Authorship and citation patterns of highly cited biomedical researchers: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Scientific productivity is often evaluated by means of cumulative citation metrics. Different metrics produce different incentives. The H-index assigns full credit from a citation to each coauthor, and thus may encourage multiple collaborations in mid-list author roles. In contrast, the Hm-index assigns only a fraction 1/k of citation credit to each of k coauthors of an article, and thus may encourage research done by smaller teams, and in first or last author roles. Whether H and Hm indices are influenced by different authorship patterns has not been examined. METHODS: Using a publicly available Scopus database, I examined associations between the numbers of research articles published as single, first, mid-list, or last author between 1990 and 2019, and the H-index and the Hm-index, among 18,231 leading researchers in the health sciences. RESULTS: Adjusting for career duration and other article types, the H-index was negatively associated with the number of single author articles (partial Pearson r -0.06) and first author articles (-0.08), but positively associated with the number of mid-list (0.64) and last author articles (0.21). In contrast, all associations were positive for the Hm-index (0.04 for single author articles, 0.18 for first author articles, 0.24 for mid-list articles, and 0.46 for last author articles). CONCLUSION: The H-index and the Hm-index do not reflect the same authorship patterns: the full-credit H-index is predominantly associated with mid-list authorship, whereas the partial-credit Hm-index is driven by more balanced publication patterns, and is most strongly associated with last-author articles. Since performance metrics may act as incentives, the selection of a citation metric should receive careful consideration. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41073-023-00137-1.