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Last and corresponding authorship practices in ecology.

ABSTRACT: Authorship is intended to convey information regarding credit and responsibility for manuscripts. However, while there is general agreement within ecology that the first author is the person who contributed the most to a particular project, there is less agreement regarding whether being last author is a position of significance and regarding what is indicated by someone being the corresponding author on a manuscript. Using an analysis of papers published in American Naturalist, Ecology, Evolution, and Oikos, I found that: (1) the number of authors on papers is increasing over time; (2) the proportion of first authors as corresponding author has increased over time, as has the proportion of last authors as corresponding author; (3) 84% of papers published in 2016 had the first author as corresponding author; and (4) geographic regions differed in the likelihood of having the first (or last) author as corresponding author. I also carried out an online survey to better understand views on last and corresponding authorship. This survey revealed that most ecologists view the last author as the "senior" author on a paper (i.e., the person who runs the research group in which most of the work was carried out), and most ecologists view the corresponding author as the person taking full responsibility for a paper. However, there was substantial variation in views on authorship, especially corresponding authorship. Given these results, I suggest that discussions of authorship have as their starting point that the first author will be corresponding author and the senior author will be last author. I also suggest ways of deciding author order in cases where two senior authors contributed equally.

SUBMITTER: Duffy MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5677469 | biostudies-other | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Last and corresponding authorship practices in ecology.

Duffy Meghan A MA

Ecology and evolution 20170920 21

Authorship is intended to convey information regarding credit and responsibility for manuscripts. However, while there is general agreement within ecology that the first author is the person who contributed the most to a particular project, there is less agreement regarding whether being last author is a position of significance and regarding what is indicated by someone being the corresponding author on a manuscript. Using an analysis of papers published in <i>American Naturalist</i>, <i>Ecolog ...[more]

PMID: 29152184

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Project description:ObjectiveTo investigate the relationship between biomedical researchers' collaborative and authorship practices and scientific success.DesignLongitudinal quantitative analysis of individual researchers' careers over a nine-year period.SettingA leading biomedical research institution in the United Kingdom.ParticipantsFive hundred and twenty-five biomedical researchers who were in employment on 31 December 2009.Main outcome measuresWe constructed the co-authorship network in which nodes are the researchers, and links are established between any two researchers if they co-authored one or more articles. For each researcher, we recorded the position held in the co-authorship network and in the bylines of all articles published in each three-year interval and calculated the number of citations these articles accrued until January 2013. We estimated maximum likelihood negative binomial panel regression models.ResultsOur analysis suggests that collaboration sustained success, yet excessive co-authorship did not. Last positions in non-alphabetised bylines were beneficial for higher academic ranks but not for junior ones. A professor could witness a 20.57% increase in the expected citation count if last-listed non-alphabetically in one additional publication; yet, a lecturer suffered from a 13.04% reduction. First positions in alphabetised bylines were positively associated with performance for junior academics only. A lecturer could experience a 8.78% increase in the expected citation count if first-listed alphabetically in one additional publication. While junior researchers amplified success when brokering among otherwise disconnected collaborators, senior researchers prospered from socially cohesive networks, rich in third-party relationships.ConclusionsThese results help biomedical scientists shape successful careers and research institutions develop effective assessment and recruitment policies that will ultimately sustain the quality of biomedical research and patient care.

Project description:IntroductionScientific collaboration is an important mechanism that enables the integration of the least developed countries into research activities. In the present study, we use the order of author signatures and addresses for correspondence in scientific publications as variables to analyze the interactions between countries of very high (VHHD), high (HHD), medium (MHD), and low human development (LHD).MethodologyWe identified all documents published between 2011 and 2015 in journals included in the Science Citation Index-Expanded categories' of Tropical Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Parasitology, and Pediatrics. We then classified the countries participating in the publications according to their Human Development Index (HDI), analyzing the international collaboration; positioning and influence of some countries over others in cooperative networks; their leadership; and the impact of the work based on the HDI and the type of collaboration.ResultsWe observed a high degree of international collaboration in all the areas analyzed, in the case of both LHD and MHD countries. We identified numerous cooperative links between VHHD countries and MHD/LHD countries, reflecting the fact that cooperative links are an important mechanism for integrating research activities into the latter. The countries with large emerging economies, such as Brazil and China stand out due to the dominance they exert in the collaborations established with the United States, the UK, and other European countries. The analysis of the leadership role of the countries, measured by the frequency of lead authorships, shows limited participation by MHD/LHD countries. This reduced participation among less developed countries is further accentuated by their limited presence in the addresses for correspondence. We observed significant statistical differences in the degree of citation according to the HDI of the participating countries.ConclusionsThe order of signatures and the address for correspondence in scientific publications are bibliographic characteristics that facilitate a precise, in-depth analysis of cooperative practices and their associations with concepts like dominance or leadership. This is useful to monitor the existing balance in research participation in health research publications.

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Last and corresponding authorship practices in ecology.

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Last and corresponding authorship practices in ecology.

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