisor or advisor;
I believe the role or function of the last author is not related to his/her order in the article’s byline.
I believe the order of the authors (all authors) is not related to their order in the article’s byline.
I have no opinion on this matter.
I do not wish to comment on this matter.
Use this space to clarify your answer if necessary.
Q6 - Do you believe that the corresponding author listed in an article performs the function of:
The main author;
A conceptual contributor;
A technical contributor;
A supervisor or advisor;
I believe the corresponding author does not perform any special function different from the other authors
I have no opinion on this matter.
I do not wish to comment on this matter.
Use this space to clarify your answer if necessary.